Process Automation by Citizen Developers

Part 1 - The First Bots

Business of Digital Hearts Group.

The group of Digital Hearts Holdings Co., Ltd. is recognized as one of the top firms worldwide offering “software testing service". With its group mission “SAVE the DIGITAL WORLD,” the group provides software testing to detect defects of various kinds of software including game software, and security testing such as vulnerability diagnosis. They have 13 test centers in Japan and utilize its approximately 8,000 registered testers all over the country for testing operation to its client companies like a few globally known game software makers and IT software developers.

Target task; Time-sheet processing

At the HQ of its subsidiary, Digital Hearts Co., Ltd., the billing team works non-stop 10 days surrounding the beginning of every month collecting and processing "timesheets" from these several thousand of active testers working in the previous month. Due to the volume of these timesheets arriving in various shapes and forms a considerable number of manual processes are needed to "normalize" these formats before they can be entered into their system. Digital Hearts Group chose this process as the first target for the Process Automation by the Citizen Developer project.

The Citizen Developers

From this operations division, individuals Yoshio Nakamichi, Makiko Kikuchi, and one other are assigned to join the project. All three of them are team veterans who are familiar with the target process, and they are comfortable using MS Excel including applying Functions where useful. However, none of them had any experience in computer programming. According to one, the closest they had come to programming was in trying to improve efficiency through the Excel Macro which had required some good amount of Googling time. All three team members assigned considered themselves qualified as Citizen Developers.  

The Challenges

Challenge I: Process Discovery and Designing of the Bot

Although all 3 Citizen Developers had thorough knowledge about the target process and its "steps", it was not so easy to translate the steps for software robots. They quickly learned that the steps that are optimized for manual processes are often not at all optimized for software. Then, they asked for guidance from the process discovery experts. In the end, all the Citizen Developers came to a good understanding of how they can translate human steps to effective software robot steps.

Challenge II: Testing and Debugging

Bot development itself was not so much of a challenge for the Citizen Developers although they often found themselves pausing and questioning if the logics they had implemented were the most efficient ones. They were able to gain more confidence as again by receiving guidance and code-review sessions from the software development experts. The bigger challenges, or perhaps the biggest challenges of the project, were in the phases of testing and debugging. When the prototype software robots failed, it was not easy to figure out the cause. Gradually the Citizen Developers have learned the "divide and conquer" approaches which made the debug tasks proceed more smoothly. However, there are still cases where they were not able to isolate the issue without advice from the coding experts. The low-code tool was helpful as the Citizen Developers could easily see what changes the coding experts made to the software robot design.

Accomplishment: The Bots went live

After xx weeks of development, 2 bots were deployed with the billing team. Showing immediate benefits. Firstly, in time saved; around 5 hours a month for the billing teams’ time-sheet processing. Another benefit was elimination of "mistakes", the new Bots gave outputs that were 100% accurate. The biggest benefit, however, according to the team, was the morale boost. The team could focus on other tasks knowing that the bots were doing their parts. This reduced pressure, anxiety, and frustration significantly for the team.

Before and After  
The changes before and after the bot’s introduction were clear. Previously, when sorting timesheet files by payment terms, the team had manually read each timesheet to extract the appropriate data. As each client has different payment terms, this was a time consuming and exhausting task, prone to human error. Following this, the data needed to be double checked against the payroll system. This was done by manually exporting the system data to csv and then merging (copy paste) it to the original Excel for comparison - Data entry, data export, merging, and double checking. The huge amount of time and effort needed for these regular tasks singled it out as the obvious candidate for this project. A project that quickly proved its value.
Once handed over to the bot, payment term extraction and the double-checking processes were fully automated, reducing errors to zero and significantly reducing the workload and pressure placed on the team.

What are the important factors?

From their experience as Citizen Developers, the team soon identified 3 key factors contributing to the successes of their project. The first, to start small and deploy fast; focusing on simple, basic processes to automate and release quickly. The second, to have regular code review sessions with programming experts. The developers recall they found these sessions particularly eye-opening in expanding their knowledge of programming language and logic. Thirdly, an important factor in managing this project was patience and commitment. The development process requires care and attention, learning to understand your bots before they can grow. The introduction of process automation bots is a partnership – one that will keep giving as the years progress. As the team said themselves "The bots are still babies. We will raise them together from here."

What is next?

Digital Hearts Group is thrilled with the benefits gained from their Citizen Development and doesn’t intend to stop here. The entire team has gained knowledge on Software Robots and is enthusiastically identifying processes for future automation. The team and their citizen developers are excited to see management making IT investments to not just improve productivity for the business, but to improve the working environment for all. We anticipate many more automation projects from them in the future, following their key 3 factors, they are guaranteed more hours saved, fewer mistakes made, and ever-growing employee satisfaction.