Back office ops · Production

H&R Block combats extreme seasonal workflow fluctuations with SS&C Blue Prism digital workers on AWS

The problem

H&R Block's extreme tax-season seasonality required hiring, training, and releasing 60,000 temporary workers each year for critical back-office operations, a cycle described as heavy and inefficient that could not cost-effectively scale with an on-premise infrastructure.

First attempt

An initial on-premise deployment of digital workers managed by H&R Block's IT team on virtual machines created inconsistencies in how digital workers were onboarded, prompting a move to a fully managed cloud environment.

Workflow diagram · grounded in source
1
Tax season workload spike
trigger
“each year, the company scales its workforce to 5x to handle the demands of tax season”
2
AWS auto-scales digital workers
integration
“With AWS' ability to auto-scale, digital workers are made more flexible and cost-effective, avoiding the purchase and upkeep of costly equipment and utilization of scarce IT resources”
3
Lease renewal processing
ai_action
“Corporate accountants manually delete the old lease and then type in the new lease conditions line-by-line — which takes an average of 45 minutes. Digital workers are now tasked with relieving accountants from this manual, repetitive wor…”
4
Tax course communications
ai_action
“H&R Block operates an Income Tax Course in all 50 states in the U.S. to help train and prepare individuals to become certified H&R Block tax professionals. Last year the company had over 47,000 people enroll in an income tax course acros…”
5
Accounting task automation
ai_action
“They spent $500,000 each year for the vendor to complete work like journal entries, travel and expense reporting, and reconciliations. H&R Block's Intelligent Automation team saw an opportunity and deployed digital workers to take over t…”
6
Peak season scale-down
output
“easily scale capacity down once the workload drops off after tax season”
Reported outcome

Digital workers achieved a 99.9% reduction in average handling time for lease renewals, saved over $100,000 in labor for the Income Tax Course, and eliminated a $500,000 annual outsourced accounting contract by automating over 75% of transactional processing.

Reported metrics
Lease renewal average handling time reduction99.9%
Manual lease renewal time45 minutes
Digital worker lease completion timefour seconds
Income Tax Course labor cost savingsover $100,000
Show all 8 reported metrics
lease renewal average handling time reduction99.9%
manual lease renewal time45 minutes
digital worker lease completion timefour seconds
Income Tax Course labor cost savingsover $100,000
annual outsourced accounting vendor spend$500,000
accounting labor savings from automationsaving a half-million dollars
transactional processing work automatedover 75%
tax season workforce scale5x
Reported stack
SS&C Blue PrismARIA CloudAWSINVOKE
Source
https://www.blueprism.com/resources/case-studies/h-r-block-combats-extreme-workflow-fluctuations-with-intelligent-automation-on-amazon-web-services/
Read source ↗

Frequently asked questions

What did this team achieve with this AI workflow?

Digital workers achieved a 99.9% reduction in average handling time for lease renewals, saved over $100,000 in labor for the Income Tax Course, and eliminated a $500,000 annual outsourced accounting contract by automa…

What tools did this team use?

SS&C Blue Prism, ARIA Cloud, AWS, INVOKE.

What results were reported?

Lease renewal average handling time reduction: 99.9%; Manual lease renewal time: 45 minutes; Digital worker lease completion time: four seconds; Income Tax Course labor cost savings: over $100,000 (source-reported, not independently verified).

What failed first in this deployment?

An initial on-premise deployment of digital workers managed by H&R Block's IT team on virtual machines created inconsistencies in how digital workers were onboarded, prompting a move to a fully managed cloud environment.

How is this back office ops AI workflow structured?

Tax season workload spike → AWS auto-scales digital workers → Lease renewal processing → Tax course communications → Accounting task automation → Peak season scale-down.