products processed in 1 hour
of processing time instead of 4 months
data accuracy
Babybots LLC is an automation service provider (based in Houston, Texas), that develops, deploys, and maintains automated bots across companies of all sizes. Their goal is to reduce human time spent on tasks that are repetitive and rule based, allowing their clients to focus on the bigger picture of growing their business.
Their journey initially started from automating small tasks that made a big difference for a self-run ecommerce store. Immediately seeing the value it brought in day-to-day operations, the decision was made to bring this technology to others. After experiencing a number of small successes in automating tasks for other ecommerce players, the immediate problems regarding lack of infrastructure to manage and monitor the automations was noted as a limiting factor for scaling.
That is when Babybots partnered with Robocorp. Our Cloud and Control Room provides them with the infrastructure they need to manage and scale as the business grows. Not only does our product enable them to optimize their bots for scale, they can also access real-time insights into how much human time is actually being saved - all in a single pane of glass!
One of Babybots’ first clients—a commercial appliance repair company—was looking to revamp their supply chain through automating the import of products to their store on a monthly basis. This included everything from the initial upload of 130k+ products to a consistent feed of updated pricing/quantity each month. This wasn't a type of RPA request Babybots had encountered. This is a fresh case for RPA, as they hadn't found another way to efficiently meet this need.
Babybots’ approach was to assess the feasibility of what they were looking for, identify any bottlenecks prior to kickoff, and construct the bots in a manner that they can rely on monthly for consistent inventory feeds.
They built a total of five bots that handle the pulling, formatting, and aggregation of 130K+ products, utilizing Robocorp for infrastructure, with a mix of Python and RPA Framework for programming. Each product had roughly six to ten data points, ranging from the price/inventory level, to user manuals and store location as well. Babybots was able to cut down the runtime substantially, e.g., some of the bots could pull over 60k+ products within an hour.
Rather than spending the time and retaining the technical staff to operate the bot on a regular basis, the client elected to opt into Babybots’ Robot as a Service model (RaaS). With this model, Babybots not only manages the bots on the client’s behalf but runs them as well. On the first of every month, the client will receive a new sheet containing the most up-to-date inventory/pricing for their store. All the client needs to do is upload the details to their webstore.
One of the main challenges Babybots faced was lowering the scrape time. The initial buildout took days to run. But, through careful optimization of the process they were able to gather all desired results in just a matter of hours.
From signing the Statement of Work to implementation, the project lasted a total of 5 weeks. As this was one of Babybots’ first projects utilizing the Robocorp platform, they had questions on where to start and how to ensure everything is set up properly. The Robocorp team was very helpful throughout the process, including the Robocorp Slack community.
Now, thanks to the automation, Babybots’ client has more product availability in one centralized location than all their competitors. They have also minimized the chance of making any customer unhappy, as now they will be able to accurately view what's in stock and what isn't - No more overselling! This also enables them to be more dynamic with their pricing to accommodate for market value changes.
It would not have been possible to achieve these benefits without automation. Babybot’s client estimates that just the initial product data load would have taken one person at least 4 months to complete if they were inputting manually and then it would be a full-time job to keep up with the monthly updates.
It takes the robot roughly 4-6 hours to complete the entirety of this job. So, the time savings are real but the true benefits are the new revenue opportunities and business models the client can explore as a result of the automation.