Podcast: Make automation holistic—“RPA & AI are just two instruments”

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Katie Sadler
Katie Sadler
03/01/2018

There’s not one tool or one set. Organizations shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes experimenting with new techniques

Automation

Photo by Adam Sherez on Unsplash

“I'm a ‘what you see is what you get’ kind of guy. Not making big things very big, but trying to make it small and concrete and manageable so that you can do something about it,” advises Bart van de Sande, Head Operations Transaction Banking at ABN AMRO.

“Everybody has their qualities, their roles, and their skillsets. Bake the right cake with all the ingredients in that group of people”

Drawing on his wealth of experience from the football pitch to his role today he believes, “everybody has their qualities, their roles, and their skillsets. Bake the right cake with all the ingredients in that group of people. There you have the happy families, there you have the winning teams, and there you have the winning concepts or market stores.”

Recalling his time at Unilever, he discovered the importance of trust in a partnership: “Trust and openness and willing to partner up. That was the key word in the reflections in the sales managers and the country managers responsible for the relations with the partners.”

Responsible for deploying automation in his current role at ABN AMRO, van de Sande believes automation should be “more holistic because RPA [robotic process automation] and AI [artificial intelligence] are just two more instruments, and there are several instruments. Process mining, data analytics, RDA, is a very simple solution instead of RPA, but really quick.”

“We experiment a lot with different parties and a lot of different techniques”

“We experiment a lot with different parties and a lot of different techniques. We then say, hey, this is the client journey, here are the pain points of the client and ask, what tool do I need and what is the best tool in the market? And that’s what we put in place.”

Organizations “shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes experimenting with the new techniques.”

Listen now:

[Transcript]

Seth Adler: From ABN AMRO, Bart van de Sande joins us. First, some supporters to thank. And thank you for listening.

This episode is supported by the AIIA Network, the AI & Intelligent Automation Network is an online community focused on building the intelligent enterprise. Content covers a broad range of issues, including digital disruption and transformation, task and robotic process automation, augmented intelligence, machine learning, and cognitive computing. Our goal is to help businesses apply these technologies and build the intelligent enterprise of the future. Go to aiia.net to join.

This episode is also supported by RPA & AI Week 2017. The world decision-makers and doers in process excellence and shared services meet in London this November to collaborate on the direction of task automation and augmented intelligence, share best practice, and discover strategies, tactics, and initiatives, which industry leaders are already implementing for business success. 2017 is our second year of bringing this growing and exciting industry together. Go to rpaandaisummit.com for more.

Utilize RPA, reach for AI, focus on automation no matter what you're talking about, according to Bart van de Sande, the Head of Operations Transaction Banking for ABN AMRO. It's all just transformation. Bart notes that these are just new tools on the transformation journey, just as lean management and all the other tools before and after. At the core, he notes, do you love your clients? Do you have passion for your clients? Do you want to go the extra mile? Do you know what drives them? How are you going to help them fulfill their dreams or maybe, sometimes, help them get out of their worst nightmares? But that, Bart says, is the core of transformation, not the tools that you use to answer those very questions.

Welcome to the AI & Intelligent Automation Network on B2BiQ. I'm your host, Seth Adler. Download episodes on aiia. net or through our app on iTunes, within the iTunes podcast app in Google Play, or wherever you currently get your podcasts.

Bart van de Sande!

Bart van de Sande: Van de Sande, yeah

Seth Adler: Van de Sande?

Bart van de Sande: Yes.

Seth Adler: So it's almost an F?

Bart van de Sande: I think for you it sounds like this ...

Seth Adler: Yeah.

Bart van de Sande: But it's a V, actually.

Seth Adler: Yeah.

Bart van de Sande: It's a Dutch name. I'm speaking here at the summit in London, so very cool.

Seth Adler: That's it. RPA & AI for BFSI.

[00:02:30]

Bart van de Sande: Yes. When you've touched upon it, I've already forgotten it.

Seth Adler: Indeed.

Bart van de Sande: So it's just all transformation, in my opinion.

Seth Adler: It is all transformation. And as I've been talking to folks, it does seem that way. Some folks are getting maybe a little too caught up in the technology ...

Bart van de Sande: Yep.

Seth Adler: But it is just transformation, isn't it?

