The problem

Systems need to allow for dedicated connectors from them to analysis tools of choice because otherwise time is wasted running reports, extracting it, manipulating it to show the detail they want and then working from it.

The challenge

How might we cut out all the time wasted on downloading reports so that it is available in a format that suits everyone’s needs?

The outputs

• Finance data available near-live straight to Excel (no stopping this from being ESR data too)
• Ability to leverage the power of SQL to connect multiple data sources to produce a powerfully detailed transaction report and budget statement
• Able to see reports that would otherwise be too difficult to achieve like having seeing temp spend compared to budgets for that temp spend or producing a quarterly detailed VAT report with all details and links to invoices
• Ability to interrogate data using SQL in SQL Server Management Studio instead of logging into and navigating in-system areas to search for the same thing
• Report generation in Excel using the SQL Server database allows for a full months’ transactions including balance sheet to be produced in 10 seconds and rolling transaction reports, spanning over 24 months can be produced in under 3 minutes

The outcomes

• The RPA tool does the same job as the human did in 44% of the time
• If a human did as many extracts (every 20 minutes during month end and 3 hours outside of month end) then this would require someone employed for 0.57 WTE just to do what the robot is doing in the background (for effectively £0) If the 0.57 WTE was a band 2, this would be a saving of around £12,500 a year
• As it wouldn’t be expected to do the same frequency by a human, the original human rate was 0.05 WTE at a band 4 so this is a saving of around £1,500 a year
• No burden on staff to run reports from our finance system as it was all done for them