Second row from left: HNB Project Manager Process Re-Engineering Munaf Afzal, POTENZA Associate Intelligent Automation Prathiba Fonseka, HNB Head of Business Transformation Christopher Thuraisingham, POTENZA Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer Dhanusha Muthukumarana, HNB Deputy General Manager - Chief Human Resource Officer/Chief Transformation Officer L. Chiranthi Cooray, Deputy General Manager Wholesale Banking Group Damith Pallewatte, HNB Head of Trade and Financial Institutions Rozanne de Almeida, HNB Manager Business Development - Trade Shyam De silva, HNB Head of IT PMO Nadun Gomes
Frist row from left: HNB Trainee Bank Associate Yohani Abeygunawardena, POTENZA Associate Intelligent Automation Krusthiga Murali, POTENZA Business Analyst Poshene Sivaruban and HNB Project Manager Business Transformation Nuwanka Perera

POTENZA, the Sri Lanka-based global business technology consultancy group, recently announced a landmark partnership with Hatton National Bank (HNB), as its official implementation partner, to facilitate and support the bank on its journey of robotic process automation. 

As a first step, POTENZA is managing the implementation of HNB’s ‘SWIFT Messages Extraction and Integration’ process, which is a critical process for HNB’s import/export trade transactions.

A pioneer in RPA, POTENZA first introduced the technology to Sri Lanka in 2018. Since then, it has established itself as the premier RPA consultancy in Sri Lanka, with a global footprint, including supporting organisations with the most comprehensive software bot pool in Sri Lanka. Worldwide, POTENZA has automated more than 60 process chains with unattended automation across a variety of industries in nine countries. 

Announcing the partnership, POTENZA (Private) Limited MD/CEO Dhanusha Muthukumarana said, “We are very pleased to announce this partnership with one of Sri Lanka’s most respected financial institutions. We look forward to supporting HNB on its RPA journey. As many commercial and industrial processes are repetitive, RPA can then reduce human intervention in these processes while increasing efficiency and reducing both errors and costs. This in turn helps to provide better, more seamless services to customers. Most importantly, it allows for companies to better distribute and utilise their human capital, allocating people to positions that actually need human intervention, which is also often much more fulfilling and engaging for people. Thus, RPA creates a win-win situation for businesses, customers and employees, while also pushing commerce and industry towards Industry 4.0, which is the future.”

In terms of quantifiable results, POTENZA’s first implementation of RPA at HNB has resulted in an increase in productivity by approximately 68 percent whilst also improving accuracy.

Commenting on the benefits of the implementation, HNB Chief Human Resources Officer/Chief Transformation Officer L. Chiranthi Cooray said, “RPA implementation enables the automation of repetitive processes, which are ubiquitous in banks. The implementation at the Trade department has increased the bandwidth of the staff through efficiency gains, thus enabling them to carry out more value adding activities to serve the bank’s trade customers.”