The software robot as Internal Auditor: automating SOX controls with RPA.
Approximately 500 hours of time saved
per year
Hogere frequentie en
100% foutloze controles
Daily dozens of checks
in more than 15 ICT systems
Darling Ingredients is an American publicly traded company, with European headquarters in the Netherlands. Because of its listing, Darling must comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, also known as SOX. Among other things, this obligation means that Darling must be able to demonstrate that its financial reports are reliable. This requires intensive and time-consuming internal controls, the so-called SOX controls. RPA is proving to be an effective tool here.
Automating IT Application Controls (ITAC).
Darling and Tacstone Technology started robotizing IT Application Controls (ITAC) in 2020. The goal was to extensively automate the intensive and time-consuming controls on employee access rights to applications.
In a short time, we succeeded in developing the desired robot script, testing it and putting it into production. Meanwhile, the software robot in question now checks all access rights daily, prepares a report and shares this report with the Internal Audit department. This Internal Audit department has actually gained a new employee. A virtual employee. You could also call it the Internal Auditor 2.0.
The benefits of the new way of working are great. First of all, the software robot saves hundreds of hours per year because the auditors now no longer have to perform these checks manually. They can now spend this time on other important tasks. But there is more. The software robot can perform the necessary checks much more frequently than was previously done. With the same ease, as often as they want. Moreover, the checks are now guaranteed to be performed and reported 100% error-free. An important step forward with a view to SOX compliance.
RPA as a full part of company-wide IT strategy
Darling had experienced the power of UiPath in-house after the RPA pilot. And the success of the first application tasted like more. The conviction grew that RPA could be a full-fledged part of company-wide IT strategy. RPA should no longer be seen as “just” a tool to automate repetitive tasks, but also as a driver for future innovation. By investing in RPA, Darling is also already anticipating the potential applications of Artificial Intelligence.
“With entrepreneurship as one of our core values, we continuously look for opportunities to take advantage of new technologies and anticipate on trends and innovations in order to improve our services and strengthen our competitive position.”
Bart-Jan van Beckhoven | IT Director International
Toward an in-house RPA Center of Excellence
In Tacstone Technology, Darling found a knowledge partner that could go far beyond just building good robot scripts. For example, Tacstone provided support in setting up an internal RPA Center of Excellence (RPA COE). Together, the parties also did the setup of the RPA development and production environment including the installation and management of UiPath software.
Tacstone also trained a number of Darling’s internal employees in various roles such as RPA Developer, UiPath Orchestrator Administrator and RPA Business Analyst.
The growing collaboration between Tacstone Technology and Darling Ingredients further focused on developing knowledge and expertise within the RPA COE. For example, all relevant procedures and standards have now been established for the documentation, development and management of robots.
RPA: spread the word!
More than 70% of organizations begin their RPA journey within the Finance & Accounting department (UiPath, 2018), and then continue to scale up to other departments. However, this was not the case for Darling. Here, the RPA journey began in the Compliance & Security department. Why? Here were many opportunities for RPA. Think of checking a provision for bad debt allowance, obsolete stock or FX rates. No longer monthly in retrospect, but proactively on a daily basis. This allows deviations to be followed up immediately, instead of correcting afterwards.
Using the success story of the Compliance & Security department as a springboard, the RPA COE set to work proclaiming the ‘RPA gospel’ to other business units. Together with Tacstone, inspiration sessions were organized for management and employees. Not only in the Netherlands, but also in Brazil, Poland, Germany and Belgium. The enthusiasm was great and ideas for new applications emerged everywhere. And so RPA began to spread through the company like an oil slick.
“We see many opportunities for RPA in different areas of our business. At the same time, successfully scaling up RPA is quite a challenge. With our own RPA COE, we now have for central place where RPA knowledge and standards are managed. This allows us to roll out RPA step by step to the different regions. We often use appealing demo videos to show the potential of RPA. And we are always looking for local ambassadors who can put RPA well on the map in our organization.”
Niels Engelberts | RPA project leader at Darling Ingredients
As RPA scaled up, it became increasingly important to manage the development pipeline well. Here, too, the UiPath platform offered a solution. With UiPath Automation Hub, all robot ideas submitted are now conveniently gathered, organized, validated and prioritized.
Co-creation with RPA Developers from Darling
Darling Ingredients has been successful to date in building its own knowledge and expertise. There are several employees in the Application Improvements department who have become proficient in UiPath’s RPA software. Their knowledge of the applications and processes within Darling and their UiPath skills are an effective combination to successfully develop new applications.
“Darling Ingredients is a great example of how we are successfully working together from a co-creation model to explore, establish and scale up RPA.”
Ebert Knol | Senior Implementation Lead at Tacstone
And now onward!
The collaboration with Tacstone Technology has now made Darling largely self-sufficient in many aspects of RPA. Process qualification, development and management: the knowledge and competencies as well as the enthusiasm and persuasiveness needed to take the next steps have been secured within the organization.
“RPA is more than just time savings. We want to free our employees from the dull, repetitive work. So they have more time available for interesting and exciting tasks. With RPA we can also easily increase the frequency of execution of certain processes. This is especially helpful for some of the SOX controls. And last but not least, RPA is very scalable. After automating a SOX control for one company, we could easily scale this to run in more entities worldwide.”
Wendy van Soelen | Manager Compliance & Security
Is this the end of the cooperation between Tacstone Technology and Darling Ingredients? No, certainly not. Tacstone remains the knowledge partner that Darling can fall back on for new developments. Tacstone will also provide capacity on request, for example to develop extra robot scripts temporarily for a certain period of time.
More about Darling Ingredients
With more than 10,000 employees, 200+ locations in 15 different countries and sales of $3.57 billion (2020), Darling Ingredients is a global player in the field of sustainable, natural ingredients. For example, Darling develops and produces edible and inedible bio-foods, bio-fuel and nutritions. Darling Ingredients’ customers are in the pharmaceutical, food, pet food, feed, industrial, fuel, bioenergy and fertilizer industries.