UiPath Fusion 2025 | Paul Kistner & Julie Woods, Allegis Global Solutions & Maureen Fleming, IDC

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More from UiPath Fusion 2025

Paul Kistner

Global Director, Business Transformation

Allegis Global Solutions

Julie Woods

Executive, Digital Transformation

Allegis Global Solutions

Maureen Fleming

VP, Intelligent Process Automation

IDC

How Allegis breaks bottlenecks with workflow automation

Many organizations chase efficiency gains with workflow automation, but few achieve measurable outcomes that ripple across their entire business. For Allegis Global Solutions, a strategic shift in thinking — and tooling — helped the company leap beyond those limitations.Faced with a legacy system that would’ve taken more than a decade of developer time to scale, Allegis turned to UiPath Inc.’s platform and an innovative approach to workflow automation

play_circle_outline UiPath Fusion 2025 coverage introduction and welcome to guests Maureen Fleming, Paul Kistner, and Julie Woods.

play_circle_outline Transforming Automation: How UiPath's Innovative Solutions Enhance Scalability and Efficiency in Workflow Management

play_circle_outline AI25 Award recognition for innovative solutions that address complex business challenges.

play_circle_outline Overall goal: encouraging organizations to rethink processes for efficiency and strategic impact.

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Paul Kistner & Julie Woods, Allegis Global Solutions & Maureen Fleming, IDC

Paul Kistner

Global Director, Business Transformation Allegis Global Solutions

Julie Woods

Executive, Digital Transformation Allegis Global Solutions

Maureen Fleming

VP, Intelligent Process Automation IDC

In this UiPath Fusion 2025 interview, theCUBE’s Dave Vellante and Rebecca Knight sit down with Julie Woods, executive digital transformation, and Paul Kistner, global director of business transformation, both of Allegis Global Solutions (AGS), alongside Maureen Fleming, VP intelligent process automation at IDC. The discussion unpacks AGS’s AI25 Award–winning initiative for Integrity Services and why IDC’s Fleming, a judge, highlighted its complexity, business value and use of a broad swath of the UiPath portfolio. Woods and Kistner explain how moving from bri... Read more

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Paul Kistner & Julie Woods, Allegis Global Solutions & Maureen Fleming, IDC

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Rebecca Knight

>> Good morning everyone, and welcome back to day two of theCUBE's live coverage of UiPath Fusion 2025 here in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, and we have three terrific guests for this next segment. First, I'd like to welcome back to theCUBE, Maureen Fleming, VP intelligent process automation at IDC. Welcome.

Maureen Fleming

>> Thank you. Good to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> And we have Paul Kistner, global director of business transformation at Allegis Global Solutions.

Paul Kistner

>> Thanks for having us.

Rebecca Knight

>> Good to have you on, Paul.

Paul Kistner

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> And his colleague, Julie Woods, executive digital transformation at Allegis Global Solutions.

Julie Woods

>> Thanks for having me.

Rebecca Knight

>> So first off, a big congratulations because you are here, because you won an AI25 Award. Before we get to that... And Maureen was a judge, just to level set for our viewers out there.

Paul Kistner

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> For Integrity Services. This is the first time you are meeting. But tell our viewers a little bit about Allegis Global Solutions. Why don't you start, Paul?

Paul Kistner

>> Sure. So Allegis Global Solutions, or AGS for short, we're actually part of Allegis Group, which is one of the world's largest staffing and services companies. And then specifically AGS, our focus is on research advisory and managed services primarily for our customers extended and permanent workforce solutions.

Rebecca Knight

>> And so what do you do? What is the meat of your company?

Paul Kistner

>> The core of what our customers count on is helping them understand what's the best way to get work done. A large portion of our business is through global MSP programs, running their contingent workforce programs, and outsourced RPO programs. So helping them hire talent better. And then ultimately, how do we bring that ecosystem together between that combination of full-time contingent services and now digital workers.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Julie, talk a little bit the solution that you came up with, because traditional automation couldn't keep up and small changes broke processes and there was bottlenecks, and it was very time-consuming. So talk a little bit about what you all did.

