First RPA Center of Excellence to Bring Hundreds of New Jobs to Mississippi Delta

Automation Anywhere and PeopleShores to reskill 200 workers in RPA, AI in underserved region

The Economic Development Authority of Coahoma County announced the official opening today of the first RPA Center of Excellence (CoE) dedicated to bringing more than 200 jobs to the region by retraining and upskilling workers through a collaboration with Automation Anywhere, a global leader in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and PeopleShores, a Public Benefit Corporation.

The announcement, to an audience of more than 200 state, regional, and local leaders, who joined top executives of Automation Anywhere and PeopleShores from California’s Silicon Valley, was made at the  inauguration of the Automation Anywhere/PeopleShores RPA Center of Excellence.

The RPA Center will serve as a research, design and development base for RPA and is expected to generate hundreds of high-value, tech-enabled jobs in the Mississippi Delta. Clarksdale, as well as many communities in rural America, has suffered depopulation in recent years resulting in economic stress felt throughout the community. The significant number of new job and educational opportunities in Clarksdale created by the Center is expected to have a transformative economic impact on the lives of its citizens.

In a related development, Horne CPA Group, a certified public accounting and business advisory firm with clients across the southeastern United States, announced that they will offer RPA services produced by PeopleShores to their client base, leveraging the new RPA CoE. This announcement underscores the success PeopleShores has had in developing a skilled workforce in Clarksdale, as well as the trust and confidence they have engendered to clients across the region.

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Automation Anywhere combines RPA, artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics to help organizations automate repetitive, mundane business processes, while freeing up existing employees to focus on more strategic tasks. This results in businesses having more time to improve customer engagement, innovate and accelerate digital transformation.

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 associates are trained through Automation Anywhere University (AAU), which has certified more than 90,000 people globally in RPA.  The program in Clarksdale anticipates training 200 associates from across the region.

Mihir Shukla, co-founder and CEO of Automation Anywhere, said: 
“As a leader in RPA, we have helped thousands of organizations drive end-to-end business efficiency. But at the core, the impact of this technology is human, and the foundation of our company is about empowering people. We are steadfast in our commitment to provide RPA training to help  break the generational cycle of poverty in Coahoma County, and believe we can change the blueprint for how government and the private sector approaches employment challenges by providing new career paths that align with the kinds of skills companies require today.”

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Murali Vullaganti, founder of PeopleShores, said:
“By providing access to RPA training, PeopleShores associates from a range of educational, ethnic and social backgrounds are empowered to expand their skills, improve income thresholds and transfer that knowledge to organizations looking to automate end-to-end business processes to improve business productivity. Through our partnership with Automation Anywhere and regional leaders, we are training associates to become bot developers in as little as six months.”

Jon Levingston, executive director of the Economic Development Authority of Coahoma County, said:
“The RPA Center of Excellence is the first of its kind in this part of the United States. The fact that these outstanding companies chose Clarksdale, in the Mississippi Delta, is a testament to their belief in our labor force. The educational opportunities, combined with the work opportunities, represents a breakthrough in the effort to stop depopulation and create more financial sustainability for families living in our communities. 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.”

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