Sutherland Global Services is a global provider of business process and technology management services offering an integrated portfolio of analytics-driven back-office and customer facing solutions that support the entire customer lifecycle. Sean is responsible for managing finance and accounting solutions inside Sutherland in order to identify business opportunities, solution levers and new technologies/services that create compelling business cases and transformation opportunities for their clients.
Topic: How the early adoption of RPA will align with your business model delivering superior value to your clients by consistently staying ahead of the curve. Read more about why RPA innovation and transformation are integral to any corporate DNA.
1. While many service providers have been slow to make the pivot and embrace robotic process automation (RPA) Sutherland Global Services has been proactive in integrating RPA into your service delivery model. Can you explain what is behind this strategy?
Since inception, Sutherland’s focus has been to deliver measureable results to our clients by combining domain knowledge, technology-enablement, service excellence and innovation. Consequently our early adoption of RPA is totally aligned to our objective of delivering superior value to our clients by consistently staying ahead of the curve.
Innovation and transformation are integral to our corporate DNA. That is why innovation is institutionalized at Sutherland through the Innovation Labs (Incubation, Catalyst, Experience and Display) to generate and cultivate the next wave of ideas. Dedicated transformation teams then turn those ideas into reality in order to enable our clients to attain and sustain competitive edge.
RPA, therefore, is less of a strategy and more of staying true to the core of how we predictably deliver significant and sustainable value to our clients. In fact it’s just another day at the office.
2. You have real-life design & implementation experience across multiple industries….in your keynote you will talk about some of the lessons learnt. Please share the top 3 takeaways from your experiences?
Sure, as a pioneer in Robotic Process Automation, Sutherland is continually developing its expertise and experience. In doing so, we’ve learnt some very valuable lessons:
1) The traditional view of change management needs to change!
Traditional change management process may or may not have a direct impact on the delivery environment. However, with RPA-enabled delivery, every change has an impact on up/downstream processes. As a consequence the engagement relationship and governance needs to be truly symbiotic with a clear view and understanding of the delivery and IT eco-systems. This is crucial and requires true partnership and a common strategic vision.
2) The best process documentation and SOPs are still not enough.
No matter how linear a process may seem or detailed documentation may appear, there’s a good chance it’s not as linear as you think! To successfully implement an RPA solution, process needs to fragmented and defragmented at a binary level to maximize results.
3) RPA is a catalyzing component. The total solution configuration requires a dedicated robotics and transformation team to truly impact your delivery organization and your client’s retained organization.
The change catalyzed by RPA requires to be supported at an institutional and project level. The deployment of an RPA solution fundamentally changes both robotic and manual process, impacts multiple stakeholders and needs to be integrated with multiple systems ranging from legacy to proprietary.
The inherent nature of this change requires institutionalized robotics expertise, project-based resources and an overall organizational transformation approach to deal with dynamically changing environments. Ultimately, a truly successful RPA deployment is part of broader organizational approach to innovation and transformation.
3. Looking into the future, what impact do you see RPA having on the BPO ecosystem and Sutherland specifically?
We see the overall ecosystem being impacted in several ways. Firstly, it’s going to change the way the industry – analyst and advisors – assess service providers from the current metrics of headcount and TCV’s to annual transaction volumes, value and quality. That is because RPA engagement require lower headcount, process more transactions with greater accuracy.
Next, this will also impact the way we commercialize deals with our clients leading to more outcome-based pricing engagements. And, finally it will open up more delivery options for near-shore and onshore services as the “new” RPA delivery model shifts the client personnel deployment from lower level processing to high value-added tasks, such as exceptions management, problem resolution and data analysis.
For Sutherland specifically, it further consolidates our position as the iBPO (integrated BPO) leader. A corollary outcome of RPA is a tighter integration of front-office and back-office processes through data and insight and breaking down internal silos and barriers to cross-tower communication that exist in most business value chains. This has resulted in significantly additional operational efficiencies.
Our RPA expertise combined with industry and process knowledge has already enabled us to initiate transformative engagements across multiple verticals for vertical-specific, as well as horizontal services such as F&A and SCM.
About Sean Tinney: Vice-President, Finance and Accounting Services:
Sean is responsible for managing finance and accounting solutions inside Sutherland in order to identify business opportunities, solution levers and new technologies/services that create compelling business cases and transformation opportunities for our clients. Before Sutherland, Sean’s BPO experience includes roles of Head of Consumer Products and Supply Chain Management, Global Delivery Management, Account Executive, and Head of Business Insights and Analytics for large global clients. Sean graduated from York College’s Graham School of Business with BA in Marketing.
About Sutherland Global Services
Established in 1986, Sutherland Global Services is a global provider of business process and technology management services offering an integrated portfolio of analytics-driven back-office and customer facing solutions that support the entire customer lifecycle. It is one of the largest, independent BPO companies in the world serving global leaders in major industry verticals. Headquartered in Rochester, N.Y., Sutherland employs over 30,000 professionals and has locations across the United States, Brazil, Slovakia, Morocco, Philippines, Malaysia, China, India, UAE, Egypt, Bulgaria, UK, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, and Jamaica. For more information, visit www.sutherlandglobal.com