Virtual Robotic Process Automation

Montgomery County Partners with UiPath

In January 2018, the $ Montgomery County Department of Finance$  purchased three licenses from $ UiPath$ , a company specializing in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). These three licenses cost the county approximately $5,400 total annually and are a cheaper productivity solution than designing a new product. According to the $ UiPath CTO Jim Walker$ , Montgomery County decided to become "$ the first county in the United States to deploy RPA$ " after witnessing the "potential of this emerging technology".

Implementing RPA in the Department

$ The RPA platform$  was designed by UiPath to reduce the need for staff to waste precious time on repetitive low-value tasks. Automating these tasks with the platform allows the staff to save that time so it can be invested time into more complex tasks with better returns. The platform functions in a purely virtual environment and leverages existing systems to minimize disruptions to department. In fact, Montgomery County already intends to expand the RPA platform to other departments.

Direct Increases in Productivity and Efficiency

The Department of Finance staff have used the platform to automate four data entry workflows, which has resulted in significant time and financial savings. The county's high returns on their annual RPA investment include:

A daily credit card receipt task that used to take an employee 20 minutes to complete is now finished in only 3 minutes. This is a direct savings of 75 hours a year.

An estimated 1,000-hour record update was completed in just 40 hours. This a direct savings of 960 hours.

A payroll system holiday addition that normally takes 8 hours to complete has been reduced to a 20 minute task. This is a direct savings of one full work day.

Approximately 12,000-15,000 annual property tax refunds went from being completed at a rate of 1 refund per 2 minutes to 1 refund per 10 seconds. This is a direct savings of at least 350 hours a year.