UiPath Forward 2024 | Rockie Solomon, Eversource Energy & Jamaal Stanford, EY

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Rockie Solomon

Business Intelligent Automation Lead

Eversource Energy

Jamaal Stanford

Senior Manager

EY

Eversource, EY use process mining to cut backlogs and boost customer service

Eversource Energy’s automation journey shows that companies can reinvigorate operations and employee experiences through intelligent automation. By addressing backlogs, adopting process mining and reducing manual work, Eversource has transformed its business practices and customer interactions, according to Rockie Solomon (pictured, left), manager of enterprise automation at Eversource Energy.Eversource’s Rockie Solomon and EY’s Jamaal Stanford discuss process mining and RPA’s enterprise value.“We had processes that would stack up for quite a bit of time and ultimately were costing us a bit of money,” Solomon said. “That was our introduction to automation

play_circle_outline Maximizing Efficiency: Eversource's Path to Automation Success with Ernst & Young Collaboration

play_circle_outline Automation solutions for back office and front office processes at Eversource

play_circle_outline Involvement of employees in automation decisions at Eversource

play_circle_outline Future focus on adopting agentic AI and continued innovation at Eversource

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Rockie Solomon, Eversource Energy & Jamaal Stanford, EY

Rockie Solomon

Business Intelligent Automation Lead Eversource Energy

Jamaal Stanford

Senior Manager EY

Rockie Solomon, business intelligent automation lead at Eversource Energy, and Jamaal Stanford, senior manager at EY, discussed their automation journey at Eversource. The journey began to handle backlogs and reduce costs, starting with a bot and scaling to reduce overtime and process issues. Process mining identified deviations for improvements. Employees have been engaged, offering ideas for over 150 automated solutions, saving 400,000 hours. An AI factory integrated new technologies like generative AI for value. Successful use cases include an outage predi... Read more

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What was the initial reason for starting the automation journey at Eversource? add

What types of process automation have been implemented, including both back office and front office automations? add

What is the importance of creating an atmosphere where employees feel comfortable raising process pain points and allowing for potential changes in work tasks or automation? add

What capabilities do you believe Eversource will be able to adopt in the future? add

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Rockie Solomon, Eversource Energy & Jamaal Stanford, EY

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Rebecca Knight

>> Hello everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of UiPath Forward. We are smack dab in the middle of day two's wall-to-wall, back-to-back coverage with great guests. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside my cohost and analyst Dave Vellante. We would like to welcome back to the show, Rockie Solomon. She is the business intelligent automation lead at Eversource Energy. Welcome, Rockie.

Rockie Solomon

>> Thank you, Rebecca.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Jamaal Stanford, the senior manager at EY. Thank you so much.

Jamaal Stanford

>> Thank you. Thank you. Very happy to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, we're happy to have you. So you are both very close partners working hand in glove. But Rockie, why don't you start by talking a little bit about maybe the problem you were trying to solve and how the automation journey kicked off.

Rockie Solomon

>> Yeah. So our automation journey at Eversource began with a need to handle a lot of backlogs. So we had processes that would stack up for quite a bit of time, and ultimately were costing us a bit of money, leaving about $1.2 million on the table in a bad debt process that we could not get to. And so automation, that was our introduction into automation. How can we get through this backlog? How can we look up accounts where we can transfer the balances instead of writing them off? And our introduction was a bot. We did a small proof of concept, and then we scaled from there. So our introduction is, how do we get through all of these backlogs? How do we reduce overtime? How do we reduce the burden on our employees? Because it's frustrating. When you see work piling up, that's frustrating. So we were looking at it not just from a cost savings or bad debt reduction perspective, but what can we do to make it easier for our employees? And that's when we partnered with Ernst & Young to do that proof of concept, and then begin our automation journey by building the foundational capability and the governance to support it, and that's what has allowed us to scale.

Dave Vellante

>> So Rockie, I've got a little gripe with you since I'm an Eversource customer.

Rockie Solomon

>> Uh-oh, everyone has a gripe.

Dave Vellante

>> And I installed a generator, and I'm dying to use this thing, because my wife, Deb, was like, "Why do we need this? It's ugly." I'm like, "You watch." So anyway, we lost power for three minutes. The thing kicked on. I was like, "Yes." And then the power came back on. So we didn't even get to really use it.

