Automation is becoming a prevalent theme at businesses, as more organizations look to employ computing resources and software rather than, or in addition to, people to handle repetitive tasks or other work requiring a high level of consistency.

For example, some companies in the financial industry are now beginning to leverage robotic automation so call center agents don’t have to navigate through various screens. Instead, the system can be automated to pop up the screens and information these agents require as they need them, explained Dinesh Venugopal, president of digital and strategic customers at IT services giant Mphasis, a company with nearly $1 billion in revenue and 24,000 employees worldwide.

Mphasis can work with clients to assess their processes, look for patterns, see what things can be automated, and then help them do that. By automating processes businesses stand to save on costs, allow for a higher level of responsiveness, and lessen the opportunity for mistakes.

It’s not one-click ordering that makes Amazon great, noted Venugopal, it’s all that happens behind the scenes to enable that. This model could be applied to the financial services industry, he said, to allow for faster loan approvals, as just one example.

Robotic automation, he added, can also be used for more complex, process-level work. For example, Mphasis offers a compliance automation solution that can be used to lessen the frequency of false positives in anti money laundering applications, he said.

Claims processing is yet another example of where robotic automatic is being employed, said Venugopal. Using this technology, he said, Mphasis was able to reduce the number of people it needed for claims processing from 400 to 220.

While the artificial intelligence and other technology required for doing this kind of thing have existed for some time now, Venugopal said, what’s important here is that Mphasis, which has both domain knowledge and technology knowledge, is making it real for the financial services industry.

In the case of claims processing, for example, Mphasis looked at the entire claims process and how it was being done. It mapped the various processes within the larger process and identified what parts could be eliminated. The processes and factors that were considered included everything from the number of keystrokes and their purpose, to the data required, to information about when managers need to be brought into the process, and more.

Mphasis, which was founded in 1998, is the company that Blackstone in April acquired the 60 percent stake of from EDS (News - Alert) for $1.1 billion. It was the largest single investment Blackstone has made in an Indian company.