Nuuday: Operational Efficiency and Organizational Trust

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Optomo at Nuuday

In recent years, Nuuday has been undergoing an intensive automation journey, discovering and executing on good automation candidates and bringing previously outsourced finance processes back to its headquarters by the use of RPA. During this period, Nuuday has tripled the number of its robots in production.

As the telco expanded its automation efforts, the Robotics Department encountered challenges, particularly the timely execution of its essential finance processes. Recognizing the need for a smarter solution to manage its RPA, Nuuday partnered with Optomo.

‍A focus on operational stability:

Given that many of the firm's automated processes are tied to crucial financial workflows, it's imperative for Nuuday to ensure timely execution and completion. With a wide swathe of different IT systems, including occasionally unstable legacy systems, the robots that had to navigate them were error-prone. This meant that at the start of each working day would bring a list of issues to solve manually.

“(…) things that hadn't run or were stalled didn't start up again by themselves, so you'd start work the next day and have a pretty long list of things that had failed”
‍– Nina W. Jensen, Head of Business Process Management.

Time was frequently spent on minor yet time-consuming issues, and a significant amount of effort went into addressing inquiries from various business stakeholders. Processes were executed on individual virtual machines, leading to potential blockages and the need for constant monitoring to ensure timely completion of critical processes. This not only affected the developers' job satisfaction but also required them to occasionally monitor processes during their personal time and in the evenings.

“I love to develop, so I find it frustrating to handle tasks that don't add value. (…) It felt like we were always manually fixing things, which was quite annoying”
‍– Christian Meyer, Lead RPA Developer.

Now, thanks to its user-friendly interface, Optomo serves as Nuuday's primary hub for managing RPA processes. The intuitive overviews in Optomo ensure that insights and operational actions are always easily accessible.

“Using Optomo is advantageous as it provides a clear overview of our processes, showing what has run, what hasn't, and upcoming tasks. It's a valuable tool in our daily operations”
‍– Christian Meyer, Lead RPA Developer.

With the implementation of Optomo, automated restarts and error-handling have enhanced operational stability, reducing concerns for developers, operators, and the business.

“We no longer face the same uncertainties. If there's an issue, we're either alerted, or we know that Optomo has restarted the process”
– Mehmet Cakmak, Operation Manager.

Optomo's service window functionality allows the company to manage system downtimes effectively, ensuring they do not disrupt process execution.

“We have our old legacy systems, as well as the newer systems. Many require maintenance, and with Optomo, we can easily set up a service window for that”
– Mehmet Cakmak, Operation Manager.

By leveraging Optomo's flexible timing capabilities, Nuuday has addressed its operational challenges as well as optimized its RPA license utilization.

“Flexible scheduling ensures that we can utilize our licenses fully during peak times (...) Optomo has significantly improved efficiency, preventing automations from stalling”
‍– Mehmet Cakmak, Operation Manager.

Engaging the business with RPA:

The leadership found that the lower stability of an operation afflicted by a large degree of manual handling made it more difficult to build trust in the automation initiative from the rest of the organization.

“(…) we wouldn’t be allowed to automate processes if we couldn’t show that we are also able to operate them efficiently”
‍– Nina W. Jensen, Head of Business Process Management.

Today, the increased operational stability of and improved success rate of cases processed, means that the business overall is more satisfied with the work done by Nuuday’s Robotics Department.

“Feedback from the Accounting Department has been positive. They're impressed with the extent of our automation and the stability of our operations”
‍ – Nina W. Jensen, Head of Business Process Management.

Additionally, Optomo also functions as an instrument for spreading the word about the Robotics Department’s work across the firm.

With live dashboards across the offices showing the performance of the robots in real-time, business stakeholders are kept informed, engaged, and interested. By using Optomo, the RPA team can more clearly communicate the actual work the robots are doing to the business departments.

“We have regular status meetings with the departments (…) Sometimes they might think a robot has only completed 10% of its tasks, but with Optomo, I can show them it's actually 80%”
– Nina W. Jensen, Head of Business Process Management.

Business users are also active in the application itself having tailored read-only access which enable them to check up on their affiliated processes and even dive deep into cases and exceptions - without the Robotics Department as a middleman. If an exception is due to specific erroneous input from the stakeholders, they can see and manage problems by themselves. This has significantly reduced the back-and-forth between the functions to the benefit of all. The solution not only fosters business engagement around RPA initiatives but also alleviates developers' maintenance burdens, freeing them to focus on more value-driven tasks.

“Now, I have a tool that handles the tasks I used to find tedious”
‍– Christian Meyer, Lead RPA Developer.

The stable operation means that fewer employees are needed to oversee the daily operation. In fact, Nuuday expects it would be able to double its current amounts of processes without needing to redelegate existing or hire more people, than the current employee in charge of operations and maintenance.

“We have a single person overseeing operations. Before, during our peak times, he was always swamped. Now, with higher stability of our systems and processes, he manages comfortably even during those busy periods.”
‍ – Christian Meyer, Lead RPA Developer.

In the customer co-development approach adopted by the Optomo development team, Nuuday's Robotics Department has influenced the tool's design to meet the needs of both its RPA operators and business users. As a result, Optomo has both addressed the primary challenges faced by the RPA operation and improved business engagement with RPA. With these successes, Nuuday sees Optomo as an integral part of its long-term RPA strategy.