Julie Woods

>> Yeah. So I think when we looked at the process, the way that we were doing it with traditional process automation, it would've taken one developer 11 and a half years to do it the old way on an older system that we were using. So when we moved over to UiPath, we really wanted to look at the full suite of the platform. And we had to make sure that the solution was scalable. It had to be something that was easily updatable for us, and it had to be something that was innovative. So that was at the core of what we were looking for. With UiPath, we were able to look at leveraging agentic Maestro document understanding and bringing those all together to create a cohesive ecosystem for that specific workflow and how we could really advance building that out.

Rebecca Knight

>> Maureen, you were a judge and have awarded them this AI25 Award. Talk a little bit about what stood out to you about this solution and why it was so successful in your mind.

Maureen Fleming

>> Yeah. I think what I was impressed with about it was the complexity and the business value driven. Because you got through things that took a lot of time. You had lots of customers that you were onboarding or partners onboarding. And that was a difficult process because of the variation in the context that had to be managed. And then you also used a lot of the UiPath portfolio as well to execute the solution, including some of the newer elements like orchestration and AI agents. So it came together with good results. So that mattered.

Paul Kistner

>> There was definitely a few pieces to it, for sure.

Maureen Fleming

>> Yeah, definitely.

Rebecca Knight

>> But I know you also had some questions about not only the process and how they devised this, but also some of the impacts. So take it away, Maureen.

Maureen Fleming

>> Thank you. So the couple things that come to mind, there's some technical questions I have because this is new to everyone, and so, the design points become interesting. There's that. And then also what I'm really interested in as well is, how you pick the solution to build, and how you went through a permission process or business case approval and everything. So why don't we start with the hardest one, which is the approval of it. So how did you pick this as your use case that you're going to build?

Paul Kistner

>> I can start with a little bit of the why and then Julie can get into some of the-

Maureen Fleming

>> Yeah, exactly....

Paul Kistner

>> finer details. We started out with an existing automation that was already in place, and as Julie mentioned, it wasn't functioning at the level that we hoped it would. It was using traditional methods. It was failing a certain percentage at the time, because our customers were constantly making changes to invoice files that we were in-taking. So this is all centered around our invoice remittance process. And the nature of our business for our customers we handle their treasury management functions. So take 150 plus global customers, thousands of contingent workers for each of those customers, and suddenly we're aggregating together tens of thousands of contingent worker time cards on a weekly basis. We aggregate that, then invoice together, customer gets one bill, they pay us. We're then tasked with responsibility for paying all of our suppliers accurately. So those invoice remittance files that are coming in every single week become a key part of making that solution work effectively. When the previous automation was breaking down, we were spending as much time repairing and rebuilding, as we were actually saving time with that particular automation. I'll let Julie elaborate a little bit further on some of the mechanics of what was happening.

Julie Woods

>> Yeah. And I think one of the other things that I would add into that, is this is just a core of a process. This is just one little piece of the process, and there are downstream and upstream impacts. So we think this solution could become much more broad. So I think when we looked at it holistically, there was just a ton of opportunity there. We decided to just be really focused and intentional on where we wanted to start, because we wanted to look at things that had the largest impact to ourselves and our customers. Because everybody wants to be paid in a timely fashion, so I think that's where we really looked. And then, one of the important things was, when we were looking at a solution, we said, "What did we do last time that didn't work? And what can we do now?" If we take the blinders off and we just really look at the solution and say, "What are we trying to deliver?" So we weren't trying to say one-to-one, "This is happening and this is what we're replicating." But it's "What are we ultimately trying to achieve and how do we get there?" And I think by having that process-driven approach, we were able to come at it from a different lens.

Maureen Fleming

>> That makes sense. I mean the origin story of the solution. So at the end of the day, what you expect is to have a largely, much more autonomous type of process that operates using all the different technologies and more end-to-end?

Julie Woods

>> Yes.

Maureen Fleming

>> So then, I guess, do you use an application? Is there an application context that is in place where you're updating an enterprise application that support your financial applications?

