“Redwood Software…. Its latest solutions focus on the robotization of end-to-end business processes across record-to-report, order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, HR and supply chain. “

“Publicly nameable clients include SAP, Genentech (Roche Group) and DSM, and partners include Deloitte, KPMG, EY, PwC and Accenture. Its product development plans include providing key performance indicators (KPIs), SLAs and dashboards to help customers measure and improve thousands of robots and millions of robot executions per week, both generically (for example, how often does a certain robot run and how long does it take), and for specific robotized processes (for example, the monetary value of outstanding accounts receivable [AR] processed by a robot). It is also working on deeper and broader integration with operating systems, applications and APIs in order to make developing robots simpler. Finally, it is working on standard robots in specific verticals for finance-specific and accounting-specific processes and high-level processes in common ERP applications. Its targeted sectors include manufacturing (aerospace, auto, industrial and high-tech); retail and consumer products; banking, financial services and insurance; healthcare and pharmaceutical; government and public sector; and communications, telecom and media.”

Redwood Software was benchmarked as a strong performer. Remember that the measurement criteria are purely on the basis of traditional desktop user interface based RPA tools and therefore much of the measurement criteria is not relevant with our paradigm.

“Redwood Software draws from its ERP professional services experience. Plugging inefficiencies in SAP and Oracle enterprise apps has been a full-time and successful effort for Redwood. RPA reduces manual labor in supply chain, logistics, forecasting, eCommerce delivery, and financial posting. Robot deployment times are reduced by a catalog of SAP and Oracle robots. A Redwood robot accepts external variables from the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to execute its routines. This results in a smaller set of centrally run robots that run without concern for a physical desktop. Control room and governance features include real-time views of robot progression and audit forms that provide a snapshot of what the robot has executed with data sources and steps. In terms of philosophy, Redwood is more API-oriented (data integration) and less UI-oriented (desktop integration) than other vendors in the field. It is worth a good look for any serious F&A operation looking to robotize tasks.”

MARKET GUIDE FOR ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION SOFTWARE – CATHY TORNBOHM

THE FORRESTER WAVE™: ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION, Q1 2017, THE 12 PROVIDERS THAT MATTER MOST AND HOW THEY STACK UP – CRAIG LE CLAIR

This document highlights coverage by industry analysts that will assist in your deeper understanding of Redwood ‘s unique approach to robotics. Please note we will only supply links to analyst materials where we have distribution rights.

REDWOOD ROBOTICS™ SOFTWARE - ANALYST COVERAGE

INDUSTRY ANALYST GARTNER

INDUSTRY ANALYST FORRESTER

Arla Foods, a major international dairy company based in Denmark, implemented Redwood Software’s robotics solution to reshape business processes in finance, including creating and maintaining master data sets, performing financial reconciliation work, and conducting rule-based pricing analyses.

TECHRADAR™: AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGIES, ROBOTICS AND AI IN THE WORKFORCE, Q2 2017

“By guaranteeing outcomes and by taking a business function point of view, Redwood is adding a distinctive voice to the discussion on Intelligent Automation. Redwood is offering robotized process IP, not task or swivel chair automation.

Redwood’s approach to Enterprise Process Robotics is adding a distinctive voice in those discussions by addressing automation from a business function point of view rather than from a task or sub-process level. Instead, Redwood is focused on back office/administrative processes for finance (RoboFinance™), supply chain (RoboSupplyChain™) and human resources (RoboHumanCapital™) that are largely standardized but with some variation in each organization. Creating deep domain expertise in those processes allows Redwood not only to robotize those variations and gaps, but also to guarantee outcomes to its clients.

Looking at Redwood’s approach around its process robotics offering in more detail, it is significantly different yet complementary to the leading RPA vendors. It is different in that Redwood doesn’t approach customer situations from a task or sub-process level and then work its way up in the organization or going after ‘swivel chair’ front office processes like claims management or mortgage processing. Rather, Redwood is focused on back office/administrative processes such as finance, supply chain and human resources that are largely standardized but with some variation in each organization. The starting point in those discussions is the discovery of any required parameters so that process owners can configure the automation steps easily and consequently the time to value is significantly reduced.

Having re-evaluated their entire close process, SAP decided to implement Redwood’s RoboFinance solution specifically geared to the R2R function. Based on handbooks that described standard operating procedures in offshore delivery centers, robots took over the majority of manual steps. The main achievements included:

SAP executives summarized the achievements as follows: “The spreading report is completely automated. Robots now check invoices and deferred revenue, and remove it from the deferred report automatically. It originally took 90 minutes for each spread report to run, but now it takes just a few minutes for each. SAP can now re-order processes and save time. For example, we allow certain entities to start their spreading reports if they're finished with invoicing, so they no longer have to wait a whole day. We can even run all entities in parallel and track each one.”

REDWOOD POSITIONS ITSELF AT THE INTERSECTION OF ERP, COGNITIVE COMPUTING AND RPA – TOM REUNER

Link to document at: http://bit.ly/2sU696H

INDUSTRY ANALYST HORSES FOR SOURCES (HFS)

A reduction in the time it takes to publish and to close entities from four weeks and 7 days respectively to three weeks and four

days respectively.

Redwood’s robots now perform 100% of the revenue recognition tasks, eliminating the 197 man days required per close period.

Globally standardized processes.

