Howie Lau (NCS)
NCS is moving ahead with plans to create a dedicated automation practice in partnership with UiPath, housing more than 250 employees with the aim of enhancing digital services offerings across the region.
Under the banner of NCS UiPath Automation Practice, the Diamond Business Partner will seek to build automation solutions on the UiPath platform to enhance its NEXT services capabilities -- which operates as the provider’s dedicated digital transformation services arm.
The practice will house more than 250 employees with a focus on process discovery and automation testing, supported by the delivery of fully automated enterprise-grade solutions. To accelerate such plans, NCS also aims to up-skill and certify its UiPath practitioners within the next three years in addition to “deploying hundreds” of automations within the organisation.
“The convergence of 5G, IoT [Internet of Things], and artificial intelligence [AI] has created new business opportunities for enterprises and consumers,” said Howie Lau, managing partner of Corporate Development and Partnerships at NCS. “To fully capitalise on this, enterprises need to improve the performance, flexibility, and reliability of their technology.”
According to Lau, the solutions will allow organisations to leverage automation to "transform digitally, improve operational efficiencies and optimise for emerging technologies". Meanwhile for consumers, increased automation will aim to improve the speed and accuracy of processes including enabling effective on-boarding for new customers and broader self-service options.
“NCS is investing in developing intelligent and automated operating models to deliver rich customer experiences and drive high-impact employee engagement,” Lau added. “Through our partnership with UiPath, we are reimagining and simplifying internal processes by integrating automation into our business units and products to offer our clients more intelligent and elevated services for the digital age.”
From a customer standpoint, the practice will target both public and private enterprises from industries such as telecommunications, government and financial services, with a specific focus on high growth markets in Singapore and Australia.
“NCS is a proven leader in digital services and as an early adopter of automation, it has a sophisticated knowledge base to redefine how its customers and partners are shaping the future,” noted Rick Harshman, senior vice president and managing director of Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) at UiPath.
“Asia Pacific is a rapidly evolving market with potential for tremendous growth for automation-first organisations. UiPath shares NCS’ vision for human-centric, sustainable automation adoption, democratising access to technology that improves the world around us.”
The launch comes less than a month after NCS made its fourth acquisition within the space of 15 months in Australia by snapping up Arq Group in a A$290 million deal designed to strengthen digital capabilities and services offerings.
Headquartered in Melbourne -- with offices also in Sydney and Brisbane -- Arq goes to market as a cloud, digital, data and analytics solutions provider and will attempt to provide the Singtel-owned business scale in the local market.