Bart van de Sande: I really believe so. I will be doing my presentation after this and in my heart and soul, I believe these techniques are only new tools to work with, just as we have worked in the financial sector with the management and all the stuff that has been coming and going. But it is always in the core, do you love your clients? Do you have patience for your clients? Do you want to go the extra mile and do you know what drives them? And how are you going to help them to fulfil their dreams? Or maybe, as in the financial sector, sometimes help them to get out of their worst nightmares. But that's the core of transformation and also the digital transformation.

Seth Adler: It is all about the customer for you.

Bart van de Sande: Exactly, yeah. We have real cool stuff, RPA, AI, and so on and so on and so on.

Seth Adler: Yeah.

Bart van de Sande: But it starts with your people and the people passionate about your clients. If you work in the financial sector or you are with Google, help the world go round, or at an airport, yeah, you should love your clients and know what drives them.

Seth Adler: And there you have it. So let's make sure that we understand how you have this mindset. You're from Holland. You're from Rotterdam, not Amsterdam, right?

Bart van de Sande: I live in Rotterdam and also work in Amsterdam.

Seth Adler: Oh, you do?

Bart van de Sande: Both cities.

Seth Adler: Where are you from, though?

Bart van de Sande: I live in Rotterdam. I'm from Rotterdam.

Seth Adler: From Rotterdam.

Bart van de Sande: Yes.

Seth Adler: Uh-huh (affirmative). And growing up in Rotterdam, what was that like?

Bart van de Sande: No, I live in Rotterdam now, but I've been growing up in a little town called Hakendorf. Those were seven streets in a lot of green areas, green fields with [ 00:04:37], typical Dutch small kennel, in a farmers environment.

Seth Adler: Yeah.

Bart van de Sande: So there I grew up playing football with my friends, doing a lot of naughty tricks ...

Seth Adler: Of course.

Bart van de Sande: And therefore, I'm thinking with a smile back at my youth of not being a team member, sometimes a captain. Doing all those nice things and that's what drives me.

Seth Adler: Interesting. Now, again, this is where the windmills would be, right?

Bart van de Sande: Yes.

Seth Adler: We know about the windmills. This is central for the windmills, where you grew up.

Bart van de Sande: Absolutely, yeah. Windmills, cows, cheese, and wooden shoes.

Seth Adler: Wooden shoes, of course.

Bart van de Sande: But I had my Nikes on.

Seth Adler: So you were on the pitch, you were playing football, and you said even in a captain's mindset, did you wear the number 10, I wonder?

Bart van de Sande: No, actually I didn't.

Seth Adler: Okay.

Bart van de Sande: No. I had different roles in the team, so I was a goalkeeper or I was a hardworking member, 6 or 7 at the midfield.

Seth Adler: Right.

Bart van de Sande: Working really hard and pulling up the sleeves, but not the technical guy at the number 10 position.

Seth Adler: I understand. Kind of doing everything else.

Bart van de Sande: Yes, and making the team grow stronger and let the guys score the goals.

Seth Adler: Yeah. So the goalkeeper position fascinates me. First off, this person wears a different outfit, for those keeping score at home.

Bart van de Sande: Yeah. It is.

Seth Adler: But what you need to do ... You have to have a completely different skillset than everyone else on the field. Is that fair?

Bart van de Sande: Is that fair? What do you mean by that question?

Seth Adler: This is my assumption, do you agree?

Bart van de Sande: I think just as in every piece of life, everybody has their role. In a family, the father has a different skillset than the mother and so on. And when I go to the marketplace here at the end of the street, there are also people with different skillsets. The manager has another role than the people behind the counter.

Seth Adler: Yeah.

Bart van de Sande: So what I really believe in all those groups of people, everybody has their qualities, their roles, and maybe their skillsets, and it's important to look at those different types of people with those different types of skills and make the exact, fitted mixture of it. Bake the exact right cake with all the ingredients in that group of people. There you have the happy families, there you have the winning teams, and there you have the winning concepts or market stores.

Seth Adler: You bring up how to create a successful teamwork, that you need a number of different pieces of a successful team. When you spoke of the football team, you didn't say ... You did say, "I'm looking back upon it fondly." But you didn't say, "I was enjoying myself and scoring goals" or "I was enjoying myself because X, Y, and Z." What you said more than once was, "I was doing my job to help the team succeed."

Bart van de Sande: Yes.

Seth Adler: This is a very specific viewpoint, even early on.

Bart van de Sande: Yeah.