Guarantee of 100% SOX compliance.

Strong positive feedback from employee surveys.

RPA POSITIONING BY HFS

“The RPA market is turning in Redwood’s favor…”

“In the last 12 months, however, the market has started to shift and has progressed toward understanding and applying RPA as more transformative projects with higher business impact. We are finally starting to overcome the early misconceptions that RPA is a turn-key, non-invasive, low-risk solution, largely focused on replacing FTEs.

Redwood is aiming to integrate the digital underbelly into intelligent digital support functions.

Despite all the noise around Intelligent Automation and broader digital technologies, ERP systems are not going away any time soon. Organizations must find ways of innovating around and on top of their legacy platforms. This is where Redwood’s value proposition and differentiation come in.

Redwood aims to play a part in an ecosystem that enables the journey toward OneOffice, rather than facilitating the journey. The facilitation will be largely done by a set of consulting partners. Mature partnerships with the Big 4 and specialist consultancies reflect that fundamental belief. Thus, Redwood’s notion of the robotic enterprise aims to integrate the digital underbelly into the intelligent digital support functions. But, unlike most RPA approaches that extract data from heterogeneous sources to overcome breaks in process flows, the company has codified the process knowledge of complete business functions and its deep insights into ERP architectures. Redwood automates the process rather than just the data integration as most RPA vendors do.”

REDWOOD GETS UNDER THE HOOD OF THE ONEOFFICE – TOM REUNER

Link to document at: http://bit.ly/2skrS99

In this RPA, centric analysis Redwood was marked as a challenger. However, note that they were uniquely identified as having a different approach to robotic process automation than traditional RPA.

ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION (RPA) – TECHNOLOGY VENDOR LANDSCAPE WITH FIT MATRIX ASSESSMENT – SARAH BURNETT

INDUSTRY ANALYST THE EVEREST GROUP

Everest Group Freature | Implementation | impacT (FIT) Matrix1

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Kryon Systems

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UiPath

Kofax Kapow

NICE

The report further went on to describe Redwood as an Innovator as well as with the highest percentage of focus towards large enterprises.

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“Everest Group believes that Innovators are ahead of the market in their use of next-generation technology, and in some cases their advanced commercial models and higher automation levels.”

To try to differentiate further, Everest Group coined the term Accelerated Robotic Automation (ARA). Whilst this is not a common term it was used to describe a differing approach to desktop based RPA.

“ARA refers to software products that are designed to automate significant parts of specific business processes such as order-to-cash and procure-to-pay. The products in this category use software modules or robots, some with built-in intelligence, to automate processes end-to-end. The products come with pre-built function specific libraries of automations that bring process knowledge as well as pre-built integrations using APIs and connectors with enterprise systems such as ERP.

ARA software typically comes with built-in workflow and process orchestration to enable end-to-end process automation. This allows easier automation of higher level processes. The primary advantage of ARA is that it brings with it the business context and knowledge of the process that is being automated, built into its models, and pre-built libraries of automations, to speed up deployment. Another advantage of ARA software is that, because it comes with the knowledge of the process it also recognizes where interactions are expected between different parts of the process and can offer pre-built capabilities to handle these. Consequently, it helps organizations automate a greater part of each process without significantly increasing the software development effort. ARA typically requires involvement from the software vendor or its partners for solution customization.

The combination of process knowledge and the workflow and orchestration means that it is easier to automate higher level processes, e.g., level 3.”

PUSHING THE DIAL ON BUSINESS PROCESS AUTOMATION – SARAH BURNETT PROS AND CONS OF RPA AND ACCELERATED RPA (ARA)

Link to document at: http://bit.ly/2sUapDj

Link to document at: http://bit.ly/2zsajXp

Redwood Software has progressed well on two key facets (i.e. dedicated process expertise and core RPA platform features and capabilities) enabling a process-centric approach to robotic automation and has established credentials in terms of automation of enterprise-scale, back-office processes. Redwood Robotics software can deliver significant time (including agility) and cost benefits over traditional RPA products and is suited to the requirements of robotic automation of sophisticated, end-to-end processes.

With such a process-centric approach, enterprises can not only robotize tasks previously executed by humans, but also application- and system-specific tasks (e.g., those involving ERP and other enterprise applications), which together result in a greater degree of automation of an end-to-end process. Consequently, Redwood Robotics solutions can enable process automation in the range of 70% to 100%, with the average being 80% automation.

Redwood platform has built-in workflow capabilities for supporting sequencing of tasks/steps and process orchestration to simplify automation of end-to-end processes. Likewise, Redwood platform can coordinate the handover between process participants (i.e. robots and humans) when human intervention is essential, without any need for a manned control tower for managing robots. Redwood also allows customers to create and maintain templates of robotic processes and corresponding interdependencies.

In the case of the Redwood Robotics solution, the TCO for RPA is reduced by a significant extent, as customers do not need a large number of VMs with windows and office licenses for scalability. As a standard part of its offering, plug and play robots with built-in knowledge of process tasks are developed, maintained, and fully supported by Redwood. These can be easily configured by users, which greatly reduces the bot development effort.

THE VALUE PROPOSITION OF REDWOOD ROBOTICS SOFTWARE – SARRABH SHARMA

INDUSTRY ANALYST OVUM

For more information on Redwood Robotics software, please visit www.redwood.com/robotics