RPA FOR APPLICATION SUPPORT

OVERVIEW

The Client is a large Power Distribution Company based in Europe where we provide 24/7 Software Maintenance Support from our remote engineering centers. We provide support for several applications such as SAP, MS Azure, Oracle, Primavera, eWay, IBM Integration Bus (IIB), Microsoft Business Intelligence, Websphere, Weblogic, Alfresco, etc. by Class of Service required (platinum, Gold 24X7, Gold 12X5, Silver, Bronze).The Incident management is handled by ServiceNow (SNOW). We developed and Implemented Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for few applications where the tickets can be closed by routine checks and fixes. This early identification and fixing the issues helped us deploy limited maintenance resources more cost-effectively, maximize application uptimes and ultimately improving ourfinances& customer satisfaction. Solution was integrated with an existing Web portal for easy configuration and scalability.

RESULTS

• Better employee utilization
• Reduced costs and operational Risks.
• Better 24/7 coverage at lower costs.
• Improved employee engagement with better customer experience.
• Flexibility and Simplicity.
• Analytics and Insights.
• Faster and Reliable service.

TYPICAL CHALLENGES FOR REMOTE SOFTWARE SUPPORT:

• Unable to provide continuous software application up times resulting in poor customer satisfaction.
• Software is not designed properly resulting in unknown catastrophic failures.
• Network and connectivity issues from remote servers.
• Increased software downtimes due to lack of proper 24/7 support coverage.
• Patches/Upgrades arenot done asper schedules.

SOLUTION

Our goal was to explore how RPA can lead to improved metrics across all software applications routine support &maintenance and to have a positive impact on our customers, employees, and the bottom-line. After thoroughly evaluating the client’s challenges, we used UI Path to develop a solution that automatically performed tasks without human involvement to close the incident-tickets and email confirmation to clients as needed. This process included monitoring Email Alerts and taking appropriate actions required to close the tickets. In one flow, the bot monitored the alerts and makes RDP connections to a remote server, checks if the required services are running, and then starts the services as needed. The bot then also confirms if all the appropriate ports are open on the remote servers and send confirmation mails to the corresponding end users.

The typical RPA process for this project involves:

• Monitor emails for real-time alerts and process the incident tickets based on subject for each alert type/issue.
• RDP into remote servers and check for services and make fixes and confirm after service is available to end-users.
• Send out an email confirmation to respective end-users or escalation emails if the problem cannot be resolved.