Rockie Solomon

>> That's frustrating. That's a momentary outage actually that you had, right? So that was a momentary outage that occurred. Those are frustrating. And one of the things that we may get to talk about today is how we've leveraged these capabilities to address a momentary outage challenge for our customers, because we want to ensure reliability. So that experience that you're having, although you laugh about it, it's frustrating.

Dave Vellante

>> I wanted a multi-day outage. I wasn't clear. I was like, I got the generator. Now I'm good. All my neighbors will be like, "Can we come over?"

Rockie Solomon

>> That's not nice. That's not nice.

Dave Vellante

>> No, but thank you for your service. So Jamaal, tell us about what your activities are around automation and how you guys are working together.

Jamaal Stanford

>> So in my role, I help clients, at Eversource in this case, identify ways to implement strategies and identify use cases, ways to implement AI and automation into their business processes. So my day-to-day is working with Rockie to have conversations with the various business domains within Eversource and just really understand their goals, objectives, and pain points. We typically always start with what the challenger is, and then we back into, okay, what outcomes do we want to arrive at in using this technology? From there, we identify the specific capability that'll be used, whether that be RPA, chatbots in the form of advanced analytics, or a mix of all to really address those challenges and strive at the outcomes that the business domains are looking for. And Rockie, you told us last year your automation journey started, I think, in 2018.

Rockie Solomon

>> 2017 was the proof of concept. 2018 is when we really launched the foundational capability.

Dave Vellante

>> So you're well into it.

Rockie Solomon

>> Yes.

Dave Vellante

>> Okay, so take us back to sort of where you've come from and where you want to go.

Rockie Solomon

>> Oh my gosh. It's exciting because we started with your kind of bread and butter, robotic process automation, right? So hitting all of those back office processes with unattended automation, it's like all right, let's get the low hanging fruit, and then let's go from there. We've also deployed robotic desktop automation, so attended front office automations that enable our customer service agents to focus on their calls, their discussions with our customers while they've got bots in the background doing their thing, right? On demand, they're invoking these automations to work in real time while they're on the phone with the customers. So cool. We've also introduced chat bots. So some of our CSRs can go into a chatbot and say, "Okay, give me the latest and greatest," whatever information they need or retrieve something from their knowledge base. And right there at their fingertips, they have that. So those are three of the main ones that we've been leveraging over the last few years, but we've also done process mining. And Jamaal, if you want to take that a little deeper because that's pretty cool. The process mining has allowed us to get some granular data insights into processes. Why are things happening the way that they are? When are we veering from the way a process should be executed? So those are really cool tools as well that we've been leveraging. So, Jamaal.

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah, please share with the audience.

Rebecca Knight

>> Take it away.

Jamaal Stanford

>> So from a process mining standpoint and with all the capabilities, we found ways to embed the work that we do into the transformation programs that Eversource has. In this case, that we're going through a transformation within the operations organization. And as a result, as fallout from the transformation, they found that they had issues with inspections specifically, but they didn't know what the root cause of the issues were. They didn't know if it was people, process, or technology issue. We were able to come in and leverage process mining to give them greater transparency into their process to help them identify areas where they could either apply automation, provide coaching to some of the folks that were completing the work, or a need to change the process itself. So we were able to really give them that visibility to help some of the decisions that they would take afterwards.

Dave Vellante

>> So for the process mining layperson, how does that work? How do you discover something as amorphous and ever-changing as process? And how do you determine that steady state and where you want to go from there? What role does the technology play? What role do humans play? Walk us through that if you would.

Jamaal Stanford

>> So there's a component of working with the folks that do the work to understand the baseline of what they believe the process should be doing. From there, we take a deep dive into the data itself to understand the flow of data as transactions are completed and model that out itself, right? We then come with process mining where we're able to integrate with the systems and create various dashboard views that enable us to understand the flow of transactions as they're being completed within the baseline process. As Rockie mentioned, we're also able to see variations where there's a deviation from what's expected, and able to drive at the root cause of what caused that deviation at sales.

Dave Vellante

>> So it's really classic consulting work to say, "Okay, what's actually happening here?" Observe it, document it, talk to everybody along the way, identify discrepancies, try to rationalize those. And then you help people visualize that, and then say, "Okay, do we have this right?" And then you model it and say, maybe there's a better way to do it or there's some steps you can cut out. There's some repetition.

Jamaal Stanford

>> Yeah, I think one of the distinctions is I think there are probably fewer interviews that are required. We're able to do this more in an automated fashion and leverage system data in a more effective way to gain that view of what's occurring, what should be occurring, and what can be done to address the challenges that are .