Julie Woods

>> So we haven't yet integrated with that application, but we are. And the reason that we didn't integrate directly with that application is because we are currently in the process of switching. So that's why we didn't get to that piece.

Maureen Fleming

>> Yeah. I noticed that, what you're using. Yeah, exactly. But it's interesting, and in judging all of this, what was interesting was how little enterprise applications actually perform work. When you think about all of the things that go on before you can even enter information into the financial application, the effort is extraordinary. So it seems like that's going to be a major disruption in terms of what workers' relationships with the applications are, as opposed to the agentic process.

Julie Woods

>> Yeah. And part of it too was, this is coming in emails with different file formats. There's six or seven different Excel workbooks that are being used. There's manual trackers all over the place. So being able to have all of this automated, and being able to have the insights to look at what happened, it's going to take us a lot further than we are right now with this whole process.

Maureen Fleming

>> Right. And one question I had technically, so in some sense, when you think about an AI agent, on the one hand, you could think about RPA as a tool of the agent, and so then the interaction goes between the agent and RPA to execute, and then the agent goes somewhere, does something else. And what you decided to do, it seems like, is you did the AI agent as a decision engine, and then you went to the next node in the orchestration to do the RPA. Which was really interesting to me, because it seems like it's more over, you can understand how the process flows from that. Is that why you made the decision? Rather than going deep into the tooling for an AI agent, you went deep into the orchestration to spread it out. So what was your decision around that?

Julie Woods

>> Yeah. The decision was based on one primary factor. We can't control the formats in which we're getting these invoices and they change all the time. So if we have something that was titled invoice amount, and now it's titled total amount, how do we have an agent go, "Okay, this was invoice amount before, but I looked at total amount, I did the comparison, it matches with 90% accuracy, so I know that this should be right. Now, I'm just going to send it to somebody for approval. Does this look great to you? Yes or no? And we can move on with the process." So it was really about just taking that decision off of a person and putting it into a practical format.

Maureen Fleming

>> Okay.

Rebecca Knight

>> So I'm thinking about your story and how others can learn from what you did at AGS. The first thing that I really took away was something that Daniel Dines was talking about on the main stage yesterday, and that is that companies are not being ambitious enough. They're not thinking big enough about choosing a use case. And so, what's interesting, Julie and Paul, when you were describing, you were being very focused, very intentional, but also narrow. So it almost looked small, but it also had a big impact. So that also really struck me in terms of what you're talking about. When you talk to your peers here at UiPath Fusion and companies that have similar aggravations that you have, how do you talk about choosing that use case, and what's your advice to them as they think about this?

Paul Kistner

>> Yeah. I think, well, this particular use case had a narrow purpose. The impact was big in a couple of ways. Number one, if it goes wrong, it's going to get escalated immediately because it's involving dollars. So that was one reason to take a look at it. The second was just the accumulation of hours being spent. So right now we're in the process of scaling it, but when we're finished, it's going to touch every customer in the global ecosystem. So the hours start to add up in a couple of ways. Certainly for Julie's team and the development work, as she mentioned, the time-saving, we're going from taking two months to add a customer into the workflow to down to two weeks or less. So that part's huge. But then also for our internal customer, our finance team, that is then picking up the human element at the end of that. Number one, they trust it. So we've talked a lot about that this week. It's trusting the automation. So now that trust is building. And then, the second thing is the time savings for them. So that'll be like part two of this is, they're going from an activity that was taking one of our invoicing analysts 90 minutes per customer per week, down to a couple of minutes. And then you start scaling that. Now we can actually start talking about organizational change. So that's the other part of it, is like, "All right, we're freeing those resources up to focus on higher value activity, or potentially even how does that department restructure itself now that you've got that time back?" And that's where this becomes more than just a technology initiative, but an organizational change-

Rebecca Knight

>> A real change management-

Paul Kistner

>> 100%....

Rebecca Knight

>> initiative too. So that's actually where I wanted to go next because of something you said, Maureen, about how little value enterprise applications have, because the amount of human effort to make them do what they're supposed to do is tremendous, and very often tedious and dull. Julie, how is your team redirecting their focus? And what are you finding already in terms of the time saved and the different kinds of projects, ideas, strategies that they can focus on?

