Top 5 Takeaways from Our Conversation with TransUnion

Recently, WorkFusion and consumer credit reporting agency TransUnion presented a webinar, “Developing Your Capability: Intelligent Automation to Supercharge Your Team.”

In this virtual meeting, Alex Lyashok, President and CEO of WorkFusion, spoke with Tim McCarthy, SVP of Global Operations at TransUnion, one of the world’s largest credit bureaus, about the broader prospects of Intelligent Automation, as well as real achievements TransUnion has experienced as a WorkFusion customer. The webinar audience was also able to take part in a live Q&A session.

As a recap for those who attended, or a preview for those who want to watch the session on-demand, here are 5 top insights from the webinar.

Less routine = more creativity 

As we know, automation is a powerful tool that enables a business to reevaluate its current (and perhaps outdated) processes. According to McCarthy, exploring automation allowed TransUnion to create a distinction between mundane activities that could be performed by machines and those that couldn’t — thereby freeing up time for people to use their cognitive functions to perform more creative tasks. 

Measure success not just by numbers, but by new ideas  

Many purveyors and automation users immediately look towards ROI, thinking, “How can I make money on this investment?” McCarthy does not think that’s the right measure of successful automation implementation. He sees automation success as not only reducing the number of hours a human is needed to perform a particular task but also as reinvesting those hours into creativity.

Think big

For those who rely solely on traditional RPA, McCarthy insists that its limitations keep a business from going very far. When considering what kind of technology and partnerships TransUnion should have, McCarthy says he looks for companies with an eye towards the future — moving beyond RPA into machine learning and even more advanced intelligence.

Flying a rocket instead of riding a bike

Automation is not as ubiquitous as people think. Even though some forms of business automation have existed since the ’80s, McCarthy emphasizes that we are at a critical point. We now have a deeper understanding of not only how automation works, but of the processes themselves:

Tim McCarthy

We spent a hundred years developing these processes in corporate America, where we have segmented and made these processes less interesting and easier to scale. We have never actually taken a step back and said: ‘What’s the smartest way we can apply automation now?’ And it’s really by rethinking the processes such that you can now create this distinction between what is human and what is routine, and that’s what I think is kind of new. … [Instead of] riding a bike, you are almost flying a rocket.

Tim McCarthy
Tim McCarthy, SVP of Global Operations, TransUnion

Rearrange the processes

According to McCarthy, automation is a skill that a business needs to get good at through practice. It’s not something that can be done overnight. Instead of starting with figuring out how automation works, companies would do well first to figure out how their own existing processes work. McCarthy thinks major corporations are so fragmented that having a holistic understanding of a particular internal process takes a lot of work to unpack.

In light of the fact that TransUnion is WorkFusion’s customer, McCarthy shared his opinion on the alignment they found with our company and our platform.

tim mccarthy

First of all, WorkFusion has been great to work with on the logistics and commercial side of the business. You are ready, willing, and able to jump in and understand the particularities of certain needs. … Outside of that, I was looking for a company that had its eye on the future. I think WorkFusion understands this. … [Your solutions are] more in machine learning, and a much more sophisticated piece of engineering, piece of software, that enables far more capabilities than routine RPA. And that’s particularly what we’re after at TransUnion.

tim mccarthy
Tim McCarthy, SVP of Global Operations, TransUnion

We can only include a few highlights in this article. We recommend watching the full webinar. If you’d like to talk with us about how our innovative solutions can meet your needs, feel free to contact us.