Direcional Engenharia Migrated 160 Automations to Python, Accelerating Performance
A construction firm with 43 years in the market and a leader in the Minha Casa Minha Vida program (a Brazilian government initiative for affordable housing), overcame automation challenges to achieve scale and governance in RPA.
Reduction in Time for Completing Accounting Processes
Reduction in Accounting Process Time
Reduction in Execution Time for Unattended Automations
1st Place in INTEC’s Ranking of the 100 Largest Construction Companies in Brazil
Direcional Engenharia is a leading construction and development firm with a 32-year history. Established in Belo Horizonte in 1981, the company is publicly traded on BM&FBovespa. Direcional has delivered and/or developed over 80,000 units, operates in 10 Brazilian states, and employs more than 14,000 people. Catering to all income levels, Direcional has focused on expanding its presence in underdeveloped markets and large-scale projects. Currently, Direcional is constructing the largest residential development in the country, with 8,895 units in Manaus, AM.
Automated Processes
Residential Tax Payment Processing
Accounting processes
Government Certification Management
CO2 Emission Calculation for Compensation
Challenge: Frequent Robot Failures
As the demand for automations grew, the company faced a high volume of repetitive tasks. To address this, they initially deployed 160 robots over a two-year period using a low-code platform, Automation Anywhere.
However, leadership was concerned about the scalability and governance of these automations due to the high cost of licenses. Additionally, they encountered monitoring issues, with business areas reporting frequent failures of automations. These challenges indicated that the situation could become an even more significant bottleneck.
“We realized that our complete dependence on the previous platform was causing disorganized growth and robots couldn’t be stopped due to their essential role. The team itself started pushing for us to migrate to Python.
Gustavo Naider, Tech Lead at Direcional
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Solution: Evaluation and Transition for Better Governance
Prompted by the development team, Direcional successfully migrated 160 low-code automations to Python in under 6 months, significantly reducing the reliance on expensive high-code licenses. This shift not only enhanced the team’s efficiency but also made it easier to recruit as it is easier to find Python developers than those specialized in specific low-code platforms.
Leveraging Python’s extensive libraries for diverse use cases streamlined the transition complemented by the use of BotCity for implementing and orchestrating proprietary automations.
“With our automations in Python and orchestrated by BotCity, we’re not tied to any specific vendor. The robots are ours. The faster execution and the freedom to scale as needed are key advantages. The orchestrator provides us with complete governance, showing who executed the automation, who edited it, and what is causing any bottlenecks.”
Gustavo Naider
The response to the migration was highly positive: for instance, accounting processes that previously took 3 to 4 days to complete with Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere are now done in just one day. By converting attended robots to unattended ones, Direcional also observed a remarkable improvement in performance. For example, an unattended operation that used to take 12 minutes was reduced to just 1 minute, freeing up more resources on VMs and decreasing resource consumption.
Gustavo Naider
Technical Lead at Direcional
