Citizen developers light up Orange Polska

Thanks to its long history of constant innovation, the telecoms industry is full of legacy business processes.

Orange Polska isn’t immune from these challenges, which affect its over 11k internal and external staff.

Repetitive tasks can be found in almost ‌every part of the organization, at various levels. Many people accept it as the norm, but we wanted to challenge the idea that some tasks should always be manual and routine.

Piotr Sobczyk • Director in Charge of Data & AI at Orange Polska

During Orange Polska journey, they realized that colleagues needed relief from tedious activities, which can hamper skills development, limit work-life balance, and reduce well-being. Not to mention holding back productivity and accuracy for the business. Thanks to automation it is possible to redirect people's talents to better-used places — e.g. direct contact with customers.

A history of automation

Orange Polska has pioneered automation since 2016. It started with advanced robots built with complex coding. However, more recently, it launched the “#Doit4Me” robotization program, which has democratized the software, allowing citizen developers to create robots for themselves using low- and no-code tools from UiPath. To explain, citizen developers are business users who automate tasks without being coding experts.

We established the program at the end of 2022. We didn’t want to just build robots. We wanted to transform the company by empowering employees to create their own automation to take on repetitive tasks. Our enthusiasm was infectious, and the board gave us its full support.

Piotr Sobczyk • Director in Charge of Data & AI at Orange Polska

The goal was to create a new, democratic approach to automation while making procedures more consistent. Dorota Kondej, RPA Leader mentioned, “We also wanted to implement automatic reporting with a business information dashboard showing all our robots so we could coordinate activity throughout the company and proof tangible business value of the program.”

As Dorota Kondej got going, she was keen to distribute the management of the program.

Each business unit has a unique understanding of its processes and skills. We wanted colleagues to be in control of their own automations. So, we created a federated structure of 10 local teams with a center of excellence linking them together. This allowed each area to develop according to its needs, capabilities and at an individual pace.

Dorota Kondej • Program Manager and RPA Leader at Orange Polska

As the program rolled out, it did so with care. “We focused on automations in areas that had already experienced the robotization. We wanted to test the new low- and no-code technology before giving wider access to all business units,” Dorota Kondej continues.

One in ten becomes a citizen developer

We launched a program that we called #Doit4Me. As we deeply believed that robots will hand people in everyday tasks. In #Doit4Me program Orange Polska RPA team decided to focus first on spreading (“democratizing”) knowledge about robotization. The program provided tools thanks to which every one of our employees, regardless of technical skills, could create a robot for their area.

“There are now over 900 people trained how to build robotic process automation. That’s close to every one in ten of the entire workforces - a huge achievement. This has triggered an explosion in the software’s use. In mid-2024, Orange Polska achieved the ambition of building 500 robots in 500 days.” Piotr Sobczyk said.

Most of them are robots created by citizen developers, supporting operational day-to-day tasks. Additionally, many advanced robots performing more complex tasks and not requiring employee assistance to run have been delivered by RPA developers dispersed throughout the organization.

Overall, the program has accelerated digital transformation of the operational teams and boosted productivity. Moreover, it helped employees upskill and reskill while improving their work satisfaction and giving them a new perspective. “There’s been a real change of mindset among employees. They’re more open to digital novelties and challenges, and there’s a willingness to develop and experiment, using low coding development tools,” Dorota adds.

Rising to challenges

Like any technology program, there were issues to address. For example, ensuring that the software meets Orange’s cyber security requirements. One of the biggest challenges was getting so many people involved including those who had previously not dealt with automation or coding.

People understood that robots aided their daily routines, reducing the time needed to complete mundane activities, rather than being a threat to their jobs.

At the very beginning there was also a challenge that new robots could be a threat to the architectural stability and development of systems. However, time and experience have proved that with the right procedures and close cooperation with cyber security and IT Devops teams, this is not the case.

A future that embraces AI

Having experienced such success with the automation at scale, Orange Polska now sees enormous potential in integrating AI robots and machine learning with robots. With automation’s ability to handle routine tasks, matched with AI's cognitive capabilities, it’s possible to streamline workflows, increase efficiency, and supercharge productivity.

“We’ll also explore how to automate processes from end-to-end. By working with analysts, we can find large, protracted processes with many steps that could be streamlined,” Piotr Sobczyk adds. Having said this, the focus will remain on supporting all colleagues to create simple robots for themselves and their peers. “This is a huge opportunity. Anyone who has an idea for a robot can get trained in a day or two so they can start automating their own tasks.”

Be brave

When asked what advice Dorota Kondej would offer to other businesses embarking on their automation journey, she makes four points.

• Firstly, “Be brave! Embrace new experiences. If you see potential in automation, there will undoubtedly be value for the business.”

• Secondly, “Look more broadly. The benefits of automation are not simply cost savings. In the long run, robots can change work culture.”

• Thirdly, “Democratize. Everyone has the power to improve the processes around them. It’s worth harnessing this power by showing what they can achieve with automation and then assisting to gain the skills to make it happen.”

• Finally, Dorota Kondej adds, “Benefit from the experience of others. If you know someone who has experience and competence when it comes to automation, get them on board.”

Which is a good point to end on. Orange Polska has plenty of experience and competence when it comes to delivering connectivity to people and businesses across the country.

“Now the era of smart robots is coming. They will combine the world of artificial intelligence, language models and machine learning into one solution to even better support our employees in their tasks. We are curious about this challenge and ready for it” - Dorota Kondej concludes.