Challenges
With more Microsoft Power Platform MVPs than any other North American partner, Hitachi Solutions fully understood the possibilities that the Power Platform opened for organizations in this case study.
For example, one of their clients was using an automated PDF-filler feature on a competing legacy RPA platform. Hitachi Solutions identified they could complete the same actions with formal automation controls in Power Automate and combine it with Power Cell to achieve the same results in 45 minutes instead of six hours.
With many of their clients on competing RPA platforms looking to deliver UI-based automation with Microsoft tools like Dynamics 365, Hitachi Solutions identified a great opportunity: leveraging the marriage of the best enterprise-grade solutions in the Power Platform.
“Along with our customers, we've experienced how Microsoft has seamlessly integrated the best of digital process automation, cloud automation, RPA, and AI Builder. It's pretty unstoppable." said Lindstrom.
With the lucrative opportunity to reduce costs and become more efficient, there was significant interest on the customer side to explore and switch to Microsoft Power Automate, however Hitachi Solutions had yet to encounter a solution that was purpose-built to help with RPA migration and re-platforming. Because RPA tools specify automated processes differently, automations needed to be investigated, understood, and then manually rebuilt from scratch so they could work in a different RPA platform. This meant that manual RPA migrations were still incredibly labor- and time-intensive.
With the potential that Power Automate delivers to reduce costs and unlock the full capabilities of Microsoft’s Power Platform, Hitachi Solutions was eager to find a better way to migrate their clients’ RPA estates from legacy automation platforms onto Power Automate that prioritized speed, quality, and efficiency.
Solution
Hitachi Solutions first discovered Blueprint through conversations with Microsoft. To drive large-scale RPA estate migrations, Microsoft had already partnered with Blueprint to leverage Blueprint’s RPA migration and analytics capabilities.
“Blueprint is the first RPA migration or re-platforming tool that we’ve worked with. It’s been a big asset especially for customers that have a deadline and want to get off their legacy RPA tool quickly before they have to renew,” noted Lindstrom.
Hitachi Solutions adopted Blueprint to ingest their clients’ automation estates and understand them in terms of what they do and how complex they are in addition to optimization and retirement opportunities to improve RPA estates holistically.
Using Blueprint’s Common Object Model (COM), Hitachi Solutions was also able to automatically map their clients’ automations from legacy RPA tools into Microsoft Power Automate and isolate the minimal effort required to get them fully compatible for Power Automate, saving both time and effort in the migration process.
Outcomes
Blueprint has helped Hitachi Solutions understand their clients’ RPA estates in a much quicker and effective timeframe especially considering that most automation practices lack documentation. In the past, stakeholders would have to take a day-in-the-life and interview approach with clients to understand automations in their estates.
Blueprint dramatically cut the time to assess automations and RPA estates with their analytics and visual representations of automated processes, enabling Hitachi Solutions to quickly understand what’s being done and which connectors are being used.
"Blueprint definitely helps save time when migrating RPA estates because the alternative is that you’ve got to go in and understand the automation, and then build everything from scratch. You need to go through the clicks, use a recorder, lay the steps out, and then there are comments attached to those steps,” outlined Lindstrom.
In addition, Blueprint enabled them to identify optimization opportunities such as APIs or cloud connectors that can make the automations better and more stable. In this case study, Blueprint also helped to rapidly identify retirement opportunities, preventing the migration of ineffective automations that didn’t deliver meaningful business value, improving the RPA estates of Hitachi Solutions’ clients while migrating them to Microsoft Power Automate quickly, securely, and effectively to leverage all the benefits the Power Platform offers.
For More Information
About Hitachi Solutions
About RPA Migration Services: Migrate & Modernize with Power Automate
