Somany Impresa Group Lays the Groundwork for Sustained Growth With AI-Powered Automation

India’s leading conglomerate, Somany Impresa Group is home to one of India’s most iconic brands, Hindware. Its diverse portfolio spans across sanitary ware, consumer appliances, building products and packaging products among others.

The group’s long-term vision and strategy helped in achieving a leadership position in many of these product segments. As it set out to achieve an ambitious target of considerable revenue growth over the next three years, the group had to adopt new approaches and strategies.

The quest to maximize the top-line and bottom-line prompted the Group to reassess its operational processes. Recognizing the scope for improvement in manual processes and their impact on productivity, speed, accuracy, and consistency, the focus shifted towards automation. Consequently, automation emerged as one of the four key verticals established under the digital transformation initiative to drive the next phase of technology-led business transformation.

Grappling with the complexities of modern business demands, the conglomerate embarked on an ambitious journey to redefine operational efficiencies across all business lines through advanced AI-powered automation. Collaborating with UiPath for its platform’s AI-powered automation capabilities, the Group scaled its automation efforts to create a hyper-automated ecosystem that serves as the foundation to achieve exponential growth targets.

In collaboration with UiPath, we're streamlining operations and fostering adaptability for future challenges. This partnership signifies our commitment to immediate efficiency gains and long-term innovation, positioning us for sustained growth in the digital landscape,

Anjaiah Surgi, CIO, Somany Impresa Group

Building a Future-Ready Business

Till date the Group has successfully automated over 80 processes, leading to significant impact on the key parameters of operational costs, efficiencies, productivity, accuracy, turnaround times and resource utilization.

On an average, the six Bots deployed have achieved first time correct results almost 95% of the time in most processes and helped with optimising resources, which in turn has led to 55% more availability of resources. However, the Group’s automation success conveys a story that goes beyond the numbers to highlight a significant leap from traditional operating models to build future-ready businesses.

Automation’s Impact: At a Glance

• Reduced Operating Costs: Perform tasks with optimisation of resources, thereby reducing operating costs.

• Reduction in Manual Effort: Approx. 80-90% of manual effort eliminated by automating repetitive tasks, saving valuable time for users.

• Enhanced Accuracy and Compliance: Improved precision ensured error-free processing of legal documents, aiding in various audit purposes.

• Focus on High-Value Tasks: Employees could shift their focus from mundane tasks to more productive and growth-oriented activities, improving productivity and morale.

• First Time Right: Approx. 95% of the time processes were rightly processed.

The Group’s automation coverage today encompasses all the key functions with finance and sales and marketing leading the way, applying the Pareto Principle of 20% mass bringing 80% of the impact. HR, manufacturing operations and a few other departments’ use cases form the rest.

Implementing AI-powered automation with UiPath has contributed significantly to cost savings, optimizing resource allocation and aligning the workforce with strategic business goals.

Nitin Dhingra, CDO, Somany Impresa Group

AI-Powered Automation: From Incremental to Exponential Impact

The Group’s automation journey started with a clear vision to harness AI-powered automation not merely as a tool but as a critical lever for growth, scalability, and innovation, and to leverage it Group-wide and process-wide to maximize impact and generate synergy across business lines. UiPath’s focus on advanced AI-powered automation and a platform centric approach coupled with a user-friendly interface and capabilities around extensibility aligned perfectly with this automation philosophy.

“AI-powered automation is a key element in our business transformation strategy, essential for improving efficiency and competitiveness. AI has been a catalyst bringing an additional layer of intelligence, taking automation’s impact from incremental to exponential,” said Dhingra.

Beginning with foundational RPA initiatives, the automation projects eventually scaled up to advanced maturity level through integration with technologies such as OCR, intelligent document processing, computer vision and Generative AI.

Among the most standout initiatives has been the recent to integrate ChatGPT with automation, starting with the talent acquisition process in HR. This involved creating a ChatGPT interface with UiPath to automate the candidate screening process with ChatGPT analyzing thousands of resumes against the job descriptions and various other parameters, scoring each candidate accordingly and creating a single view with all relevant details of the shortlisted candidates for HR.

With the integration of Generative AI with automation in the talent acquisition process, HR not only streamlined time-consuming tasks but also enhanced candidate shortlisting with remarkable efficiency, setting a new benchmark in recruitment practices

Niraj Kumar, Head – Automation, Somany Impresa Group

More experiments around Generative AI and automation are underway, especially in the service domain.

Cornerstone Projects

The Group’s automation journey has moved beyond task automation to re-engineering the core processes to unlock unprecedented levels of efficiency and accuracy. This transformative impact is evident in several of the Group's automation initiatives. Let's delve into some of the cornerstone projects marking this journey.

Customer Portal Invoice Automation

This initiative automated the invoice submission process through the customer portal. RPA Bots automated the invoice submission process, resulting in reduced time for invoice submission, streamlined billing cycles, real-time updates, and efficient handling of high invoice volumes. This improved vendor relationships and operational efficiency.

Job Work Process Automation

The job work process involves subcontracting tasks to external parties. Automating this subcontracting job work process significantly reduced task completion time, enhanced overall efficiency, and provided real-time visibility into job progress, enabling better decision-making.

Vendor Aging Report Automation

The vendor aging report tracks outstanding payments owed to vendors based on the duration of time they've been outstanding. Automated vendor aging report generation ensured accurate data, reduced manual effort, and empowered the organization to make informed decisions and manage cash flow effectively.

Inactive Vendor Blocking/Auto Blocking of Inactive Customers

This initiative involved identifying and blocking inactive vendors who haven't had transactions or activity within a specified period. RPA Bots automated the process of identifying and blocking inactive vendors, streamlining vendor management, reducing manual effort, and ensuring compliance with vendor policies.

Freight Inward Process Automation

The freight inward process involves booking actual freight costs based on vendor invoices and shipping documents. Automating freight cost booking using OCR reduced processing time and led to shorter lead times, faster invoice generation, accurate inventory records, and real-time visibility for proactive decision-making.

Future roadmap

With plans to expand the automation coverage to encompass many more processes, the Group is relying on the scalability and agility of the UiPath platform. According to Dhingra, UiPath's platform plays a pivotal role in enabling scalable and agile operations, allowing for quick adaptation to changing business requirements.

"We are proud to announce our holistic automation strategy, addressing immediate challenges while paving the way for sustained growth. Building on our successful RPA implementation, we're leveraging Azure and UiPath to integrate cognitive automation and AI/ML capabilities, driving enhanced business performance and growth,” said Kumar.

By adopting a holistic and forward-thinking approach to automation, the Group has not only addressed operational challenges but has also laid the groundwork for sustained growth and competitiveness in the digital era.

Building upon its successful RPA implementation, Somany Impresa Group envisions the future of automation and integration services to be centered around Azure and UiPath. The plan involves adopting cognitive automation, leveraging AI/ML capabilities, and incorporating UiPath Apps to further elevate business performance and growth.