Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance uses Power Automate to boost employee training efficiency

Sally Shi, , 25 सितम्बर 2020

We are very happy to share an exciting Power Automate story from Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance that was published recently! Earlier this year, Aioi Nissay also participated in the Microsoft Business Applications Summit (MBAS), where they talked about their Power Platform journey, and how they leveraged Power Automate and its Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capabilities called UI Flows to accelerate digital transformation across the company.

Click this link to watch their MBAS session: https://aka.ms/MBAS/AioiNissay

Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance: Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance is one of Asia’s largest insurance companies, offering a wide range of insurance services to 2.4 million individuals and businesses around the world. The company’s guiding principle is Kaizen – a Japanese concept of continuous improvement. With this principle, Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance has encouraged its employees to help drive company-wide digital transformation, automate paper-based workflows, and improve their own business processes using low-code development tools in Microsoft Power Platform.

In order to accelerate the innovations, Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance created an in-person training certification program to upskill the company’s citizen developers. However, the company soon encountered critical challenges to scale up the training: those employees away from headquarter could not receive the training easily due to travel and expenses; sessions were limited and less inclusive to those who cannot be away from their primary job.

By using Power Automate and Power Apps, the business strategy team built an automated e-learning portal to help streamline the processes, broaden training access, and reduce cost. Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance is on track to boost citizen developer certifications by 350% and reduce training costs by USD1.4 million by 2022, transforming its company culture to foster a more proactive, innovation-driven employee mindset.

Read the full story at: https://aka.ms/PowerAutomateStory/AioiNissay

E-learning portal solution and how Power Automate helped: with e-learning portal, employees can remotely access training content and assessments on-demand, and earn certification for model-driven app development with Microsoft Power Platform. Power Automate is used to create training environments and Common Data Service databases automatically once employees have registered for the training. Users can work at their own pace to view the training content, complete all the assignments in the training environment, and take the exams. Power Automate assesses the test results and send result notifications to the trainees through automated emails.

A sequence from left to right: 1. Apply for training. Employees. Apply for training from Power Apps, 2. Prepare Training Environment. Power Automate. Each trainee is automatically assigned with Dynamics 365 training environment. 3. Receive training and tests. Employees. Work on self-paced learning from ebooks and video courses. Try out Dynamics 365 and complete final assignment. 4. Automated testing results sharing. Power Automate. Test app developed by trainee and send email notification for test results. 5. Check results. Management. Check on test results. — *Figure1: Training flow diagram*

Power Automate flows and UI flows used in the e-learning portal solution:

Flow 1: Create new environment and CDS database

A flow is triggered by an HTTP action. The flow includes an action to create an environment, create a CDS database, and ends with a response. — *Figure 2: Power Apps triggers this flow to create a new environment and CDS database upon registration.*

Flow 2: Assign training environments using UI Flow

An HTTP action triggers the flow. The flow executes a UI flow with an input for a date and ID. Then it ends by sending a response with the Training URL. — *Figure 3: When the user starts the training, pressing the “OK” button triggers the UI flow that opens up Microsoft Edge and then fills in the log information.*

Flow 3: Assess test results and send email notification

A screenshot of a flow triggered by an action in the Common Data Service. A condition checks for a pass. If so, there are three additional actions from Common Data Service that execute. After that, an action for a UI flow updates the results. Then there is an action that updates CDS again before an action for sending an email. — Figure 4: Once a test from the training module is completed, this UI flow will be triggered to scan and assess if a user has passed the test. If so, it will update the company portal and send an email to notify the user about their test results.

Inside UI Flows for Windows

A screenshot of a UI flow that includes actions for 1) launching Notepad++, 2) sending keys, 3) posting element, 4) left clicking, 5) sending additional keys, 6) left click, 7) send keys. — *Figure 5: This UI flow opens Text Editor app, edits/appends HTML file to add newly certified citizen developer, and overwrites & saves the HTML file*

By transforming the training program with Power Automate flows and RPA capabilities, Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance is on track to achieve its program goals of increasing citizen developer certifications and reducing its training costs. It has also inspired the employees with an innovation-driven mindset, and provided catalyst to accelerate the digital transformation across the company.