Seth Adler: Does that come from your parents? That sense of family, that sense of team?

Bart van de Sande: Yeah, I think so. My father was a teacher and my mother was a housewife, very active in the church community. I'm not a very religious person, but it was a very religious family in which I grew up. But I think I have the ... How do you call it? The way of serving a group of people from my parents. It's something that I've been growing up with and which might be in my DNA.

Seth Adler: Yeah.

Bart van de Sande: And of course from both my father and my mother, but you bring the things that you learn as a child to the table.

Seth Adler: Indeed.

Bart van de Sande: And I really believe, to put it to the situation I'm now in, I'm working a team as a manager of approximately 300 people and I really believe the team grows stronger when I'm doing my best serving them. Of course, I have to end responsibility ... At least, at the end, I'm in charge.

Seth Adler: Right.

Bart van de Sande: But before decision-making takes place or before I have to play the role, there are many other things to do. And that's the same as when I was with my little friends in Hakendorf playing football or doing the tricks. Yeah, it's the same as the team I'm managing right now. Our clients will be very happy when my Transaction Banking team is very happy, when all the qualities of the people are on the table in the right mixture and people feel full of confidence and bring the best of that talent on the table. And then my clients will experience that in the way they're doing business with our bank.

Seth Adler: Absolutely.

Bart van de Sande: So yeah. Forty years later, I'm still happy doing that. Yes.

Seth Adler: Did you go to university?

Bart van de Sande: Yes.

Seth Adler: In Holland, as well?

Bart van de Sande: Yes, in Rotterdam, Erasmus University. That was the moment that the little boy from the little town was there between the big buildings and all the junkies and tramps. It was a really clear memory that I have in my mind.

Seth Adler: A big change. What did you study? What did you come to as far as the intellectual mind?

Bart van de Sande: I studied Public Administration, actually. So not specifically banking or commercial perspective because I was interested, and still am interested, in both commercial as public organizations, as long as playing a role in a team or managing a team.

Seth Adler: Sure. So then one would wonder, if you're studying public institutions, how you wound up in banking. What was the first job out of college?

Bart van de Sande: Actually, I started with Unilever. Also quite known, I think.

Seth Adler: Yeah.

Bart van de Sande: Fast-moving consumer goods. Very interesting company also.

Seth Adler: Yes.

Bart van de Sande: But at the beginning of 2000 and there were many organizations to choose from, just pick and choose, and I really had a match with them at AMRO.

Seth Adler: Why? Oh no, before that, but why did you have a match with Unilever, I wonder?

Bart van de Sande: I was in a student job, Institute of Sales and Account Management where I covered post-doctoral ... Is that an English word?

Seth Adler: Sure.

Bart van de Sande: Post-doc education. I managed that for the professor involved and there I contacted with some guys. So Unilever ... It was a really interesting international project that I could attend.

Seth Adler: What was it?

Bart van de Sande: Investigation and survey, you might say, with all the big retailers in Europe and looking what were the best partners for Unilever. So seeing and going to England and going to Ireland. I was graduated and I was thinking, am I going to start my job or am I going to travel or do I do a combination? So it was Unilever providing that combination, that solution. So I did that for a year, was really interesting and cool, and after that, I decided what road to take, and AMRO was the match I made.

Seth Adler: They were right there. I want to speak more about this project because I know that it was only one year and I know that you were essentially a student, just past being a student. What did you learn? What made you a good partner for Unilever? What did not make a good partner? How different were things in the different geographies that you went to? All of these questions.

But what did make a good partner? To ask you one question at a time.

Bart van de Sande: While you were rephrasing the question, I was thinking, "What was it again? What was it again?" So I put down a ... How do you call it? A model? With all kinds of figures and analyses and interviews and so on and so on. But I have to say, if there's one word, thinking 16 years back, it was trust. Trust and openness and willing to partner up. That was the key word in the reflections in the sales managers, the country managers responsible for the relations with the partners.

Seth Adler: Outweighing metrics or metrics became due to loyalty and trust.

Bart van de Sande: Yeah, a combination. If I have to sum up, that would be the first thing that I have in mind.

Seth Adler: Beyond not having trust there, what didn't make a good partner?

Bart van de Sande: Come again?

Seth Adler: Yeah. So if trust made a good partner, you would assume that not having trust would make it so that the partnership didn't line up, or not a good partner. Because you were finding good partners and folks that unfortunately were not good partners. Besides trust, what other thing was it?

