Volkswagen Financial Services: Automation that Works Alongside with People

How do you build an automation program that grows year after year, rather than losing momentum after the initial enthusiasm?

Only 3% of organizations that launch an RPA program manage to scale beyond the first pilot projects. The remaining 97% stop there: they start with enthusiasm, automate a handful of isolated processes, and then lose momentum. The challenge facing Volkswagen Financial Services Italia was therefore far from simple: operations spanning heterogeneous systems, including core banking platforms, leasing systems and external portals, alongside high-volume, business-critical processes ranging from credit management to accounting. Workloads also peaked around periodic closings and seasonal campaigns, while financial tables were still being compiled manually every month by an external provider.

The question driving the project was not “How many activities can we automate?” but “How do we build something that keeps growing beyond the initial enthusiasm?” The goal was to establish a program capable of evolving for years without ever taking control of critical decisions away from people. Today, around 40 automations are part of daily operations, within a program recently renewed for a further three years.

From Individual Use Cases to a Structural Capability

A continuous delivery model turned new automation opportunities into a governed, measurable and incremental journey.

The starting point was a complex organization, with distributed processes and an application ecosystem comprising legacy core systems, leasing platforms, external portals and tools specific to different business functions.

The program began with an initial three-year contract, establishing not a one-off intervention, but a continuous delivery model. New use cases are identified through regular business reviews, assessed jointly with the client in terms of benefits and risks, and then developed on UiPath according to shared security and testing standards.

Security and governance have been built in from day one: robot accounts and credentials are protected through CyberArk, while each automation is monitored through dashboards that calculate ROI in real time. The platform, initially deployed on-premises, was migrated to the cloud without any service interruption.

The clearest sign of the model’s success came when the initial contract expired: Volkswagen Financial Services renewed for a further three years, not simply to develop new automations, but also to receive consulting support to improve and redesign processes before automating them. At the same time, the company sought robust governance for its now-mature Digital Workforce.

Greater operational capacity, without increasing manual workload

More than 150,000 hours saved demonstrate how a digital workforce can free up time and capacity for work that genuinely requires people.

Only 3% of organizations launching RPA initiatives manage to scale beyond a handful of isolated use cases. Most remain stuck with promising pilots that never evolve into a structured business asset. At the same time, the most effective models do not aim to remove people from the process. Instead, they combine automation for repetitive tasks with human judgment for exceptions and relationship management. Organizations that eliminate human oversight altogether experience lower accuracy and less trust in the results.

In this context, the value of automation lies not simply in the number of tasks automated, but in the ability to redesign how people and technology work together. Repetitive, rule-based activities can be delegated to technology, while people continue to oversee decisions, handle exceptions, manage customer relationships and address situations requiring experience and judgment. In the financial services sector, where traceability, security and control are essential, this balance becomes an integral part of the operating model.

This is why organizations need to move from a project-based approach to a continuous automation strategy. The Volkswagen Financial Services journey demonstrates what happens when an automation program is built to last, with people remaining at the center of process governance.

Key Enhancements

Continuous automation program

Digital workforce governance

Cloud migration

A roadmap designed to scale

Why Most RPA Programs Never Make It Beyond the Pilot Stage

The challenge is no longer proving that automation works, but scaling it while maintaining control, continuity, and value for people.

Only 3% of organizations launching RPA initiatives manage to scale them beyond a handful of isolated use cases. Most remain stuck with promising pilots that never become a structured business asset. At the same time, the most effective models do not aim to remove people from the process. Instead, they combine automation for repetitive tasks with human judgment for exceptions and relationship-driven activities. Organizations that eliminate human oversight altogether experience lower accuracy and less trust in the results.

In this context, the value of automation lies not simply in the number of tasks automated, but in the ability to redesign how people and technology work together. Repetitive, rule-based activities can be delegated to technology, while people continue to oversee decisions, exceptions, customer relationships, and situations requiring experience and judgment. In the financial services sector, where traceability, security, and control are essential, this balance becomes an integral part of the operating model.

This is why organizations need to move from a project-based approach to a continuous automation strategy. The Volkswagen Financial Services journey demonstrates what happens when a program is built to last, with people remaining firmly at the center of process governance.

Volkswagen Financial Services: Automation that Works Alongside with People

How do you build an automation program that grows year after year, rather than losing momentum after the initial enthusiasm?

150,000+

hours of work reinvested in higher-value activities

27

FTEs freed up in 2025 alone

5x

growth in the volume of new commercial offers generated