Ignitis turbocharges automation with agents

Ignitis Group’s automation journey started in 2017 when it built its first robot. This unleashed the technology, increasing efficiency and lowering costs. As a result, customers get greater value while the company can work faster towards its goal of transitioning to green energy. Today, Ignitis has 355 processes managed by 45 robots. This frees up the equivalent of 200 people’s time, allowing employees to focus on higher value activities. Two Centers of Excellence (CoEs) oversee their management. One is in the company’s shared services center. The other is part of ESO, an Ignitis brand responsible for energy distribution.

UiPath partner and AI automation specialist, Office Samurai, has helped Ignitis explore and implement UiPath Agentic Automation, giving advice and training to use the technology. Importantly, customers are noticing the impact. For example, one automation manages a document management process for installing a solar power plant for prosumers. These are customers who both consume Ignitis’ energy and produce it through solar panels. Previously, it took three days for the process to run its course. The automation reduced this significantly. Customer satisfaction increased as a result. Other high-profile automations include one that revolutionized a simple accounting process. Another handled customer emails. Agentic AI has since turbocharged the second of these.

Agents enter the picture

Previously, Ignitis used RPA to group emails into general topics. This reduced the workload of customer service teams by the equivalent of 1.2 people’s time. But staff still had to read the emails to understand them and forward them to the right person for a response.

Daiva Gaudutė, head of process automation solutions, has supercharged the automation with agentic AI using UiPath Agent Builder.

We’ve introduced an agent to the process. The existing robot extracts the information from each email. Then the agent reads and understands its contents. This lets a second robot put the email in the right category.

Daiva Gaudutė · Head of Process Automation Solutions at Ignitis Group

This agent is still being tested. It will handle about 1,000 emails each month and help reduce the time it takes to answer customer questions. And employees have been incredibly receptive. Customer support specialists will be able to focus on more important work. This includes migrating to new systems or improving processes to become even faster. “There’s been a lot of positivity about not having to wade through so many emails before being able to act on them,” Gaudutė says.

Legal agents at work

But this isn’t the only agent at work for Ignitis. Another is helping the legal team sort through the many new rules and laws that the government passes. Every day, the company’s regulatory experts had to monitor two public websites that published documents on 26 different areas of law.

One team member had to spend two to three hours a day picking out the files that would be relevant to departments across the business. For example, if legislators enacted a new labor law, it would need to go to the HR team. This ensures compliance and reduces risk.

An old Macro automation existed to distribute the documents. This was based on a list of people who had to keep up with legal changes in the company. But this left the bulk of the work in the hands of the legal team. They still had to find and read all the materials before putting them in groups for the automation to send. It was dull, laborious work.

This prompted Gaudutė to act. “We reviewed the process and reinvented it. We created a SharePoint where people could subscribe to get the legal updates they needed. With this in place, a robot could monitor the websites where legislation is published. It extracts the information daily and passes it to an agent. The agent reads the document, understanding which legal area it belongs to. It then puts it in the right category. Once done, a second robot distributes the document to the correct people based on legal area subscription on the SharePoint.”

The agent reads 1,500 documents each month, categorizing them into one of 26 relevant areas of law and routing them to Ignitis Group employees responsible for those areas. The agentic automation solution achieved an excellent accuracy score of around 93%. The agent saves the legal team 60 hours a month. This is a small start considering the size of Ignitis. However, it’s a huge leap forward for the business.

We’ve proven that an agent can read information, understand it and then act. The technology has proven itself in a very safe context, using public data rather than confidential.” This opens the door to agents across the entire company.

Daiva Gaudutė · Head of Process Automation Solutions at Ignitis Group

An agentic future

Gaudutė thinks that the introduction of agents will start a new age of automaton. What was once a vision will now become a reality. Her team has a target of introducing five agents in 2026 and is well on the way to achieving that goal.

As the CoE gets more experience, it will speed up the process. And there’s no shortage of ideas. Employees can submit requests via a self-service system. An automation analyst reviews these. They think about if the workflow is right before deciding if robots and agents should be used. They do this based on how much money or time they could save and the complexity of the automation. Enterprise architects and cybersecurity specialists also provide input.

Finding her tribe

2026 will also see the two CoEs come together into one super CoE. Within it, there will be a team of AI experts who will use the technology in the business. Gaudutė calls it the AI tribe. A place where she can collaborate with like-minded colleagues to fully realize the potential of agents.

Advice for agentic explorers

When asked how others can follow in Ignitis’ footsteps, Gaudutė says people should start small and focus on creating fast, tangible value. Choose simple, repetitive processes to improve and then augment with an agent.

It's important to look at your existing automations to add agents. Robots can do tasks, but agents can see their environment, think about it, and ask questions. This lets them plan and do things to reach their goals.

Daiva Gaudutė · Head of Process Automation Solutions at Ignitis Group

She also makes it clear that time spent on governance is vital. With rules in place about how to manage automation and agents, it’s easier to learn, iterate and improve. With this approach, Ignitis has gone from a single robot to a whole team. With the introduction of agents, Ignitis Process Automation Solutions team, supported by Office Samurai, has supercharged them. And it’s only going to get faster.