Bart van de Sande: Of course, there are the quantitative elements. What kind of shared production do you deliver? What was invested in marketing? And so on and so on. So a combination of [numbers 00:14:35], besides trust.

Seth Adler: Those are straightforward things. In terms of when it didn't line up, I wonder, what was it attributable to?

Bart van de Sande: Gee.

Seth Adler: Good question, right?

Bart van de Sande: Yeah. I have to look back at my survey. What did these out of two things that I have in mind. It's a combination of some qualitative elements that key interviewees, key managers had in mind, and trust one of them in combination with a more obvious data when a company is interesting to work with. So it's the combination. Then I come back to living in Hakendorf with my friends. I believe in what way we will develop as a society or in business or education. In core, people are looking for key elements that were already important when we lived in tribes several thousand years ago.

Seth Adler: Interesting. What do you mean by that?

Bart van de Sande: I mean, if trust is a key word in selecting a partner for a fast-moving retailer, or if you look at this digital transformation, what we just discussed, and see that key elements, such as trusting your team, making people shine, may you compare it, as you can imagine, living in a tribe, going hunting, and have to trust that when you come back, hey, you have a place to live and so on and so on.

Seth Adler: Yeah.

Bart van de Sande: It always comes up through those basic instincts of people, and that people feel when they're doing ... When they have a connection to someone and want to do business there or want to buy the groceries there or want to be on that team.

Seth Adler: So the basic connection...

Bart van de Sande: Yes.

Seth Adler: What was it between you and ABN AMRO? How did you know it was a match? How did they know it was a match?

Bart van de Sande: Because in two or three days, I had a contract in front of my nose.

Seth Adler: They were timely.

Bart van de Sande: Yeah, no, not timely. They showed confidence and trust. I really felt that they were passionate about me working there.

Seth Adler: Why did you think they were? What did they see?

Bart van de Sande: That's of course a difficult question.

Seth Adler: Yes.

Bart van de Sande: I think that they see what you see now. I'm a "what you see is what you get" kind of guy. Not making big things very big, but try to make it small and concrete and manageable so that you can do something about it. And I'm passionate about the things I do.

Seth Adler: Practical and direct. This is the Dutch way, I think.

Bart van de Sande: Yeah, I think so.

Seth Adler: And we as New Yorkers, we used to be New Amsterdam, so we keep this ... I think it is from our Dutch ancestors that were practical and direct.

Bart van de Sande: I hope so.

Seth Adler: Yes, of course!

Bart van de Sande: We feel a great connection with New York, as well.

Seth Adler: Absolutely! You found it! And thank you for doing so. What job did they give you and how quickly did you rise?

Bart van de Sande: I started as a trainee, so I did several ...

Seth Adler: Early on! Yeah.

Bart van de Sande: But I asked if I could be an account manager in the commercial site, so looking at the small shops to the big companies, the big enterprises. It was a mixture of companies in my portfolio because I wanted to learn the core of banking and wanted to learn how clients react giving them a loan or not giving them a loan and how does that feel, how does that work, what dreams do we make come true, and also, how are we dealing with the nightmares of our clients. So that was really at the basis of banking.

Seth Adler: And you really wanted to ... You mentioned that at the beginning of this interview, which is at the present, that is what it's all about. And so it sounds like when you first started with the company, you really just wanted to know, okay, where does the rubber meet the road? What are we doing?

Bart van de Sande: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Seth Adler: What did you notice about the customer experience then that is oh so different now?

Bart van de Sande: I think that customers then were much more dependent on their banks because there were only a few banks. I think customer behavior has changed somewhat. They're more critical because, also in the Netherlands, we have companies like Amazon.com and you name them all that you order at 11 o'clock in the night and the day after it, it's at your doormat. And those kinds of client experiences weren't there yet, so I think customers became more critical.

Seth Adler: We had the financial crisis, of course, obviously, where confidence dropped ...

Bart van de Sande: Very low.

Seth Adler: In the whole financial sector. So now six or seven years later, we have to work really hard to regain the confidence of our clients, that they are attracted to us, that they will promote us as their banks because otherwise, there will be ... I think the competition isn't there from all the banks, the competition will be there from new Fintech players, or maybe Apple, Google, or other companies.

Bart van de Sande: Who knows.

