Connections created for Optima the robot that helps customers order phones in installments

Connections, a leader in the digital transformation market in Romania, has created, together with Optima, the robot that streamlines the experience of customers buying phones in installments from the most performing mobile network in Romania. Once the order is registered in the call center, the robot processes it and makes decisions regarding the delivery, hold, insufficient funds or the use of bonus points.

“When placing the order, the customer interacts with an operator who takes the data, then the entire subsequent processing of the order is done by the robot, which relieves the Optima team of repetitive manual processing of phone orders,” explains George Niță, Business Unit Manger Connections Romania.

“Initially there were many exceptions, but we managed to scale quite quickly through a redesign of the initial process and the development of a custom software plugin, thus reducing to 0% the exceptions for validating the initial data. We were only left with the business exceptions for which we have defined specific flows, so as to maximize the area of ​​process automation”, adds George Niță.

“The adoption of the first robot colleague, named Adam, within the Optima team is just one of the steps taken by the company in a wider process of automating the activities. Adam already works daily with our colleagues, receives emails, processes data, accesses various systems. It was easily integrated by our colleagues, we were really having fun the previous days when a newer colleague complained that Adam was not responding to a certain email”, explains Daniel Mereuță, CEO of Optima.

The programming of the robot lasted four weeks, and the implementation two more weeks.

Connections is a ‘trusted UiPath implementation partner’ and has already successfully implemented robotic automation processes in various industries, from FMCG, banking and telecom companies to accounting firms, BPO companies, healthcare companies. The automated processes targeted departments in the financial-accounting area and the operational area with activities related to monthly reporting, management of holidays, the introduction of invoices in accounting software, but also back-office processes in the banking industry.

Connections is a leader on the digital transformation market in Romania, with 300 employees, offices in Bulgaria, Serbia and plans for global expansion. The company specializes in Intelligent Automation, IT Infrastructure Support, Digital Business Process Management and Software Development On Demand. Connections’ clients are global companies and medium-sized Romanian companies from industries such as Banking, FMCG, Oil & Gas, Telecom and Retail. Starting with July 2018, Connections signed a partnership with UiPath, the Enterprise Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform with the fastest customer adoption worldwide, with which it has already successfully implemented robotic automation processes in key industries. At the same time, Connections has invested over 200,000 euros in the development of a fintech open banking platform meant to integrate the APIs made available by banks in Romania, with the enforcement of the Revised Payment Service Directive (PSD2), which obliges banks to give access to information regarding bank accounts for payments accessible online to third parties who can develop their information services, payments and offer other financial services to the clients of the banks. Connections ended 2018 with a turnover of 5.5 million euros.

Optima company was founded in 2010 and is based in Bucharest, being a member of the Association of Business Service Leaders (ABSL). Currently, Optima employs 400 employees in the centers in Bucharest, Iasi and Brașov. Optima is part of the Next Capital Group with business in factoring, purchasing and recovering debts, with an annual financing value of over 50 million euros.