workforce resiliency solution blueprint › uploads › resources › white-papers › ...the...

Workforce Resiliency Solution BlueprintLeveraging Digital Workers to Support Remote Application Access

blueprism.com

Executive SummaryIn this document, Blue Prism outlines a framework for organizations to engage digital workers to support remote employees, provide business resiliency and enhance the interaction between automated processes and employees.

IntroductionDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations around the globe have quickly discovered that many of their internal systems and data sources were not designed for remote access. For example, shared services such as HR, IT, Finance & Accounting, etc., do not typically have people work remotely, and some of the applications used by these teams are not certified for remote access. In addition, very few enterprises are structured for prolonged remote access of their workforce.

With these challenges, both government and private sector leaders have mandated employees to work from home to reduce contact with others. From a public health and safety perspective, this approach is necessary, but most organizations have not planned to support this scale of remote workforce. Because of this, many businesses are finding it difficult to maintain their operations.

Workforce Resilience Solution BlueprintOrganizations that have implemented a digital workforce using intelligent automation platforms like Blue Prism for streamlining steady-state operations have been able to off-load repetitive transactional processing from their employees. These operational efficiencies are only one aspect of the power of a digital workforce.

The Workforce Resiliency Solution Blueprint leverages this Blue Prism digital workforce as an abstraction layer between enterprise systems and remote employees to provide basic, yet critical, application functions to the remote workforce. This framework is intended to address the challenge of providing access to key functions of applications that do not have remote access capabilities to employees in roles that typically do not work remotely. The approach leverages the ability of Blue Prism digital workers to be trained to access any systems internally within a company, regardless of the platform or age of the systems, and interact with those systems and underlying data just as a human would do. Communication between the digital worker and remote employee in this scenario would take place over a simple, secure channel such as email or an internal messaging system.

With these challenges, both government and private sector leader have mandated employees work from home to reduce contact with others.

blueprism.com 2

:CUSTOMER INTERVIEW GUIDE

WHITE PAPER: WORKFORCE RESILIENCY SOLUTION BLUEPRINT - LEVERAGING DIGITAL WORKERS TO SUPPORT REMOTE APPLICATION ACCESS

The following is an example of this solution blueprint at work:• A Remote Employee fills out and emails a pre-defined form to request information or a transaction

on an enterprise system that is difficult or impossible to access remotely.

• A Digital Worker picks up the emailed request, authenticates the requestor

• A Digital Worker executes the requested task by logging onto and interacting with the systems and data required via the credentials that have been provided to it.

• The Digital Worker sends confirmation of request execution as well as any information requested to the Remote Employee through their preferred secure channel, e.g., email or text.

WorkletsThe design concept of this solution involves defining and creating simple collections of application functions, referred to as “worklets,” that a digital worker can quickly be trained to carry out at the request of a remote employee. For rapid development and adoption, it is recommended that the worklets be developed at the application level. Not only does this promote easy adoption by remote employees required to engage with an application, but it also readies the application for a more fully automated process that may require access to the same application functions. Since Blue Prism’s development architecture naturally encourages this sort of reusable application functionality, building these application-level components leads to supporting more robust automations that include access to these systems.

Application access is only part of the equation when developing a worklet. In addition, the logic to support the workflow must also be included as part of the worklet. With its development architecture, Blue Prism supports a powerful mechanism to engage processes from small and simple to large and very complex. This permits a wide range of worklets to be developed to support interaction by remote employees from simply initiating a report to be emailed to offering decision-support related to the processing of complex or subjective data at various points along the way in a highly automated process (human-in-the-loop). In each case, the worklet may be developed to support employees no matter their location.

blueprism.com 3



While access to a single application is helpful, it is likely that organizations will have many of these types of applications that lack remote-access capabilities. As such, the worklets will likely need to access multiple applications to support the various remote employee requests. Blue Prism has been designed to scale with massive transaction loads using our embedded queuing mechanism to build work queues for each digital worker. While this type of access provides the opportunity to process transactions, it may also introduce asynchronous data access/update issues. However, Blue Prism’s worklets can review the data prior to processing to ensure that it is acting on the relevant information. When in doubt, these digital workers can escalate to remote human employees who can intervene as necessary.

Continuous Improvement / Continuous DeliveryThis solution is intended to provide a Continuous Improvement/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) model. An increasing number of application functions can be added to the digital worker, and additional channels can be created between the digital worker and remote employee. A rudimentary level of remote employee productivity can be developed in a short timeframe, leveraging Object Design Instruction (ODI) workbooks, to capture the minimal amount of information necessary to define an application function.

