LONDON, UK – January 26, 2021 — Blue Prism’s intelligent automation technology is being embraced by Mencap, the UK’s leading learning disability charity, which is one of the world’s first not-for-profit organizations to use robotic process automation (RPA) technology to work smarter, faster and more efficiently than ever - without using additional resources.

The Covid-19 pandemic has proved difficult for everyone, but people with a learning disability have been one group who have been hit hardest. It’s increasingly important that the charity is able to work efficiently to provide the best possible support for the 1.5 million people in the UK with a learning disability.

This technology is not only generating hundreds of monthly hours back to the organization but will also provide significant cost savings by 2021. Mencap staff are achieving this seemingly impossible goal by training Blue Prism’s smart software robots to perform work across their back-office operations.

Mencap employs around 8,500 colleagues to support people with a learning disability and their families, by fighting to change laws, improve services and provide access to education, employment, and leisure facilities. Organizing this effort nationwide is a huge operational challenge for colleagues working with complex systems and processes, especially in the current climate of ever-increasing change, resource and cost constraints.

Head of HR Shared Services at Mencap, Sam Jackson, explains the challenges: “Like any responsible charity, we ensure that everything we do and the money we spend on front-line and back-office functions are focused on our central cause - supporting people with a learning disability. To achieve this, we’re on an exciting work transformation journey, with Blue Prism intelligent automation technology operating at the heart of our newly formed Centre of Excellence (CoE). Using this easy-to-apply robotic capability ensures that our already efficient processes deliver more work much faster, which helps the enabling team provide better support and service to our colleagues across the organization.”

To address these challenges, the charity is strategically applying Blue Prism’s intelligent automation technology running pre-built, smart, multi-tasking, software robots that effortlessly perform joined-up, data-driven work, at a speed, accuracy, and integrity unmatched by humans.

As part of Blue Prism’s ‘Blue Prism for Good’ initiative, automation experts have been made available to work on this program to provide the mentoring and support needed to equip Mencap with the in-house skills required to scale and sustain automation initiatives.

Together, Blue Prism and Mencap’s automation team initially focused on automating five key processes within HR and finance operations, which has seen benefits across the organization, including:

• In payroll, Covid-19 has forced changes in working patterns. To conserve time, resources, and money, rather than colleagues inputting hourly work change form data across two systems, robots now perform over 100 of these processes each month, passing any incomplete forms for human review. This saves three days of human effort each month and avoids the potential for errors, which is highly appreciated by the team too.
• In HR, a form used when colleagues change their title or address is now completed faster and more accurately than before.
• Also, its colleague leaving process, which has recently been automated, is freeing up an impressive 10 days per month to be reused by the charity for other work activities.

“Like other forward-thinking organizations, Mencap understands that intelligent automation isn’t just about using smart robots to save time and costs, it’s about enabling your workforce to fulfill more worthwhile tasks instead. So, as well as being able to perform more work with less, it’s great that Mencap’s employees are excited about being re-focused on delivering more of those activities that really matter” says “Blue Prism for Good global lead, Matt Juden-Bloomfield.