Dave Vellante

>> How does that work? Because the outcome and you can follow the data. Is that right? Is that essentially how you-

Jamaal Stanford

>> Correct. We know what the "happy pass" is. We're able to see when there's deviations from it. And when there are deviations, we have the data to say what actually occurred, right?

Rockie Solomon

>> It starts with a hypothesis and then we test the hypothesis using process mining to determine whether or not it proved to be true, it proved to be false. And what were the reasons behind that?

Rebecca Knight

>> And the human has the hypothesis.

Rockie Solomon

>> And the human. Right. The human has the hypothesis.

Rebecca Knight

>> Okay. Okay. So

Rockie Solomon

>> Yeah.

Dave Vellante

>> We Are these processes documented anywhere formally? And are they kept up to date, like company policies and things like that?

Rockie Solomon

>> That is a great question. And as much as I don't want to air anyone's dirty laundry... No, but keeping processes up to date is a challenge that many businesses have, because as systems are upgraded, things... A screen can change, a process might be eliminated, or something could be added. And on the fly, it's like, okay, yep, we now need to do this or we don't need to do this, and you don't take the time to go back to the documentation because at that point, people are no longer relying on the documentation until you need the documentation.

Dave Vellante

>> Right.

Rockie Solomon

>> Right? So part of our process with building any of these automated solutions is to step through these processes with the people who do the work. Their voices are just as important as the developers who are going to be coding and automation or whatever, right? So sitting side by side with the employees that are doing the work either literally or virtually so that we're understanding what they're doing and being able to ask questions, because it's through the dialogue that we are able to identify really, does this need to be automated? Should this be abolished instead of automated? Is there some other system that is already like the root cause of this particular exception that if we fix that? Is that going to get rid of the problem? So you get that through discussion and dialogue with the people who do the work and the business process owners who own the work. We can't do any of this apart from that. Otherwise, we wouldn't be successful.

Rebecca Knight

>> Okay. So I want to hear about how customers are already seeing value from this journey, but also about those employees. I would like to hear how their lives have been changed for the better ostensibly because of this automation.

Rockie Solomon

>> So let's start with the employees. Because if it wasn't for our awesome employees, the satisfaction that our customers are getting in many areas of the work of the bills that are going out the door, we wouldn't have that if it wasn't for the dedicated and awesome employees that we have. And so one of the things that our folks do is they raise things quickly. We have a pain point. This isn't working. We need to do something else, right? So because they're comfortable giving voice to the process pain points that they're encountering, that gives us an opportunity to help solve it for them, right? So being engaged with them from the outset is also one of the things that has prevented Eversource from having this kind of backlash of employees saying, "Hey, wait a minute, what are you doing? Are you getting rid of the work? No, you're actually going to give us something that we want. You're going to give us some relief." Right? So by creating an atmosphere where our employees feel comfortable raising things, knowing that, hey, this could either be automated, or my whole work here can change, but they're comfortable and confident in their leadership.

Rebecca Knight

>> Psychological safety,

Rockie Solomon

>> Yes, absolutely. They're comfortable and confident in their leadership knowing that if this gets moved away, my work experience is going to be much better and I'm going to be able to do something that I actually like to do. And they're also able to focus on pain points for the customer. So when they're not burdened down with all this monotonous stuff, mind-numbing stuff, they're able to say, "Hey, you know what? This process here is causing a hiccup for our customers. Do you realize how many customers have to do a cancel rebuild because we're doing A, B, and C? Or they're calling in looking for their bill because it's been delayed because..." Great. So our employees are at the forefront of that. They're the ones who are saying, "Hey, we need to do some automation or some process improvement here so that our customer experience is better." And because of that, a byproduct of that is customer bills are going out the door accurately and timely based on the input from our employees and based on us being able to tackle the things that they're bringing to us.

Dave Vellante

>> You've obviously done a good job with this. You told us last year that the response was overwhelmingly positive, and they were happy to share their ideas. The key, it seems to me in looking through this, is you got the employees involved in the decisions, and then you gave us some metrics. You delivered over 150 automated solutions that have not only given back to Eversource, but over 400,000 hours of workforce capacity digitally, and you're now leveraging those automations. You're probably taking this to new levels.

Rockie Solomon

>> Yes.

