The Levi Strauss & Co. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Center of Excellence (COE) team set out to automate 20,000 hours of tedious work by the end of 2022. And today, we’re proud to share that the team surpassed that goal by nearly 5,000 hours with 45 in-house bots.
These bots alleviate the burden of monotonous tasks like data entry and data validation, and ultimately allow employees to spend time on more analytical work. From IT and merchandising to distribution and logistics, the RPA COE team has worked with functions across the organization and throughout the globe to help balance workloads and improve efficiency and accuracy.
“In late 2021 and early 2022, I embarked on a mission to educate LS&Co. about the power of automation, and I think with the results of 2022, we have proven the benefit. Now it is a question of how far we can go,” said Stacie Clarkson, senior director of Process Transformation and Global Business Services Governance, and lead of the RPA COE. “We’ve created automation ambassadors across the company, and beating our internal goal by nearly 5,000 hours is proof that there are major benefits our workforce can take advantage of. We have even more work underway and plan to automate at least 45,000 hours of work by the end of 2023. It’s been a busy yet very rewarding year.”
Our global product development team was among the many functions that tapped into the RPA COE services in 2022. The Levi’s® brand is a full head-to-toe lifestyle brand that offers staples like fresh graphic tees each season. Normally, the product development team would be responsible for combing through thousands of graphic tee product codes and cross-referencing them in our digital asset management tool, ensuing all the information and visuals were accurate and included in the briefs before sending to our manufacturing partners — a task that would take hours.
The RPA COE team, in partnership with the product development team, developed a bot that would vet and validate the thousands of product briefs and flag those that needed some form of reconciliation like accurate file types or missing visual links. The team could now focus on fixing the problems rather than searching for the problems.
“With the bot developed by our RPA team, our team is saving nearly 450 hours a year, and we’re able to be much more efficient and effective in our validation process,” said Jonathan Hsieh, manager of product development. “While I’m somewhat tech savvy, I never thought I’d be working on an automation project like this. It’s already sparked so many other ideas and has me wondering what other projects could benefit from a bot.”
The RPA COE team has quickly become a proven asset to LS&Co., and the team is eager to continue the momentum into 2023. With digital transformation being a key strategic area for the company, this is just one way the company is embedding technology throughout everything it does and arming employees with the right technology to drive transformational change.
“This year, the company turns 170 years old, and it’s investments like RPA that will drive us forward for another 170 years,” said Harmit Singh, chief financial officer. “What the RPA team has accomplished in the past year is truly remarkable, and their work is having a significant impact on the organization. I am so proud of the team for a successful year and thank them for all they have done and continue to do to make LS&Co. a stronger company.”
