From complexity to clarity: How Deluxe uses intelligent automation to drive operational efficiency

In a business landscape that demands fast adoption to stay relevant, operational efficiency isn’t just a competitive advantage, but a strategic necessity. Businesses operate in a market defined by speed, scale and customer expectations for seamless experiences, particularly in the rapidly evolving fintech realm. Delivering on those expectations while managing cost, compliance and complexity requires an efficient internal engine.

For Deluxe Chief of Operations Garry Capers, streamlining operations through intelligent automation is the name of the game. As part of a larger north star initiative, Capers’ goal for his team has been enabling them to work smarter in service of themselves and their customers.

“A big goal [for us in 2024] was literally: How can simplify how we do work?” Capers shared in a recent interview, emphasizing how crucial automation and AI opportunities are to that goal. “Intelligent automation helps enable our organization to forgo having to put effort towards low-value work, redirecting [efforts] to the type of work that actually creates value.”

This drive to simplify and optimize has powered ongoing internal transformation at Deluxe, backed by technology partnerships, process overhauls and a clear commitment to delivering on both customer and employee needs.

Intelligent efficiency, undeniable influence

Efficiency directly translates into agility. A recent Bain & Company study on automation leaders found that companies with highly automated operations are consistently seeing higher cost savings than their counterparts. This is notably evident in the financial services industry where median cost-savings are 4 times higher.

And it’s not just about cost savings, either. According to McKinsey & Company, organizations that fully integrate AI into operations can see productivity gains of up to 40 percent. Those high performers are leading the charge, powered by faster decision making and greater agility.

Inside Deluxe, streamlining is more than an exercise in efficiency. It’s about realigning internal focus toward high-value work.

“We spent quite a bit of time [with our teams] building comfort, confidence and credibility using [automation] for back-office functions, exploring where we could help reduce backlogs of work, eliminate manual effort and improve customer experience,” Capers shared.

Automation in action: Deluxe streamlines developer pipelines

Part of the overall strategy shift at Deluxe is in the organization’s way of thinking, moving from a product-centric mindset to a solution-oriented approach.

“If a customer needs a solution, typically they're not buying in advance of needing it,” Capers shared. “They're buying it because they need it now. How can we help meet those requirements quickly and accurately the first time?”

And as Capers notes, the goal is to reduce friction, not just for the external customer but also for internal teams who deliver and support those solutions. For example, Deluxe recently partnered with Harness.io, a software delivery platform, to accelerate pipelines, improve change management and reduce deployment time for internal product developers.

“A good developer experience ensures we deliver quality products,” shared Satish Balasubramanian, Head of Architecture and Shared Services at Deluxe, “which in turn ensures the end-customer gets the best experience.”

As Deluxe has grown in part due to acquisition, many of the software development practices needed standardization and centralized governance. “We also wanted something that would help us across all stages of the software delivery process, starting from coding to continuous integration and deployment," Balasubramanian noted.

Through this partnership, the technology team at Deluxe was able to use automated continuous delivery to drive scalability without sacrificing safety, enabling cross-functional collaboration between the development and operations teams.

The results were impressive: Project onboarding that originally took five to ten days now can be completed in mere minutes. This free time allows developers more room to be creative, to experiment and to explore bigger ideas. Security was also strengthened with all development teams following centralized policies for greater consistency of compliance.

Using bots to remove data barriers behind the scenes

A driving philosophy for Capers and his team is that technology should be an enabler, not a threat.

“I think people have built a level of concern and skepticism that this [technology] is intended to replace people,” he explained. “I continue to tell people that [automation and AI are] actually there to make you better. It’s there to make it easier to do your jobs and elevate you in a way where you can spend more time on the things that are more complex.”

This philosophy was realized in a recent data-consolidation project done in partnership with UiPath, an agentic AI company. By using generative AI, internal teams at Deluxe have trained bots to simplify internal pricing workflows—an area notorious for manual effort and cross-functional complexity.

By using generative AI to extract data from hundreds of documents and synthesize insights, these have drastically reduced turnaround time for pricing updates, resulting in enhanced speed-to-market for pricing models, increased data accuracy and decision confidence and significant reduction in manual processing time. These improvements directly impact the customer experience, ensuring that pricing conversations are faster, more responsive and more personalized.

“We’ve gotten much more intelligent in how we need to use data: in how we think about what others in the market are doing or in establishing and leveraging benchmarks to achieve better outcomes for ourselves,” Capers said.

Building muscle for the future

Streamlined workflows, cost savings and more secure practices are all beneficial results of operational transformation. But at Deluxe, the goal of integrating intelligent technology is to build long-term capabilities.

“There is always a financial target, but through this process of building operational efficiency we start to build muscle,” Capers shared. “We now know how to seek opportunities for enhancement and can drive those opportunities throughout the organization.”

By collapsing silos and embedding operational thinking into customer experience, Deluxe is creating a flywheel of innovation that benefits everyone. And that momentum isn’t slowing down. As Capers puts it, “We are very well positioned. I’m proud of everything that has been accomplished—and even more excited about what’s ahead.”