Information Technology Manager Serkan AYVERDİ took place in Procurement Magazine with his article entitled "Unsped Customs Brokerage, Robotic Process Automation And Digitization."

Robotic Process Automation and digitalization at UNSPED customs brokerage

In UGM, we regularly define our “digitalization strategy” every year and create our current situation and next new goals.  In fulfilling these goals, our senior managers, teammates and all colleagues have been extremely successful in fulfilling their duties. In order to demonstrate the competencies of digitalization, the issue of keeping up with the changes that occur in infrastructure, software, hardware, investing or changing the existing structure or business process always gives momentum to digitalization. In UGM, we carry out all our business processes on a digital platform.

In 2019, we incorporated a new “technology concept” as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) into our “Digital Transformation” Strategy. In fact, this is not a “physical robot”, as it is called, but the concept of “Robot” here is a programmed software platform running on servers.

Robotic Process Automation allows you to use all the operations that an employee performs on his computer today by teaching them how to read data, write data, perform calculations, compare and make decisions with machine learning, as if any user were doing. In the platform we use, we can quickly activate our processes with drag-and-drop logic and coding.

In order to receive efficient and high-quality service from the RPA system, to minimize operational costs, to increase productivity, to provide value-added support to business units and end users, the processes to be taken into this system must be well analyzed, correctly designed and planned. Otherwise, you can also face a process that has very little advantage.

In order to measure the success to be achieved, these criteria are our sine qua non. This is how we compare the current situation with the new situation.

As our priority; we have evaluated all our business processes which are routine or frequently repeated, large volume, with a specific workflow and most importantly error-prone, in this context.

In some of our business processes that do not allow integration, our error-prone business processes that may arise from a serious lack of attention are also evaluated and designed.

For example, automations for interface use were developed between the systems used in UGM and the web portal.

OCR technology separation of the information contained in a 3000-page PDF file that came in the Mail environment was provided to our existing system quickly and error-free.

The invoice from the customer was read again by OCR method, providing error-free and fast data transfer to our own systems.

To summarize the Productivity Report and our advantages obtained at the end of these works;

• Fast and consistent results were achieved.
• The margin of error and risk has been reduced to zero.
• It was possible to use human resources more efficiently.
• Routine operations were activated to operate 24/7.
• Operational loads reduced.
• Higher quality service was received with internal and external customer satisfaction.
• Processes have been reorganized with new perspectives.
• Faster completion of processes and efficiency were achieved.
• Cost advantage was achieved with repetitive work.

In addition, when comparing the RPA process with the end user, when “day” was taken as basis in terms of speed an 8-fold fast and error-free and a 70 percent reduction was observed on the basis of “cost”. I can say that when the time parameter changes to “week”, these values increase by 30 percent.

We aim to use the data we have measured with the positive feedback we have received, further expanding the RPA process in the coming period.