How Inelo built an automation culture that transformed efficiency

Across Europe’s transport and logistics industry, efficiency is everything. Every record, activity, task, and settlement fuels the daily operations of thousands of drivers and companies. And as Inelo continued to expand, the scale of its work grew rapidly, and with it came a clear opportunity to rethink how teams operated.

Repetitive manual tasks had long been part of the company’s daily rhythm, but they were beginning to limit how quickly teams could deliver value and support customers. For Paulina Wołowiec, Process Director and the driving force behind automation at Inelo, it was the moment to consider a new approach.

The solution, she believed, started not with technology, but with mindset—with changing how people thought about improvement, growth, and the role automation could play in the future of their work.

“We needed a new way of working,” she explains. “Not to replace people, but to free them from repetitive tasks and help all of us think differently about how work gets done. To me, the mindset is the most important part of the automation journey.” With this philosophy at the center, Inelo set out to reimagine its operational model.

Building the foundations for scale

The first step in Inelo’s automation journey wasn’t choosing technology—it was understanding reality. Paulina Wołowiec, Process Director, and her team began by measuring real working time, mapping every step of their processes, and calculating the true cost of the company’s most repetitive tasks. These insights became the foundation for an automation roadmap grounded in data.

Wołowiec recalls, “We looked at everything.” They quickly learned that large portions of staff time were spent on repetitive, structured tasks—so the team turned to automation.

UiPath was clearly the best technology on the market for what we needed. And they didn’t just give us the platform—they connected us with Office Samurai, the best local partner who could guide us and support us from day one.

Paulina Wołowiec • Process Director at Inelo

The team selected a simple but high-impact process as their starting point: data processing for client messages and emails—the handling of driver files, documents, and structured inputs that fed into Inelo’s settlement and analysis systems.

It was rule-based, repetitive, and represented a large volume of daily work—making it an ideal starting point. The process became a proving ground, allowing the team to learn quickly, refine their approach, and measure value over time. Today, the results speak for themselves: six years of robot operations have saved 26,534 hours of manual work.

More importantly, people felt the difference immediately. As Wołowiec explains, “This was all done without replacing anyone—we wanted to show to everyone how work could be done faster and without human error.”

Success gave Inelo the foundation to scale automation strategically across the business. But even with early success, the road ahead still demanded resilience, patience, and a willingness to challenge old habits.

Creating the right mindset

As automations expanded, Wołowiec encountered the same challenges seen across many growing organizations: uncertainty, misconceptions about automation, and hesitation from employees who feared that robots might replace their roles.

Some managers were initially convinced their processes were already optimized. Some employees were worried about job security. But rather than treating these concerns as resistance, Paulina Wołowiec saw them as an opportunity to reinforce the most important part of the journey: mindset.

Through workshops, discovery sessions, and ongoing communication, she began reshaping how teams and senior managers saw automation. She demonstrated the before-and-after impact of each solution, shared results openly, and showed how robots removed repetitive tasks so employees could focus on more ambitious work.

When people understand why automation exists and how it helps them, everything changes. Now, we have employees coming up to me asking ‘maybe we can automate this next?’ It’s all very exciting!

Paulina Wołowiec • Process Director at Inelo

Over time, teams even gave the robots traditional Polish names, such as Robert and Samurai—a small detail that strengthened connection and understanding, simply positioning the bots as supportive colleagues, not threats.

Today, that mindset shift is one of Inelo’s greatest achievements. Efficiency rises each year not because of automation alone, but because employees now think proactively about how automation can improve their work—and feel empowered to help shape that future.

Unlocking impact at scale

Today, UiPath robots support some of Inelo’s most essential operational processes. From over 74 million driver and vehicle activity days automatically imported to more than 980,000 driver records settled by robots, Inelo’s automation program consistently handles large volumes of customer requests and company data with accuracy and consistency.

Financially, the impact is equally significant, with robots now delivering a return on investment within five to twelve months, while generating an average monthly benefit of around 190,000 PLN. As Paulina Wołowiec explains,

The results showed our people that automation was something that made their work easier and the company stronger.

Paulina Wołowiec • Process Director at Inelo

Nothing demonstrates this better than Inelo’s largest automation: driver settlement. It involves interpreting raw driver activity data, categorizing it according to legal requirements, calculating pay, preparing documents, and ensuring everything is delivered to clients on time. “Before automation, this process required so many manual steps. It was precise work, but it was also repetitive and time-consuming,” Paulina notes.

Today, thirteen UiPath robots run 24/7 to support the process end to end. They import and validate data, transfer information between systems, classify activities, prepare settlement files, and send the completed documents to customers seamlessly.

As Paulina Wołowiec adds, “Our people quickly saw that robots weren’t taking work away but were giving them time back to instead speak to customers or work on more complex cases.”

The success has strengthened the belief inside the organization that automation is a trusted partner—one that supports people, helps them excel in their roles, and sets the stage for even more ambitious innovation. With continued support from Office Samurai, Inelo is now positioned to expand automation even further.

Shaping the future at Inelo

With a mature automation foundation in place, Inelo is now preparing for the next phase of its digital evolution. The company has already introduced AI into customer interactions, using intelligent models to support chat responses and enhance the quality and consistency of communication. But the vision extends far beyond this.

For Wołowiec, the future lies in expanding automation deeper into the likes of data interpretation, customer request handling, and cross-system workflows—areas where intelligent decision making can unlock even greater gains. “AI will help us move faster and support our teams in ways that robots alone cannot,” she explains. “But we need to use it thoughtfully, safely, and in a way that always protects our clients.”

In the meantime, Inelo is focused on strengthening its capabilities, expanding automation across the wider Eurowag Group, and continuing to shift mindsets at every level of the organization, all while refining processes with UiPath and Office Samurai. Workshops with managers and teams are already underway to help identify automation opportunities and understand how digital tools can transform their operations.

That mindset also shapes her advice for organizations at the beginning of their automation journeys. She states, “Measure the real working time. Look at what people actually do. Only then can you understand where automation will help the most.”

Equally important, Wołowiec emphasizes the human side of the journey.

Share the results. Show the before and after. And explain that robots remove tasks—not jobs. When people understand that, they will help in creating that positive culture around automation. When the mindset is right, everything else becomes possible.

Paulina Wołowiec • Process Director at Inelo

As Inelo looks to the future, this mindset—open, curious, and committed to improvement—is what will guide the company into the next era of intelligent automation. Inelo is proving that when technology and people move forward together, transformation becomes clear and full of possibility.