HuLoop Automation
Keeping Humans-In-The-Loop With Intelligent Automation

The relationship between workers and various automation technologies has always been adversarial. It’s hard to blame the worker because they have become increasingly fearful that automation may one day result in the loss of their job. The facts are quite the opposite, automation usually means job transformation and improvement, rather than job elimination.

Frankly, today’s companies really aren’t in a position to shed jobs anyhow. With unemployment remaining at or near historical lows, organizations are continuing to struggle with both new hiring and retaining existing employees in this hyper-competitive job market. It is clearer than ever that best-in-class companies need to deploy automation, and for automation to succeed, workers must embrace it, otherwise it simply will fail.

Fortunately, there is a new generation of artificial intelligence (AI)-based intelligent automation software that can help relieve employees of mundane, repetitive, and often mind-numbing work. It succeeds by leveraging the strengths of human workers with digital workers. This new approach harmonizes the need for human judgment, intuition, and governance with a rapidly advancing array of advanced automation capabilities.

"Part of our differentiation is that we understand that businesses need an arsenal of automation capabilities from a single solution provider,” said Michaud, who added, “gone are the days where businesses have the appetite to stitch together expensive and complicated multi-vendor solutions"

HuLoop Automation, based in Northern California, is an example of this next generation of human-centered hyperautomation software. The company has built a comprehensive, AI-powered, no-code platform that can diagnostically analyze how people, processes and technology are interacting, and then seamlessly automate key aspects of those tasks and processes across the enterprise. Most importantly, automations can be deployed by non-technical businesspeople, minimizing the dependency on information technology departments.

“It’s all in the name. HuLoop is focused on ‘human-in-the-loop’ intelligent automation. We blend the value of human capital with AI-powered automation to better meet the business needs of our clients,” says Todd P. Michaud, President & CEO of HuLoop.

The term “hyperautomation” was first coined by analyst firm Gartner in 2019. The concept recognized that enterprises needed more than just robotic process automation (RPA) technology to address automation needs especially at scale. Hyperautomation provides a framework for the application of a variety of automation technologies working together and enhancing them with AI and machine learning.

The HuLoop Automation platform distinguishes itself from others by bringing a unified arsenal of hyperautomation capabilities together in a single, modern platform:

1. Data-Driven Process Discovery - Generates intelligence surrounding people, processes, and technologies being used and what happens in and between them. Auto-generates actual digital diagrams of current processes and makes prescriptive recommendations to create prioritized new automations and calculates their respective return on investment (ROI).

2. Business Process Automation (BPA) – orchestration and automation of complex processes across disparate systems, data siloes, and organizational boundaries. Essentially BPA is the workflow glue binding these complex processes together.

3. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – Builds, deploys and manages software robots or “bots” (digital workers) to emulate what humans would otherwise need to do.

4. Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) – Using cognitive OCR capabilities to facilitate loading, digitizing, classifying, extracting, redacting, validating, and exporting documents. These documents can be Excel, CSV, Word, PDF, XML, EDI, etc.

5. Intelligent Data Automation (IDA) – collecting, validating, and publishing data, sometimes encrypted, decrypted, or masked, from data source to data target automatically.

6. Software Test Automation (STA) – creating, executing, and analyzing an array of software quality tests comparing actual results versus expected outcomes.

Using a simple, friendly commercial model, HuLoop brings a buffet-style combination of this portfolio to solve problems that could not be solved by software providers who only specialized in Robotic Process Automation, or another specific capability mentioned above.

HuLoop uses a more human-centered approach where we analyze the existing business model, introduce automations throughout the enterprise, and develop a new business model that has been transformed with our automation capabilities,” says Michaud

“Part of our differentiation is that we understand that businesses need an arsenal of automation capabilities from a single solution provider,” said Michaud, who added, “gone are the days where businesses have the appetite to stitch together expensive and complicated multi-vendor solutions.”

HuLoop has developed a rapidly growing customer base especially in key industries such as Retail, Wholesale Distribution, CPG/Manufacturing, Banks, Public Sector, and B2B/B2C Services. In particular, the company is simultaneously seeking to level the playing field by bringing intelligent automation to Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMB). Until recently, only large enterprises were able to adopt such technologies.

The case for intelligent automation

Businesses are under constant pressure to reduce costs while driving profitable growth – and today’s economic environment exacerbates the need to do things differently. While most businesses have already invested in leading enterprise software platforms like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and Salesforce, they are fast learning that enterprise software is only a part of the solution.

It is very common that only 20-30% of core tasks and activities are covered by enterprise software. This means that 70-80% of tasks and activities depend on manual workarounds, Excel, Email, Slack or Microsoft Teams, or other mechanisms. While no one would advocate for doing without enterprise software platforms, the real productivity gains exist outside of these platforms.

For instance, despite large investments in enterprise software, the average employee still spends approximately 60 hours each month completing tasks outside or in between those enterprise software platforms. Putting this into perspective, employees are spending as much as 3 hours daily on tasks like wrangling data, compiling reports, or creating spreadsheets or other documents. This presents a lot of potential to improve productivity.

"It’s all in the name. HuLoop is focused on ‘human-in-the-loop’ intelligent automation. We blend the value of human capital with AI-powered automation to better meet the business needs of our clients,” says Todd P. Michaud, President & CEO of HuLoop"

“Fundamentally, all enterprises have complex business processes made up of tasks and activities that need to work across disparate software platforms, data sources, documents, and organizational boundaries,” said Michaud. “HuLoop was designed to help those enterprises transform how they operate.”

HuLoop’s platform is used by its clients to do the following things:
1. Orchestrate business processes and tasks across existing disparate software platforms.
2. Eliminate non-value adding tasks or activities that no longer serve a purpose.
3. Automate mundane, repetitive, tedious tasks with digital assistants a.k.a. bots
4. Facilitate intelligent document handling enveloping documents into processes and automating the ability to derive valuable content from those documents.
5. Provide efficient and timely Human-in-the-Loop decision making and governance

HuLoop supports their clients, by analyzing workflows and understanding how employees interact with technology. HuLoop helps to create process flow diagrams of the client’s current business activities. HuLoop’s applied automation experts then provide actionable recommendations on how best to apply the array of RPA, IDP, and orchestration capabilities on the HuLoop platform. HuLoop also has a network of expert business partners who work with the company to deliver comprehensive automation and business transformation solutions.

“HuLoop uses a more human-centered approach where we analyze the existing business model, introduce automations throughout the enterprise, and develop a new business model that has been transformed with our automation capabilities,” says Michaud.

With the cost of human capital rising exponentially, automating business processes reduces costs, improves efficiency, and frees up employees to perform more essential tasks. Workers have become increasingly valuable within organizations. As a result, employers are driven to ensure employees are content and find their work meaningful and rewarding—all while balancing the need to increase productivity and reduce expenses that don’t add value.

“We regularly deliver a financial return of 10 to 20 dollars for every dollar we charge the customer,” adds Michaud. The outstanding ROI, coupled with the firm’s ability to scale across the enterprise, provides clients with customized intelligent automation at every stage of the automation journey.