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Intelligent Automation Makes HR More Human at Walgreens
Implementing a Blue Prism digital workforce gives us the ability to pivot our focus from transactional processing to the employee experience — and then to improving our customer experience.”Curt Burghardt Vice President HR Shared Services and Systems, Walgreens
One of the largest drugstore chains in America, Walgreens serves more than eight million customers each day and employs more than 230,000 people. This large employee base, many of whom are hourly workers, requires a robust human resources and payroll system.
When the company embarked on a refresh of core HR systems, replacing legacy systems with cloud-based options, existing staff found themselves stretched thin. So, they turned to a team of Blue Prism intelligent digital workers to manage the extra work.
Challenge
With a large employee base, many of whom are hourly workers, Walgreens requires a robust human resources and payroll system. When the company embarked on a refresh of core HR systems, replacing legacy systems with cloud-based options, existing staff found themselves stretched thin. The company wasn’t able to hire
additional people to manage the extra work, so they turned to intelligent automation and a team of Blue Prism digital workers.
Walgreens saw the promise that intelligent automation could be much more than just an efficiency enabler for the HR shared services group—it could also support the transformation of the overall HR function.
Solution
HR employees at Walgreens have a lot on their plates. For example, approximately 2,000 Walgreens employees are on leave of absence on any given day. Digital workers now manage the details of each absence. They automatically load the necessary data, including whether it’s a paid or unpaid leave, into all the required systems.
In the workman’s compensation process, the digital worker instantaneously feeds data back and forth between Walgreens and its claims management service provider. Applying digital workers to this process saved time and improved efficiency.
Intelligent automation, in combination with optical character recognition, was impressive to Walgreens as well. The HR team uses this technology combination to read store numbers and employee ID information on personnel documents. The digital worker determines whether the document is related to a store, distribution
center, or personnel in a support office—and then sorts, routes and saves the information.
Intelligent automation has helped Walgreens improve the employee experience and make HR more “human,” which in turn enables employees to enhance the customer experience and bottom line. All of this is done while boosting efficiency in the HR shared services group by 73%. Way to go Walgreens!
