Undressing Robotic Process Automation

by Eveline Oehrlich, Research Director Research In Action 

If you do not know much about Robotic Process Automation (RPA) you should quickly read up about it. One thing is for sure, it is a segment which has enjoyed tremendous growth since I have been covering enterprise software. Organizations worldwide are continually looking to identify processes that can be automated to accelerate productivity. Digital workers and robots are going to be essential to eliminate some of the existing skill gaps while at the same time improve the productivity and quality of work. RPA alleviates human workers of their mundane and repetitive daily tasks by processing workflow much quicker and subsequently more efficiently. The nice side effect is that RPA technologies can reduce the impact of the costs by automating the processes that were done manually and allows the shift of those people who have done this manual work towards more creative or value add tasks.

While some organizations are still thinking about leveraging RPA within their businesses, others have already made significant investments in adopting unattended and attended RPA bots. Use cases vary across numerous business areas and business processes. The financial services and telecom industries are just two examples where RPA is leveraged across processes such as claims processing, policy servicing and other customer facing work.

Let’s undress a few of the key market trends which will accelerating RPA adoption.

• Disruptive value is being recognized. Claims of savings in labor and with it in costs of more than 60{9388bcb60c6488a42b9434699bbf55e32510a7f2522b97b882e05d0ad226590f} over humans and the reduction of errors, as the tasks or processes are automated, accelerates the adoption of this disruptive technology. Enterprise leaders across all functional areas are recognizing the value of RPA and all vendors have experienced solid growth. Decreased cycle times and process risks coupled with rapid profitability increase are key benefits of RPA.
• AI within RPA is becoming more advanced. Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and the continuous development of processing increasingly complex data allows for the emulation of human level decision making. Some vendors are receiving funding to accelerate their development in these areas.
• Employee resistance to adopt RPA can be overcome. A significant amount of organizations is still hesitant with adopting RPA within business or IT functions due to employee resistance as the introduction of RPA will bring changes to employees and their responsibilities. An initial path starting and automating small and highly manual processes proofing quick wins will be needed to build momentum with key stakeholders and employees to overcome resistance. Most vendors offer free versions allowing for proof-of-concepts and current per-bot licensing models make it possible to invest into RPA one bot at the time.
• Training, services and support will become more important over time. RPA does not interfere with existing system of records or business applications and therefore does not require a lot of integration work. However, to leverage RPA software, individuals and teams must be trained so that deployment and implementation are meeting the expectations. To implement RPA typically involves “citizen developer” (a term first coined in 2018) which are individuals who are very close to the enterprise’s operations and can determine the best use cases to leverage RPA software. These citizen developers must be trained and equipped with skills and capabilities to implement successful RPA projects.
• Center of Excellence (COE) for Robotic Process Automation are essential. Furthermore, citizen developers, IT oversight, security, mobile app development, other team members and topic owners should assemble into COEs to accelerate the path to innovation. This team should own the RPA lifecycle and the ongoing expansion and maintenance. Without such a COE, there might be a disconnect between the different teams in IT and business personnel regarding the level of concern over for example security and governance. RPA control rooms or management consoles which support such COEs are necessary.

If some of you think these robots are taking away your jobs that is partially right but it is more like that these RPA bots are allowing you to work on more meaningful work. There are many vendors out there which have excellent RPA solutions and most all of them offer free trials to experience them. So, go ahead and check them out and enjoy your journey.

For more detailed findings on the vendor landscape, I invite you to download the recent research report covering vendors in the RPA space here: http://researchinaction.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/RIA-VSM-RPA-2020-WWW.pdf

Greetings

Eveline Oehrlich