Leaders see business through a new sustainable prism

The dras­tic events of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, along with an ampli­fied focus on social injus­tices and sus­tain­abil­i­ty issues, are caus­ing a fun­da­men­tal rethink of busi­ness val­ue cre­ation. 

COVID has accel­er­at­ed the shift from share­hold­er cap­i­tal­ism, where­by the only goal is to make mon­ey, to stake­hold­er cap­i­tal­ism, based on the premise that busi­ness­es should con­sid­er a much wider range of stake­hold­ers in their core deci­sion-mak­ing. This includes staff, cus­tomers, the com­mu­ni­ties they oper­ate in and the envi­ron­ment.

While the D&B Accelerate50 ranks tech com­pa­nies based on their three-year CAGR growth rates, Dun & Brad­street also recog­nis­es that finan­cial met­rics are no longer the only way of mea­sur­ing busi­ness suc­cess. Organ­i­sa­tions are increas­ing­ly being judged on their respon­si­bil­i­ty as a busi­ness, their over­all impact beyond the tra­di­tion­al top and bot­tom lines on the bal­ance sheet, and their con­tri­bu­tions to a more sus­tain­able future.

With this in mind, as part of the Accelerate50 awards pro­gramme, Dun & Brad­street is also cel­e­brat­ing excel­lence in cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty through a ded­i­cat­ed CSR award. The inau­gur­al recip­i­ent of this award is Blue Prism, a glob­al leader in intel­li­gent automa­tion. Hav­ing deployed its “dig­i­tal work­ers” in more than 2,000 cus­tomers glob­al­ly over the last two decades, Blue Prism is a high-growth tech com­pa­ny in its own right. But it has also led the way in embed­ding CSR with­in the foun­da­tions of its mis­sion.

“His­tor­i­cal­ly, busi­ness­es saw CSR as an addi­tion; what was impor­tant was prof­it and every­thing else came after,” says Matt Juden-Bloom­field, head of strate­gic automa­tion and trans­for­ma­tion at Blue Prism, and glob­al lead on its CSR pro­gramme, Blue Prism for Good. 

“But you can no longer be a suc­cess­ful busi­ness and ignore the com­mu­ni­ties around you. Oper­at­ing in silos and not think­ing about the knock-on effects of each prof­it-dri­ven deci­sion has con­se­quences. Finan­cial mar­kets are recog­nis­ing that younger gen­er­a­tions, espe­cial­ly, don’t want to invest in com­pa­nies that can’t prove their social impact, and lead­ers are hav­ing to act to retain cus­tomers and employ­ees too.

“COVID-19 was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Sud­den­ly, we now have this very relat­able and vis­i­ble event play­ing out and peo­ple want to inter­act with brands that share their val­ues. Last year, we saw a lot of com­pa­nies make big state­ments around how they want­ed to help peo­ple through the pan­dem­ic, sup­port their eth­nic com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing Black Lives Mat­ter and tack­le sys­temic prob­lems in areas like gen­der inequal­i­ty. 

“Now, peo­ple want to hold them to account. Busi­ness lead­ers are real­is­ing if they don’t tru­ly embed ESG [envi­ron­men­tal, social and gov­er­nance] into their organ­i­sa­tions, they’re not going to exist in five to ten years.”

COVID response

When COVID-19 was declared a glob­al pan­dem­ic, Blue Prism imme­di­ate­ly com­mit­ted to alle­vi­at­ing some of the chal­lenges fac­ing organ­i­sa­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in front­line areas such as health­care, finan­cial ser­vices and the pub­lic sec­tor. As busi­ness­es, employ­ees, patients and cus­tomers start­ed to be affect­ed, Blue Prism rolled out its COVID-19 response pro­gramme, donat­ing dig­i­tal work­ers and intel­li­gent automa­tion solu­tions to help them respond to the dif­fi­cul­ties they were expe­ri­enc­ing.

Whether in finance, retail, health­care or any oth­er indus­try, it has nev­er been more impor­tant to ensure the end-cus­tomer, or patient, is front and cen­tre. With free access to Blue Prism’s enter­prise-grade dig­i­tal work­force, which is pow­ered by robot­ic process automa­tion, organ­i­sa­tions have been able to accel­er­ate oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy and agili­ty when they need it most. By automat­ing resource-heavy and time-con­sum­ing process­es, the tech­nol­o­gy enables employ­ees to focus on high­er-val­ue tasks includ­ing patient care.

