Analytics firm Alteryx and RPA giant UiPath have announced a partnership to ease the process of digital transformation by unlocking the value from enterprise data. As organizations modernize their infrastructure, data can remain trapped in legacy systems and other sources that lack the necessary APIs for access. 

"We are excited that our technology partnership with UiPath provides robust integration between analytics and RPA for more intelligent business processes," said Suresh Vittal, chief product officer of Alteryx.

"The newly released connector accelerates value for mutual customers by making it easy to invoke UiPath bots from within an Alteryx workflow, enabling automated analysis and augmented robotic intelligence to drive smarter business outcomes using every byte of data in the organization - even the 'dark' data hiding in legacy systems."

Alteryx and UiPath combined to accelerate the delivery of unemployment benefits to Florida residents early in the Covid-19 pandemic.

The pandemic caused a sharp influx of unemployment applications in Florida (from 2,000 a month to 2,000,000), and their unemployment system was unable to scale in response to the requests for support.

That led to a system that was inaccessible to those desperately seeking assistance, and the information that was collected could not be analysed for eligibility, adjudication decisions could not be processed in a timely manner, and manual processes could not ensure adequate protection from instances of fraud.

This led to delays in the distribution of unemployment relief, creating additional economic pressure on individuals and families, as well as pressure on state leaders to swiftly correct these concerns.

In a matter of days, a task force of state technology and data leaders worked to supplement their existing system with critical automation to handle the extreme influx of applications. Using a combination of Google Forms for data intake, analytics automation through Alteryx, and RPA through UiPath, the agency was able to restore access to a critical array of services for those seeking unemployment relief.

By implementing a Google Forms-based process, the team was able to fix the problem associated with the input of application information. Once the data was collected, the Alteryx Analytic Process Automation (APA) Platform was utilized to process and analyse this data and create an integrated dataset with other sources to automate the process of identification (fuzzy matching), the determination of eligibility, and the management of funding distribution.

Additional workflows were automated, including the use of Alteryx to feed RPA processes (UiPath), to handle the adjudication of claims. 

The core system was still limited to 150,000 concurrent sessions, meaning that on average, 400,000 users needed to have their input (data collection) handled through Google-based processes.

Through an integrated process that included both APA and RPA, analytics automation was applied through 72 decision tree algorithms to handle backdated claims and provide unemployment relief automatically and retroactive to the date of filing instead of when the application was eventually processed. 

"The continued partnership with Alteryx, including the addition of the connector, emphasizes the strategic value the company brings to the UiPath technology partner ecosystem," said Ted Kummert, executive vice president of product and engineering at UiPath. 

"By giving users the ability to execute a UiPath process directly in an Alteryx workflow and connecting that process with Alteryx's data preparation and advanced analytics furthers the ability for UiPath to help data scientists and engineers gain access to all of the data they need, and in the shape that they need it."

More information about the Alteryx and the UiPath partnership can be found at https://www.alteryx.com/partners/alteryx-alliance/uipath