Romanian Red Cross, UiPath automate reporting of vital support for Ukrainian refugees

Romanian-born business automation company UiPath recently announced that it has supported the Romanian Red Cross (RRC) in digitizing and automating the reporting of donations collected by the organization for the benefit of Ukrainian refugees in Romania.

The war in Ukraine has created the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II, laying stress on the Red Cross’ staff and digital infrastructure, which is designed to sustain an annual, centralized reporting cycle. The organization’s Bucharest headquarters struggled to obtain reliable data fast from its 47 regional centers collecting donations in support of Ukrainian refugees in Romania. This hampered the RRC’s external reporting capabilities, such as regularly sharing an overview of the donations collected with the Romanian Department for Emergency Situations (DSU), an agency coordinating emergency responses, as part of the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

At the height of the humanitarian crisis, the Romanian Red Cross turned to the UiPath Business Automation Platform. The project – initiated as a mission-critical response to the deepening humanitarian crisis – has enabled the RRC to become more agile and efficient and has empowered its leadership with real-time access to vital data, including how funds donated are being used in their response.

“As the humanitarian crisis deepened, the Romanian Red Cross joined in the first line of response in supporting Ukrainian refugees in Romania,” said RRC Director Ioan-Silviu Lefter. “We needed to provide insight to the Romanian authorities on the donations and help we were providing to Ukrainian refugees. At the outset, we were faced with a lot of manual reporting, which impacted data accuracy and availability. The UiPath Business Automation Platform allowed us to focus on what matters most: providing vital support for millions of refugees.”

To move from manual reporting to an automated and streamlined process, the RRC was supported by a team of UiPath citizen developers to map, streamline, and ready the reporting process for automation.

The first software robot deployed at RRC was tasked with generating reporting templates for each of the 47 regional RRC centers at regular intervals, while ensuring that they correspond to the global reporting needs of the RRC. A second software robot was trained to collect reports from each regional center and centralize the data in one master report. The software robots have significantly reduced the amount of manual input and have allowed RRC to dedicate attention to supporting those affected by the humanitarian crisis.

After deploying UiPath, RRC staff was able to source reliable data at speed, supporting the organization’s internal and external reporting needs, enabling decision-making processes, and enhancing its fundraising capabilities. The RRC also reported increased data accuracy and reliability, fast access to consolidated data to support decision-making, enhanced transparency and credibility of data, and better measurement and visibility over volunteers’ time.