By employing a CI/CD methodology there is potential to add application functions through agile development sprints. Also, other channels can be added for interaction between digital workers and remote employees, such as Office 365 messaging, SMS texts, file transfers, etc. All this activity is secured and governed by the same set of protocols utilized within the company for those existing channels. In addition, every activity executed by the digital workers in response to the requests that come in from the remote employee is encrypted and written to an immutable log for 100% auditability.

As the implementations of this digital and human employee interaction evolves, an organization should consider the Service Assist platform option that allows the creation of browser based dynamic forms, from any Blue Prism workflow, interacting process activities across multiple IT platforms including legacy systems, web front-ends, mobile applications and chatbots. This solution would be a great next step to extend the functionality of worklets.

Planning for SuccessThe COVID-19 pandemic crisis has exposed opportunities to support greater business resilience, but to get the most from any remote access connections, including digital workers who are providing services to remote employees, organizations must plan for this type of communications and interaction. By engaging with the stakeholders in this solution, your organization can not only open itself up to providing secured, remote engagement with digital workers who can service remote

blueprism.com 4



employees requests during global crisis situations, but can also open up the organization to new ways of accomplishing work between human and digital workers. These new automated solutions will support enhanced daily operational efficiencies. Even in situations where processes cannot or should not be fully automated, creating worklets that support these functions will enable more of the activities to be automated to reduce the overhead work for the people whether they are remote or in an office.

These worklets still require some process assessment/definition and testing, but the expectation is that this can be done in days and weeks versus months and years with traditional IT projects. Blue Prism’s partner ecosystem adds strength to this solution concept by offering both technology components like machine learning or advanced form processing to implementation services through partners who understand your business and the urgency to adopt new ways of working.

Practical Implemenation OptionsWhile many of our customers have a digital workforce ready to deploy to support additional workloads from remote employees, there may be some that either cannot react quickly enough to add capacity in their data centers due to availability of IT resources who are required to work from home or need the flexibility of delivering solutions globally across various offices. For these customers, or the organizations who may not yet have Blue Prism’s digital workforce, there is another option to provide this type of solution.

Blue Prism Cloud offers digital workers that are available quickly and do not require any additional infrastructure. This option can help organizations not only onboard digital works rapidly but reduce the impact on IT security and risk management who are looking to add remote access to existing employees who are now working remotely. A fully cloud-enabled digital workforce can provide the flexibility to create new worklets that follow the organizations’ governance and compliance requirements and are secured through both communications and credentials.

Many Solutions - One BlueprintThe Workforce Resilience Solution Blueprint provides the framework for enabling digital workers to support remote employees for numerous applications that would be unavailable due to the capacity demands of the remote access infrastructure or because the application itself cannot offer remote capabilities. Digital workers offering interactions with human employees to complete activities will provide another option for businesses struggling to manage the workload with employees staying at home. Additionally, by adopting worklets to support various aspects of the business, the larger automation potential can be realized as each part of the organization embraces this new option for getting work done.

With the strength of the Blue Prism ecosystem, our technology, delivery, and advisory partners are coming together to help Blue Prism customers design, develop, and deploy these automation solutions that offer workforce resiliency. Blue Prism is committed to supporting our customers and partners as we all engage in new ways to interact with each other and our work.

blueprism.com 5



wp_workforce_resiliency_solution_blueprint_200325

About Blue PrismBlue Prism’s vision is “A Digital Workforce for Every Enterprise.” The company’s purpose is to unleash the collaborative potential of humans so every enterprise can exceed business goals and drive meaningful growth.

Available on-premises, in the cloud, hybrid, or as an integrated SaaS solution, Blue Prism’s Digital Workforce automates end-to-end processes that drive digital transformation.

Visit www.blueprism.comt to learn more or follow Blue Prism on Twitter @blue_prism and on LinkedIn.

© 2020 Blue Prism Limited. “Blue Prism”, “Thoughtonomy”, the “Blue Prism” logo and Prism device are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Blue Prism Limited and its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

© 2020 Blue Prism Limited. “Blue Prism”, “Thoughtonomy”, the “Blue Prism” logo and Prism device are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Blue Prism Limited and its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.



workforce resiliency solution blueprint › uploads › resources › white-papers › ...the...

Documents