To promote the optimization of operation and service process and improve the operational efficiency, Chunghwa Post started to introduce the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Project and divided the promotion into three stages. The first stage adopted the theme-based introduction, and the short-term and rapid results were obtained through a demonstration process each in the Dept. of Savings and Remittances, Dept. of Life Insurance and E-commerce Office. The second stage introduction started from 2022, and through the promotion of the business unit of the Head Office, RPA application is promoted to post offices. Meanwhile, at the second stage, internal RPA competitions were held to start the cultivation of our own RPA seed personnel. In the third stage, in addition to promoting RPA application to the whole Company, integration with AI technology tools will also be conducted, such as the technologies of AI-OCR platform, NLP or Chatbot to further achieve intelligent automation.
Development Blueprint for RPA Application
RPA Innovative Application Challenge Competition
To enable more associates in the Head Office to know RPA and to drive the internal digital transformation through RPA, the RPA Innovative Application Challenge Competition was held between November 2021 and January 2022. In the end, all participating associates completed an automated process that can be run, and presented their results of three months of hard work in the final result presentation. After learning the RPA development technology, some participating associates have turned into the internal RPA seed members and started self-development work. Some processes with higher degree of completion in the competition were also adjusted to be launched. It is expected that these seed members will gradually grow and assist in the promotion of RPA so that it can be fully utilized to enhance Chunghwa Post’s overall digital power to promote digital transformation.
Chairperson Wu, Hong-Mo made some remarks at the final results presentation ceremony of the RPA Innovative Application Challenge Competition
Final results presentation ceremony of the RPA Innovative Application Challenge Competition
RPA Introduction Results
The second stage of RPA is still ongoing. However, under the efforts of the RPA seed members, a total of 15 new automated processes were launched in 2022, mainly used in answering inquiries from local courts, collection of electric meters data in the whole district, anti-money laundering (AML) and receipt and delivery of internal official documents, etc. Each process not only saves 60% to 100% of manual work time but also allows employees to focus on work with higher added value. Some processes even accelerate the operation time by more than 50%, greatly improving efficiency and lowering the probability of errors that is likely to occur in manual operations. Take the operation of answering inquiries from local courts for example, the Dept. of Savings and Remittances has to reply 1,200 to 1,300 official documents from local courts around Taiwan to inquire about the debtor’s deposit information every day. In 2021, Chunghwa Post received a total of 315,325 official inquiry documents that took 3-4 working days to process. In 2022, RPA was introduced for responding to the official inquiry documents from Taipei, Shihlin, Kinmen, Lianjiang, Kaohsiung, and Ciaotou District Courts, and part of the sub-processes were digitalized. Before the introduction of the RPA, it cost approximately 2,417 hours of manual work time to process these official documents from the 6 district courts, and after the introduction of RPA, it is estimated to cost 521 hours annually for the operation, saving 78% of manual work time and showing impressive effect.