Datacentrix has extended its digital business solutions offering to include AI-powered robotic process automation (RPA) technology.

Recently appointed as a local business partner for UiPath, a leading AI and RPA software company, Datacentrix is able to help clients to further empower staff, boosting productivity, efficiencies and business value – through automation.

Its position as a UiPath business partner will allow Datacentrix to resell and implement UiPath solutions to automate millions of tasks for business and government organisations across the globe, delivering a positive effect on both customer experience (CX) and employee job satisfaction.

“UiPath’s technology is an excellent fit for Datacentrix’ existing digital business solutions expertise,” explains Lenore Kerrigan, UiPath country sales director. “We’re on a growth trajectory both internationally and within South Africa, as organisations look to reap the benefits of automation. This local expansion drive has seen UiPath appoint partners that we believe will help us to add value.

“Knowing the Datacentrix team well, we were pleased to engage with the company as a South African business partner to assist us in building local sales.

“The South African contact centre market is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to RPA adoption,” she says. “We’re seeing increasing demand across all industries, from retail and healthcare, to manufacturing and even public sector – with the most progressive currently being financial services.

“Interestingly, RPA implementations are being driven as a business decision, thanks in part to how quickly the technology can be rolled out and add value. As opposed to traditional transactional solution projects, which could take years to implement, RPA processes can be up-and-running within weeks.”

Kerrigan explains that RPA technology is particularly important in four specific areas: acceleration of digital transformation; customer experience; employee experience; and governance and compliance. “It has a hugely positive impact on customer and employee experience alike, with previously painful onboarding processes (both internal and external to the company) cut down from more than a week to minutes.

“It also takes human error completely out of the equation – a bot does exactly what it is told to do consistently and correctly every time – assisting businesses to better manage governance, risk and compliance controls.

“Finally, the benefits of increased accuracy and throughput offered by automation and RPA can assist in lowering business costs and increasing revenue.”

And, once an organisation has a handle on how to use RPA within traditional processes, it is able to look at potentially new realms of possibility that may not have been previously considered, she adds.

“Businesses using RPA automation can operate more strategically, and in a more targeted way. This type of technology opens up new worlds that are physically impossible to access using manpower alone, while at the same time freeing the workforce from mundane, routine activities.

“We’ve reached a tipping point when it comes to staff’s capacity; one where more overtime and more stress is just not the answer,” Kerrigan says. “It’s now time to encourage our employees to embrace creativity, empathy and innovation, essentially removing the ‘robot’ from the human. There’s proof now that digitally native companies have an edge over brick-and-mortar businesses, and it is becoming more pressing to change your mindset to stay ahead.”

Shakeel Jhazbhay, GM of Datacentrix’ digital business solutions business unit, comments: “As a partner that is focused on helping South African organisations to enable digitalisation success, the expansion of our offering to include RPA, as a framework to automate business processes and build a digital workforce, was a logical move.

“We believe that UiPath’s positioning as a progressive solution provider, as attested to by Gartner where it placed UiPath as a Leader in its 2019 ‘Magic Quadrant for Robotic Process Automation Software’ report, and its proven ability to help businesses to accelerate digital transformation and growth, as well as to create capacity, made our partnership decision an easy one.”