Mary Kay reduced costs as a result of robotization of routine business processes

2021: Robotizing routine processes

On June 24, 2021, UiPath announced a project implemented jointly with Mary Kay to robotize routine processes. This reduced the likelihood of errors and freed up human resources to solve intellectual and creative problems. The global company Mary Kay, which is engaged in the production and sale of cosmetics and personal care products, began work with UiPath in 2019.

We began to search for a partner when we realized that we could not solve some of the important automation tasks with the available means and forces, "says Nikolai Bychkov, head of the competence center for business process automation at Mary Kay. - After studying the market, we drew attention to the RPA technology, which seemed to us very successful and optimally suited to our needs. Already the first projects on the robotization of processes have brought us tangible financial benefits, and they allowed employees to deal with more interesting issues.

In just three years, the company robotic about 50 different processes in the European region, including even temporary ones, when small costs could have a quick and tangible effect. For this, the solutions used were UiPath Robots, UiPath Studio, UiPath Orchestrator.

The first large-scale project for Mary Kay was the robotization of the process of reconciling accounts of transport companies. Well-established logistics is very important for the company's business, since Mary Kay sells its products throughout Russia and collaborates with several transport companies at once, with each of which there is a complex system of agreements and discounts. Before the implementation of the robotization project, the reconciliation of accounts was carried out by an employee who did it manually. When this task was transferred to the robot, the employee was able to switch to communication with partners, as a result of which she managed to achieve a revision of the working conditions with them in the direction of greater benefit for Mary Kay. Thus, the robotization of the process brought a double effect: the robot began to do routine work quickly and without errors, and the employee managed to improve the terms of the contracts. The total savings for the company amounted to 17% of the cost of delivery in Russia.

If we talk about potential time savings, then one of the most impressive results was obtained in the Kazakhstan branch, where the complex multi-component process of reconciling the customs declaration with accompanying documents when receiving the delivery was reduced from 1 day to a few minutes with the help of a robot.

Another area in which robotization has had a tangible effect is financial reconciliation. Previously, it was handled by employees from two different departments, and then the robot began to perform routine operations and the process was significantly simplified. Other robotic processes include ordering new item codes, contract recognition, and internal IT processes.

The main difficulty faced by the company is the fear of some employees who believed that their work would be no longer needed. However, over time, they realized that the effect of robotization was beneficial to them. It was not easy to solve the issue of information security, in particular, to establish an access system for the robot.

The time required to robotize each process in Mary Kay depended on its complexity. Thus, a pilot project for the financial reconciliation process, which was originally launched in the Kazakhstan branch of the company, was developed within two months. Another three months had to be spent on adapting it for Russia.

In general, the use of robots UiPath allowed Mary Kay to save, according to the most accurate calculations, 15 FTE. This indicator helps to assess the degree of productivity of the team over a certain period of time. The company plans to scale the robotization of processes to other regions, each of which has its own features.

The projects that we implemented in collaboration with Mary Kay again proved that routine processes are better to trust robots. At this time people can be engaged in work which demands higher skill level and which will bring the companies more benefit, - Anisimov's govoritsvetlana, the CEO of UiPath in Russia and the CIS.