Dave Vellante

>> I'm dying to hear about the AI factory. That's the coolest new phrase Jensen about. Michael Dell's using it, and Antonio Neri, all the execs. But it's exciting to hear actually you're implementing in so-called AI factory. What's that all about?

Jamaal Stanford

>> So I can take this. So I think as Rockie's talk earlier on the main stage, as was mentioned, having had a strong foundation with the automation program, having gone through with the governance and identifying ways to mitigate any potential risks, evaluate value, things of that sort, naturally have enabled us to transition and incorporate additional technologies over time, including those of process mining virtual agents. But additionally, we've deployed generative AI, leveraging the same governance framework that we've had before, right? Although it's a new technology, rather than needing to recreate the will, we're able to make adjustments to the existing framework that we have in place to quickly adopt new capabilities and really enable the speed to value associated with implementing the technology . I'll let Rockie speak to one of our biggest AI use cases, but we're able to find ways to more integrate this in the business process and drive increase value as a result.

Rockie Solomon

>> I don't know which one's the biggest because there's so many. For me, every automated solution, whether it's leveraging AI, whether it's leveraging advanced analytics, they're all big because they're all following a business challenge. If there wasn't a business problem that we needed to solve, we wouldn't be implementing it. So for me, they're all big. So I'm not sure which ones . However-

Jamaal Stanford

>> Of course.

Rockie Solomon

>> However... No,-

Dave Vellante

>> You're right. You're right.

Rockie Solomon

>> I'm kidding, but... So we've done... We've actually won an award recently for a sustained outage prediction model, and that's leveraging AI. And the foundational platform also has bots that are doing work behind the scenes. And so to what you were talking about earlier, David, with having that momentary outage, we actually built a solution that identifies momentary outages. And then based on understanding the history of momentary outages on the circuit, we're then looking and determining what is the likelihood of a sustained outage more than your three minutes or your five minutes, right? What's the likelihood of a sustained outage taking place? And what can we do to stop that so that our customers aren't impacted by a long duration outage? Right? So that solution, which is an incredible solution, we developed it, I believe in like eight weeks, and so it's only about eight months young, but we've prevented our customers, over 100,000 customers from having outages that would've impacted them based on the predictions that this AI model is pushing out, right? So that's a huge win for our customers. It's a huge win as well for us as a company because we want to provide reliable service. We want to prevent our customers from having to pick up that phone and call us because we fail to meet that basic need of theirs for electricity. So by innovating, by pulling all of these different capabilities together and figuring out what can we do to solve that challenge, to solve that reliability challenge, that's one of the things that we're doing. We've also applied generative AI to help make it easier for our employees to access key resources. So to access standards and requirements necessary to do their job, we implemented a generative AI conversation and a chatbot. So once again, at their fingertips, in their own natural language, they can ask a question and receive the results without having to go through painstaking searches of these data and these document repositories.

Rebecca Knight

>> Excellent.

Dave Vellante

>> Interesting.

Rebecca Knight

>> So what's next? Already, you've talked about so many incredible innovations that, as customers, both of us, I'm grateful for certainly. What do you see as the future?

Jamaal Stanford

>> So I think, as Rockie's mentioned, there's a mindset towards solving a business challenge, an outcome value-based approach that's taken, and that dictates the technologies that's brought in. With that said, I see Eversource being able to adopt additional capabilities, agentic AI being one, the topic of the conference and one that I think will add significant value in terms of being able to provide deeper automation and equip employees with more agents, more similar to the one that Rockie mentioned that can do even more. I think as we look for the program, we'll look to adopt some of those new capabilities, and there'll be even more that we're able to offer to the organization and customers as well.

Rebecca Knight

>> Excellent.

Rockie Solomon

>> From my perspective, we're just going to keep doing more awesome stuff, right? So in response to the challenges that come up, whether it's for our customers or something from our employees, we're going to figure out a way to solve it using all of the capabilities at our disposal. And that toolkit is growing, is expanding. And so we're just going to continue to do more of the same awesomeness in delivering value, making things easier for our employees, and making things better for our customers.

Rebecca Knight

>> All right. I like the vision. I like it. Stamp of approval.

Dave Vellante

>> Thanks you guys.

Rebecca Knight

>> Rockie and Jamaal, thank you so both so much for coming on theCUBE.

Rockie Solomon

>> Thank you, Rebecca.

Jamaal Stanford

>> Thank you.

Rockie Solomon

>> Thank you, Dave.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of UiPath 2024. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.