Leading global agencies now have a choice and the opportunity to outsource, offshore or automate often tedious and routine ad operations. With the digital landscape changing so rapidly, companies need to hold themselves accountable for incorporating programs that support their communities, while also providing a crucial service to the business.
In 2018, dentsu announced its partnership with AutonomyWorks, a company that specializes in mobilizing employees on the autism spectrum by creating job opportunities. Partnering with AutonomyWorks has allowed us to tap into the high-quality talent and skill of their employees who provide invaluable services to our business.
Many people on the autism spectrum excel at tasks that require a higher aptitude for repetitiveness, pattern recognition, and attention to detail. With the advent of robotic process automation (RPA) and continuing maturity of AI services, an organization can strike a perfect collaboration balance between the humans and robots by using cutting-edge technology to augment human work in the most effective and efficient way. Human-robot collaboration (co-botting) has been found to be 85% more productive than either humans or robots working alone, according to MIT research. The co-bot operates much like a virtual assistant for the employee, but it first needs to be programmed and needs maintenance.
“People with autism are exceptionally talented. Enhancing their skills with technology presents the opportunity for significant improvements in quality and productivity. This initiative provides a great opportunity to build new capabilities on our team and we are excited to apply this new expertise to our partnership with dentsu.” – David Friedman, CEO & Founder, AutonomyWorks
To help AutonomyWorks prepare for the future of work and have co-bots at their side, dentsu’s Automation Center of Excellence (COE) has partnered with UiPath, a global software company that develops a platform for robotic process automation to help upskill people on the autism spectrum to build their own software robots. Participants from AutonomyWorks and other partnering organizations will be taking part in a two-week, self-led training followed by a four-day hackathon to create their very own automations using UiPath StudioX.
“This initiative helps our participants use their unique talents to learn new skills and improve their day-to-day work. It’s important to me that programs like this continue to grow and provide opportunities, especially as someone who grew up with a family member on the autism spectrum.” says Sarah Greis, Automation Project Manager, dentsu
UiPath and the dentsu Automation COE will guide participants of the program through creating their attended automations. By introducing automation to their current work, participants will be able to complete their work faster and with more accuracy – allowing them to better serve their current clients, as well as take on additional work, and provide never-before level of service and solutions. They will be empowered to use the no-code drag-and-drop interface to introduce attended automations to the manual processes they need to complete daily for their clients, including dentsu.
"The dentsu automation team’s mission is to elevate human potential, not to eliminate it. When AI and automation are designed and deployed with the right intentions, everyone wins. By 2025, companies that have adopted AI will be 10 times more efficient and have twice the market share of companies that have not. It’s our corporate responsibility to help partners like AutonomyWorks take full advantage of the latest technologies that will help them stay in the race and win." – Max Cheprasov, Chief Automation Officer, dentsu