Tyler Olson, CFO
Tyler.Olson@NuWay-KandH.com
In most newsletters, I discuss typical accounting
and finance subjects. I review the income and balance statements and try to help you understand our budgeting processes. Boring, right?
I prefer not to review what happened last month. I’d rather look forward and plan the next 20 years. So, here’s something new that fits our company’s mantra: Doing more with less!
NuWay-K&H Cooperative has given me the ability to try many new things and to bring value back to our company through innovative products, automation, and tools. For example, did you realize that, for the past two years, our accounting team has been using robotic process automation (RPA) or “robot” for short.
RPA is a server or computer program that streamlines repetitive business tasks, reduces errors, and removes bottlenecks within our company. This technology aligned with artificial intelligence (AI) can help us become very efficient and continue growing without the need for extra labor. We attended a CHS planning session in January 2023 and watched examples of this from our regional partner. Since that meeting, we have purchased our own RPA platform and utilized this technology in our day-to-day accounting.
We have partnered with UiPath. They service our robot and maintain the RPA platform. Along with UiPath, we’ve engaged a custom programming team called Capitalize to help use the tools that UiPath provides and build out our robot to do repetitive tasks our team would otherwise do manually.
What does RPA do? The 1st project we used the platform for involved our Best Oil book of business. We started there because we sell millions of gallons of fuel through transport trucks that are very consistent and sourced through CHS. These are repetitive processes that team typically does not have exceptions with.
“Robots can help us be efficient and continue growing without extra labor.”
During this 1st buildout, we immediately knew there were more savings than just having the robot bill out the customer. The robot saved us time by organizing automatically everything we did manually prior to the buildout. Specifically, the robot logged in as a user to download all of our CHS Invoices and name them in our filing cabinet, the same as any employee would. Then we had it do the same for all of our billing invoices. We had it merge all of the docs together and save them in a folder that was ready for all staff to use and send as needed. Today, this project will handle around 60,000 PDF documents for our team without us having to manually go and get them.
Another benefit of the robot is that it can be programmed to start any time of the day. This project kicks off automatically each morning around 6:00 a.m. and is typically finished by 9:00 a.m. Our staff can now focus on other items that are more service-oriented and people-oriented verses going out and gathering all of these docs prior to completing their daily tasks. We have eliminated around four hours each day so that our team can now focus on other higher-level items that need personal attention. Isn’t that amazing! We’re doing more with less!
What’s next for RPA? As I write this article, we are already two months into building our 2nd project which will involve NuWay-K&H Cooperative’s AFD billing. This process is also very repetitive and has the ability to save our staff significant time. I fully expect that, by the summer of 2025, our robot will be completing this task and helping our team become more available to service your needs.
The goal of this investment is not eliminating existing jobs. It is creating more efficiency and allowing our team members to become more productive. We are simply eliminating some of that boring accounting aspect and helping with their time management.
That being said, the robot will allow us to look at additional growth for NuWay-K&H Cooperative without hiring additional labor. This is something we have discussed and will utilize in the future. Our goal is to remain as agile as we can be to serve our members’ needs to the level they expect.
We look forward to all of the opportunities that RPA can give us as a team. We treat the robot as just another tool and will integrate it into our organization chart. Our people are still our greatest asset.
What does this mean to you as a member-owner of the cooperative? Just this. While utilizing historical developments like AI, we continue to learn and adapt to service your needs today and in the years to come. As always, thank you for giving us the opportunity to earn your business.