BCA using robot technologies to automate processes

BCA is utilising robotic process automation (RPA) to help improve process handling and customer service.

Managing transport collection, setting reserve prices for vehicles, allocating vehicles to online auctions, undertaking VAT checks and managing electronic cash receipts, are all tasks now undertaken by RPA for BCA. 

The remarketing giant said it introduced RPA in 2019 and has since introduced over 30 group-wide process automations, which have delivered 126,457 hours of time back to BCA’s people to focus on customers – the equivalent of having an additional 81 full-time employees.

Tanny Chiragh, director of business efficiency at BCA, said: “We began our RPA journey in April 2019. The introduction of RPA has removed the need to re-work some processes entirely, sped up activity, assured data quality and offers 100% compliance.

“We’ve created a solid operating model and the success has been achieved thanks to collaboration across the business, the landing of the right technology platform and working closely with our people to address any concerns that robotic automation may generate along the journey.

“We started our journey with about 1,200 transactions being handled each month by robots. Since March 2021, nearly 1.1 million transactions are managed every single month with RPA.”

Vertu Motors has also invested in robotic process automation (RPA) to help improve productivity across manual data entry processing tasks.

BCA said its efficiency team continues to search out processes suitable for automation, by hosting 'scouting workshops' where BCA people put forward ideas, with the 'most promising' given a benefit assessment to ensure it will bring tangible results before approval and added to a development pipeline.