PeopleShores partnership

PeopleShores of Clarkdale took two big steps Friday on its journey to bring the Silicon Valley to the Mississippi Delta.

PeopleShores announced the opening of its new Robotic Process Automation Center for Excellence in collaboration with Automation Anywhere and that one of their first clients will be Mississippi’s own Horne CPA.

The announcement was made in front a room packed with more than 300 people from San Jose, Calif.; Houston, Texas; New York City; and of course, Clarksdale.

“By providing access to RPA (Robotic Process Automation) training, PeopleShores associates from a range of educational, ethnic and social backgrounds are empowered to expand their skills,” said Murali Vullaganti, founder of PeopleShores. “(This will) improve income thresholds and transfer that knowledge to organizations looking to automate end-to-end business processes to improve business productivity.”

PeopleShores and Automation Anywhere will basically create software that allows businesses to computerize processes that are normally done manually.

Horne Marketing Director Bruce Walt said Horne CPA has been amazed at what PeopleShores and Automation Anywhere are doing to improve performance and accuracy in business processes.

“Let me explain,” said Walt. “We had a payroll process that took one person four hours a month to enter and complete. It is now done in 10-seconds.”

And Horne said as business advisors, they plan to tell their clients about PeopleShores and how RPA can save them both money and time.

RPA is a technology that uses software robots or “bots” that work side-by-side with human workers to automate repetitive, mundane business tasks, freeing up employees to focus on more strategic work.

“Intelligent automation isn’t just about efficiency – at the core, its impact is human,” said Mihir Shukla, co-founder and CEO or Automation Anywhere. “Automation Anywhere is helping to bridge Silicon Valley with the Mississippi Delta and break the generational cycle of poverty in one of the nation’s poorest regions.

The RPA Center, at PeopleShores’ 1540 Desoto Avenue location, will serve as a research, design and development base for RPA and is expected to generate hundreds of high-value, high tech-enabled jobs in the Delta.

"The RPA Center of Excellence is the first of its kind in this part of the United States,” said Jon Levingston, Executive Director of the Economic Development Authority of Coahoma County. “The fact that these outstanding companies chose Clarksdale, in the Mississippi Delta, is a testament to their belief in our labor force.”

Levingston said while these new partnerships and companies will provide jobs is a priority, they will change the economic climate in the Delta.

“The educational opportunities, combined with the work opportunities, represent a breakthrough in the effort to stop depopulation and create more financial sustainability for families living in our communities,” Levingston explained. “We could not be more grateful to Mihir Shukla and Neeti Mehta of Automation Anywhere, Murali Vullaganti of PeopleShores and Joey Havens of the Horne Group, for providing a chance for families to break the generational cycles of poverty that have plagued families in this region for almost two centuries."

PeopleShores, a leader in impact sourcing, opened their Clarksdale operations in March 2019 with support from local, state and federal agencies and has now expanded the program to retrain associates to deliver RPA services to businesses.

The program anticipates training 200 associates from across the region.