Seth Adler: Who knows. Who will take a piece of the financial services cake. So in short, customers are more critical because they also have more choices and therefore we as a financial sector have to work really hard.

Seth Adler: Which brings us to automation, right?

Bart van de Sande: Yes. Yeah.

Seth Adler: We have to work harder, we have to work smarter, we have to work much much more quickly. So where are you on your RPA, maybe even AI, journey?

Bart van de Sande: I think a little bit more holistic because RPA and AI are just two more instruments, and there are several instruments. Process mining, data analytics, RDA, a very simple solution instead of RPA, but really quick.

Seth Adler: Sure, desktop as opposed to process.

Bart van de Sande: Exactly, yeah. So just to name a few. And I think AMRO Operations ... No, let me first start at AMRO as a whole. We were just recognized, and there's only one server, but we were recognized as the most innovative company in the Netherlands, also compared to other sections and branches, so that's really cool.

Seth Adler: What do you think that was due to?

Bart van de Sande: That was due to lessons learned from the things I just mentioned.

Seth Adler: Okay.

Bart van de Sande: Looking at our clients ... I won't repeat it. Financial crisis and so on and so on. Critical view on banks. So I think we're a lot more humble and a lot more client-focused, client-centric, and see what solutions fit best to the clients and not talking about a bank, but talking about clients.

Seth Adler: Understanding that you have an entourage of solutions that you're employing to ensure that the customer's having a better experience. What would you say as far as RPA and AI specifically? Is there anything specific, understanding that you need to employ a number of different tools with those two tools that is giving you particular results of which you're fond.

Bart van de Sande: Let me give an example on the RPA side, what worked really good. We have a really good partner at Kofax. I didn't know that they were here. I just talked to them. But we choose for them based on experimenting with different parties. And that's the key success in that entourage, as you call it, and that set of tools that we have. We experiment a lot with a lot of different parties, a lot of different techniques, and see, hey, this is the client journey, here is the pain of the client, what tool do I need and what is the best tool in the market? And that is what we put in place then.

So again, I have to repeat myself, there's not one tool or one set. It's the mindset and it's the way of working and doing it very fast and experiment a lot. And again, a behavior thing. Our people, our IT people, but also our people in the field should be, at the one end, confident that it is not a risk or a threat digitalizing, and on the other hand, they shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes experimenting with the new techniques.

Seth Adler: You did mention one tool, though, and I wonder what have been the results that you can share that were immediate that you noticed. If we mention one tool, let's mention the results from that one tool. What were they?

Bart van de Sande: RPA, we're very happy about. Again, it's a good partnership with Kofax. We have now like 40 robots alive within AMRO Bank on 40 huge client processes. And in those client processes, 90 percent of all the repetitive handheld tasks are removed by the robots.

Seth Adler: Amazing.

Bart van de Sande: So let's be transparent, that's a cost perspective, but it's also an improvement in risk perspective. So much less mistakes, and therefore also, beneficiary for the client, and we are much faster, so the client also benefits in that field.

Seth Adler: Better, faster, cheaper.

Bart van de Sande: Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Seth Adler: Amazing. I've got three final questions for you.

Bart van de Sande: Okay.

Seth Adler: I'll tell you what they are, and then I'll ask you them in order. What has most surprised you at work? What has most surprised you in life? And then on the soundtrack of your life, one track, one song that's gotta be on there.

So first things first. What has most surprised you at work?

Bart van de Sande: The flexibility of people to change.

Seth Adler: What has most surprised you in life?

Bart van de Sande: That I found such a beautiful wife. I'm really over ...

Seth Adler: You're batting over your average, I think is what we say in the US.

Bart van de Sande: Exactly, that's what I'm looking for, yeah.

Seth Adler: On the soundtrack of your life, one track, one song that's gotta be on there?

Bart van de Sande: There's so many great songs, but it should be some nice house track. I think Tiesto, the whole set of Tiesto 1999 will be on my funeral.

Seth Adler: There you go! I know the artist, as I'll call him, I don't know the music. So I'll have to trust you.

Bart van de Sande: Okay.

Seth Adler: Bart, I very much appreciate your time.

Bart van de Sande: Thank you very much.

Seth Adler: And there you have Bart van de Sande. We have really cool stuff like RPA and AI, but transformation starts with your people being passionate about serving your clients. Pretty straightforward stuff from Bart. Very much appreciate his time, very much appreciate yours. Stay tuned.


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