Julie Woods

>> Yeah. I think it's a complicated question and there is change management. The first thing that happened when we introduced this automation is people were sitting there watching it, waiting for it to give the output. They're like, "Hey, it took this long. It took X amount of time." And it's like, "Why aren't you redirecting your time doing something else?" So I think that's just a change that you have to think about when you're introducing these things. But we're going through a very large organizational effort right now to do a deconstruction of our work. And there's a couple purposes. How can we leverage AI? How can we leverage technology to be better, to be faster, to be more efficient, but also how can we elevate what we're doing? Because if we're not spending time on these tactical tasks that really a human shouldn't be doing, we can provide strategic value to our customers. We can talk to them about invoicing solutions upfront, making sure that things are fit for purpose. So it's how do we look at it on a larger scale? And as we start to expand on this use case, I think we'll be able to identify a ton of opportunities to redirect the time in that department.

Paul Kistner

>> I could add to that. I think one of the other things that we're learning is, it's helpful to ask that organizational change question of your internal business before you even get started. Meaning if we were to automate this, if we were to apply agents, what would this allow you to do in terms of changing the organization? Because we don't control necessarily what happens with that time that we give back. But to start that conversation upfront saying, "All right. Well, how might the organization work differently? How might the team be structured differently if we're successful at doing that?" I think that's a question that we'll start asking before the work even starts so we can influence those outcomes.

Rebecca Knight

>> Well, and it also is a way to build trust, which as you said is paramount. And it can also help alleviate the fears that some workers might have of, "Okay, this is happening now. What about me?" Well, what about you? What are you going to be doing differently? How will your role change? How will your tasks change? So getting them prepared for a shift, that doesn't necessarily mean they're out the door.

Paul Kistner

>> But what are they going to stop doing afterwards? What are they going to keep doing? And what are they going to start doing? All of that changes. And it should change roles, and it should change the department.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah.

Maureen Fleming

>> You know what, when I did some research, I've done a lot of research around RPA. And so what we found in a study is that it took HR and the COE about two years to communicate about impacted workers. And at that point, they realized that they could upskill the workers, and the large benefit was lowering the cost of net new hires because they didn't have to hire as many people. So what's interesting that you're talking about this right away, and not having that two-year lapse by people not having jobs anymore or feeling redundant to move into upskilling mode fairly quickly. So I think that's an interesting piece of that.

Paul Kistner

>> And admittedly, we've got to get better at pulling our HR business partners into the conversation to the table when we get started.

Maureen Fleming

>> Yeah.

Julie Woods

>> And I think it's really important, and this is something that's very meaningful to me, is to take the people where you're looking at their work, and bring them on the journey with you. It gets them excited about technology. Maybe it's like, "Hi, you know what? I would love to be a business process consultant," or "I would love to work in as a citizen developer." And I think it's really important to give them the opportunity and the voice in that process to upskill them.

Paul Kistner

>> That's a great... No one's telling you, "I want to keep answering emails."

Julie Woods

>> No.

Maureen Fleming

>> Unless the alternative is not having a job, by the way. That's a huge thing.

Rebecca Knight

>> But, Julie, that's an excellent point about bringing the stakeholders in to the process early. Not to scare them, but to bring them along and to help them see how we can reimagine the business. That's really interesting.

Julie Woods

>> We call them automation advocates.

Rebecca Knight

>> I love it. I love it. I think everyone should call them automation advocates. Maureen, Paul, Julie, thank you all so much for coming on theCUBE, a really interesting conversation.

Paul Kistner

>> Thank you for having us.

Maureen Fleming

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> And congratulations again.

Paul Kistner

>> Thank you. Thank you both.

Julie Woods

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of UiPath Fusion 2025. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis. Yay. Well, done guys. That was great.

Maureen Fleming

>> Check.

Rebecca Knight

>> We did it. We did it.

Paul Kistner

>> You're right. It was more fun than I thought it was going to be.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, no, it's fun.

Maureen Fleming

>> See? It is.

Rebecca Knight

>> It's great.