Import substitution in action: Rostelecom implements Sherpa RPA Russian platform for robotization of business processes

MAKHACHKALA, November 21 - RIA Dagestan. Rostelecom's Common Service Center (CSC) has implemented Sherpa RPA (Robotic Process Automation), a Russian system by Sherpa Robotics for robotizing business processes. The platform will increase economic efficiency and reduce the dependence of routine processes on the risk of human error in all activity directions of the company: HR, finances, etc.

"Rostelecom has been using software robots to minimize manual operations and increase employee productivity since 2018. During that time, 50 robots have been developed, covering routine operations for more than 100 employees, freeing up specialists for more intelligent tasks. Previously, the development was done on a foreign platform called UIPath.

"UIPath is a world leader in robotics, so the task of moving to a domestic platform was a challenge for us in terms of the functionality and performance requirements of the new system. Now we see that the transition to the domestic software solution opened opportunities not only to replace, but also to extend the practice of using RPA to a greater number of processes and employees," Dmitry Peresvetov, the customer of the project, the chief accountant of Rostelecom says.

At Rostelecom, the robotization tasks are solved by a special competence center. Therefore, all previously created robots will be transferred to a Russian soft, which is fully consistent with the import substitution policy adopted by the company.

"Our platform fully replaces foreign platforms UIPath, Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, Kryon by the necessary functionality and technical feasibility of all robotization scenarios. From the early days we developed our platform as scalable, fault-tolerant and suitable for large companies that need advanced tools for RDP, Citrix, queues and resources in the orchestrator, multithreading, recognition of structured and unstructured documents from scans and photos, machine learning and artificial intelligence. "The emergence of built-in automated tools to convert robots from Western platforms allows migration to a domestic solution even faster" - Konstantin Artemyev, the director general of Sherpa Robotics comments.

"Our team together with Sherpa Robotics deployed and configured the platform in a short time, trained employees and conducted a trial operation. In just five months from the start of the collaboration, the Sherpa RPA platform was implemented and put into productive mode. Now every employee in the CSC can install and configure a robot to perform routine operations. We have big plans for further application of RPA tools, we also expect to involve as many areas and employees as possible in robotization," Dariy Khalitov, the vice president of information systems development at Rostelecom points out.