Client Challenge
The Department for Education's Ministerial and Public Communications Division (MPCD) aimed to enhance its responsiveness and precision in answering email inquiries by introducing automation.
Solution
The Department for Education collaborated with Cloudseed to create and execute a top-of-the-line RPA solution that quickly handles incoming emails for prompt response.
Benefits
Improving the speed of query responses through automation
The Department for Education (DfE) plays a significant role in shaping the lives of individuals in England, as it oversees and manages children's services and education from early childhood through higher education and apprenticeships. The DfE's ultimate goal is to ensure that all individuals, regardless of background, have access to world-class education, training, and care. Additionally, the department deals with issues related to children at risk and extremist messaging, making its responsibilities and tasks highly consequential. To effectively navigate the logistical challenges and achieve its ambitious goals, the DfE must constantly strive to secure top talent and utilize advanced technology.
The Ministerial and Public Communications Division (MPCD) at the Department for Education (DfE) receives 60,000 communications annually from various sources such as parents, Parliament, and the general public. This large volume of communications was causing delays and preventing employees from focusing on more valuable tasks. To improve its customer engagement, the DfE evaluated its current processes and technologies to find ways to speed up response times and increase the accuracy of email responses.
In order to embark on an introspective journey, the DfE partnered with Cloudseed through the Cabinet Office Centre of Excellence for the RPA framework. Cloudseed, known for its innovative approach in the public sector and in the field of automation, brought valuable expertise to the project. Together, the organizations evaluated various possibilities before ultimately deciding on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as the solution for the DfE and as a demonstration for other government departments and agencies. By implementing RPA at the core of the solution, the DfE and Cloudseed aimed to reduce the need for manual processing of digital correspondence while also increasing the speed and accuracy of responses.
The Department for Education (DfE) and Cloudseed sought to push the limits of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in order to achieve greater success and innovation. This required facing and overcoming several challenges. One major challenge was the decision to implement an unattended robot, which would operate without human supervision. While this would greatly reduce manual labor in the correspondence process, it required a highly precise and efficient robot to ensure accuracy. Additionally, while most RPA solutions are designed to handle structured data, the DfE robot is needed to process unstructured data. Furthermore, this would be one of the first RPA solutions applied to a public-facing, high-profile department within the public sector, requiring the team to prove its effectiveness in this environment.
Achieving greater accuracy and speed with RPA
To meet the stated goals, the partners created and put into action a robot. This robot uses a set of predetermined business rules to determine how to handle incoming emails and send them to the appropriate recipients for a response. These rules allow the robot to categorize each email based on multiple factors, allowing it to perform the same data entry tasks as a human with improved accuracy.
The robot processes incoming emails by first categorizing and extracting important information, which is then entered into the DfE's CRM system. The email is then moved to a "Processed" folder and linked to the corresponding CRM entry. The robot also detects duplicate contact cards and alerts the relevant team. One of its key capabilities is the ability to detect messages related to child welfare or extremism, which are flagged for prompt attention. The robot also leaves notes for reply writers and assigns the cases to appropriate workflow queues.
After successfully introducing the robot, the DfE has seen an improvement in its responsiveness and customer service. However, the department is not satisfied with these accomplishments and plans to continue working with Cloudseed through the CoE framework to further enhance the robot and its overall customer engagement strategy. This includes conducting another data review in 2019, incorporating the robot into a new CRM platform, and incorporating user feedback to make improvements to the solution in early 2019. The success of the robot has also sparked interest in exploring the potential use of RPA in other public sector departments and agencies.
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