SoPA IT Student Presents at Automation Conference

With robotic process automation (RPA) set to drive the next great business revolution, SoPA information technology major Jennifer Coursey stands at the forefront of coming changes. Coursey, a senior who is also an employee in the university’s Office of Human Resources, presented in early December at the “Intelligent Automation Week New Orleans” conference. Her presentation focused on building a case for RPA with key business partners, as well as how to generate curiosity, excitement, and innovative thinking to help drive change.

“For our payroll team, I created a bot (an automated program to execute repetitive tasks) that performs data clean-up work. On average, a clerk could process one transaction in about 60 seconds (assuming no interruptions or blocks occur). Due to the manual data entry process, and the volume of records to be cleaned up, there were typically thousands of records in the queue at any given time,” Coursey said.

Her problem-solving “bot” grew out of adjunct instructor Andy Quick’s RPA course. Quick is the director of automation for Entergy, the Fortune 500 utility company based in New Orleans.

“I am incredibly fortunate to have learned from him. Not only did I leave my first class bursting with ideas for using RPA, as my final assignment, I built the bot that solved a significant pain point for the payroll team,” Coursey said. During the conference, she also participated in a panel discussion on developing and promoting women in the field of intelligent automation.

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