Blue Prism has donat­ed its dig­i­tal work­ers across 14 key sec­tors, includ­ing local and nation­al gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion, fast-mov­ing con­sumer goods and, of course, health­care. In total, more than 500 licences have been donat­ed glob­al­ly, in all but one con­ti­nent; an equiv­a­lent val­ue of more than £4 mil­lion worth of soft­ware that has helped organ­i­sa­tions under great strain be more effi­cient and capa­ble in han­dling unprece­dent­ed oper­a­tional chal­lenges. 

On aver­age, across more than 60 projects, 8,000 hours have been saved by these organ­i­sa­tions, equat­ing to more than three years in human hours worked per project, rep­re­sent­ing mil­lions of pounds of finan­cial return.

No robot takeover

“Automa­tion has great ben­e­fits, but it has also led to inequal­i­ty. As a com­pa­ny that oper­ates in this space, we have a moral oblig­a­tion to step up and do some­thing to help coun­ter­bal­ance that,” says Juden-Bloom­field. “Hol­ly­wood has done a dis­ser­vice in mak­ing peo­ple think robots are going to take over the world. With Blue Prism for Good and our COVID-19 response pro­gramme, we’ve shown that automa­tion is a pos­i­tive force while also dri­ving far-reach­ing val­ue in areas and com­mu­ni­ties pre­vi­ous­ly over­looked.”

Used in the right way, robots don’t dis­place humans, they ampli­fy their val­ue. When the enor­mous num­ber of return­ing and new doc­tors, nurs­es and oth­er employ­ees began to cause sig­nif­i­cant bot­tle­necks for the human resources team of one NHS trust, it applied its free Blue Prism licences to staff onboard­ing. This saved the HR team 15 hours a day, enabling new recruits to get to work sup­port­ing patients much faster, poten­tial­ly sav­ing more lives.

The cir­cum­stances around COVID-19 also led to a promi­nent char­i­ty, which helps peo­ple with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, hav­ing to change its work­ing hour pat­terns. To pre­vent employ­ees from being paid incor­rect­ly, the char­i­ty was spend­ing more resources on admin­is­tra­tion. By deploy­ing Blue Prism’s dig­i­tal work­ers to han­dle timesheet requests, it not only reduced human error and saved £120,000 (and count­ing), but also retrieved three days of resources a month to bet­ter serve the peo­ple it sup­ports.

Over­seas, anoth­er nation­al health sys­tem need­ed help. This nation­al health ser­vice, based in Asia, was strug­gling to respond to demand for COVID-19 test­ing from 1,000 patients a day. Every swab was reg­is­tered man­u­al­ly, tak­ing up to two min­utes each time. A new solu­tion, pro­vid­ed via Blue Prism’s donat­ed dig­i­tal work­ers, went live in one week. By automat­ing the extrac­tion of patients’ infor­ma­tion and updat­ing their records accord­ing­ly, swab results can now be processed in just 30 sec­onds, which has saved the health sys­tem an aver­age of 17.5 hours a day, eas­ing the strain on nurs­es.

Mean­while, the effects of the pan­dem­ic haven’t just impact­ed people’s health, but also their finances. Blue Prism donat­ed dig­i­tal work­ers to a lead­ing UK build­ing soci­ety to help alle­vi­ate the finan­cial pres­sure on its cus­tomers with an auto­mat­ed self-ser­vice capa­bil­i­ty for request­ing and man­ag­ing a mort­gage pay­ment hol­i­day. The solu­tion was deployed in just a few days and processed 26,000 pay­ment hol­i­day appli­ca­tions, which reduced call han­dling times by 96 per cent, accel­er­at­ed approvals and ulti­mate­ly gave peace of mind to a lot of peo­ple wor­ried about keep­ing up with mort­gage repay­ments.

“Com­pa­nies need to start think­ing of their cus­tomers less as con­sumers and more as cit­i­zens, fos­ter­ing the mind­set that we are all in this togeth­er,” says Juden-Bloom­field. “At Blue Prism, we have been work­ing hard on build­ing out our com­mu­ni­ty through our ded­i­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ty plat­form, mak­ing sure we’re able to share objec­tives and ideas, and con­nect indi­vid­u­als togeth­er. That com­mu­ni­ty includes our cus­tomers, employ­ees, part­ners and sup­pli­ers, and col­lec­tive­ly we are work­ing towards these com­mon goals.”

For more infor­ma­tion and to see the full list of win­ners of Dun & Brad­street’s inau­gur­al Accelerate50, please vis­it the awards hub