Solution: Boosting Efficiency And Freeing-Up Capacity
Arvato designed an end-to-end digital automation solution that would transform Fremantle’s monthly reporting functions using ProcessAutomate – a solution that combines the business’ back-office expertise with intelligent automation technology from software specialists Blue Prism.
It uses the software to create an agile, virtual workforce able to mimic human processing of repetitive, labour-intensive tasks. It follows rule-based business processes and interacts with systems in the same way that people do.
After delivering a series of joint workshops to identify the reporting processes most suited to automation, Arvato launched a pilot project that would apply the technology to producer share reporting for Fremantle’s London-based divisions and hedging analysis for each of the 30 territories in the company’s network.
The solution integrates with the business’ financial services software and automatically completes pre-designed report templates, all without error and in a consistent and auditable format.
Following the success of the pilot, Arvato automated the firm’s stock adjustment reports, balance sheet and inter-company reconciliations, and the minimum of 2,500 royalty statements it generates every quarter, which, before automation, would have each taken up to 20 minutes to download the data manually. The statements can now be compiled in minutes.
A Bespoke, Reliable And Collaborative Approach
Arvato’s automation specialists and Fremantle’s finance team worked collaboratively to build a bespoke solution and carried out extensive testing to maximise its performance.
With the system successfully up and running, Arvato continues to actively manage the technology, providing support and monitoring to ensure it is consistently delivering against its objectives, while also reviewing other suitable processes to roll the solution out to.
The combination of Arvato’s back-office expertise and technology has created a successful and scalable automation model that has generated significant results for Fremantle:
- The solution has cut the time Fremantle’s team spends on producer share reporting by 99% and the time spent on hedging analysis by 82%
- Together, the efficiencies generated in these processes are giving significant hours back to Fremantle to be repurposed on focussing on more complex tasks – time which would otherwise be spent manually processing data
- All reports are now 100% accurate and consistently presented, further reducing the time managers need to spend on reviewing reports
