UiPath RPA and YoungCapital’s digital DNA: a perfect match?
YoungCapital is the recruitment and staffing agency with the largest youth database in Europe. YoungCapital’s growth seems unstoppable. Last year the company ranked fifth in the list of 250 fastest growing companies and has gone from 500 to 1,300 employees in three years. YoungCapital stands for guts, ambition and energy. Making mistakes is seen as the very best way to learn something new and do it better every day. Once started as an online job board, ICT is in the DNA of the organization. And that is exactly what made it such a challenge for Tacstone Technology to start an RPA project with YoungCapital. Without fear of new technology, looking for opportunities for innovation and improvement. Not thinking for too long, but taking decisions and doing it together. Therefore, the first results were not far off.
The staffing world is already extensively digitized. What can RPA add?
The world is increasingly digitizing, and that certainly applies to the staffing world as well. Staffing agencies are now perfectly capable of automatically processing and matching large amounts of resumes and vacancies. But the extensive automation of administrative processes remains a difficult task. This is partly due to the complex and frequently changing legislation and regulations in this sector. But also the speed at which new products and services are introduced into the market makes it difficult to continuously align ICT systems and processes with the way of working.
“As YoungCapital, we are at the front of innovation and automation. Such as with the use of smart data and algorithms when matching large numbers of CVs and vacancies. Yet I also see that we are still struggling to automate the last 10 or 20 percent of many administrative processes. The strong growth of our company should not be accompanied by a commensurate growth in the administrative burden. There are already too many employees doing administrative work. As a technologist and as CTO of our fine company, I am excited about the possibilities of using RPA and AI now to tackle that last 10 or 20 percent of all that manual work.”
John Muller | Chief Technology Officer at YoungCapital
Thousands of temporary workers check into UWV’s target group register
YoungCapital employs some 20 thousand candidates every week. For every new candidate who starts work, we first check whether they are included in the UWV’s so-called ‘target group register’. This register lists people who are covered by a government and employer regulation aimed at providing additional jobs for people with labor disabilities. These are people who have difficulty finding or keeping a job, for example due to an illness or disability.
If YoungCapital determines that a new candidate is included in this target group register, financial compensation such as a wage subsidy may be claimed. Every week, hundreds to thousands of new candidates are checked. This checking is done manually, by logging on to the UWV website and looking up, on the basis of the BSN number, whether each candidate is on the register. A very labor-intensive and tedious job, but one that has to be done on time every week in order not to lose the right to subsidies. A nice job for the software robot.
Since this involves personal data, both parties are aware that it is important to handle this data carefully and securely. To this end, Tacstone and YoungCapital have entered into a processing agreement. This agreement regulates all matters concerning the security and liability of the parties regarding the handling of personal data.
In the new situation, this time-consuming job has been taken over by the software robot. The robot logs itself into the UWV website via Multi-Factor Authentication (see box below). The robot starts with an export from the candidate database with the BSN numbers of all candidates to be checked. The robot then enters each BSN number one by one and checks the status. This status is read out and added back to the list by the robot.
“We are very happy with the help of our new digital colleague. Checking sometimes thousands of candidates in the UWV register every week was a really tedious part of our job. Not only did it cost us a lot of time, but it was also very boring and moreover – precisely because it was so boring – you quickly make a copy & paste mistake. We have since seen how fast and error-free our robot does its job. It saves us at least half a day a week.”
Tycho Winkels | Junior Subsidy Advisor
The digital employee who can log in himself with multifactor authentication. How does that work?
Logging into the UWV website, like many other websites with sensitive data, is well secured. In addition to an email address and password, a so-called “second factor” is required to log in. Often this is an SMS code received via cell phone, which the user must then enter in the website’s login screen.
Since the robot does not (yet?) have its own smartphone, we came up with another solution. The code that is sent is read by the robot via a so-called API and can thus be used during the login process.
Handle deletion requests quickly and flawlessly? No problem.
In 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (AVG) came into effect. The AVG regulates the protection of personal data. This protection includes, among other things, the right to inspect your personal data at a company or institution that has stored it. You also have the right to oblivion or the right to have your data deleted.
Of course, it is not surprising that YoungCapital, with a large candidate database, receives large numbers of such deletion requests every week. Every removal request must be reviewed, recorded, processed and fed back to the candidate. And this must be done within the prescribed time frame. An enormous administrative effort. Therefore, this was an eminently suitable task to be taken over by the software robot.
“We have to validate and process most removal requests within a 4-week period. Ideally, such a request would be handled the same day, but due to peak pressures or incidents, it could sometimes take a little longer. In fact, since we have the software robot working in our department, we are able to automatically handle all outstanding removal requests every hour. That is really a huge improvement. The robot reads the so-called ‘ticket’ itself, recognizes in which ICT systems a profile of this candidate is included and removes all profiles one by one. In this way we can be sure that we don’t overlook any profiles and that no data is unintentionally left behind in our systems. And the candidate who submitted the removal request receives confirmation at lightning speed.”
Kim van der Meer | Process & Support Executive
Building RPA knowledge in-house right from the start
Right from the start of the RPA project, YoungCapital made the choice to build knowledge and capacity in-house. An agreement was made with Tacstone Technology to work with a co-creation model: Tacstone provides project management, sets up the development and management environment for RPA and takes the lead in analyzing processes and developing robot scripts. At the same time, one or more YoungCapital employees will be trained on-the-job in key roles such as RPA Business Analyst and RPA Developer.
YoungCapital’s first RPA Developer is Wendy Beekman. In the past 3 years, in her position as application manager, she has already gained a lot of experience with automating processes. Partly because of this, when Wendy came into contact with the RPA program, she was immediately enthusiastic.
“I started by attending a full-time 4-week RPA Bootcamp organized by Tacstone Technology in cooperation with YoungCapital NEXT. This bootcamp gave me a good foundation so that I could start working as an RPA Developer with confidence and enthusiasm. I was able to hand over all my old tasks. As a result, I now have the full focus to work with Tacstone Technology to surprise my colleagues and the organization with the power of RPA.”
Wendy Beekman | RPA Developer at YoungCapital