According to Gartner, the amount of money spent on business automation software will surpass $2.9 billion in 2022. This will represent a 20% increase when compared to 2020. The robotic software market is growing twice as fast as other types of software markets and with good reason. Businesses are seeking to increase their level of automation because they see that as the solution to help them attain true operation efficiency.
RPA vendors are improving their offerings so that there are more sophisticated solutions to cater to complex business needs. With more money going into research and marketing of RPA solutions, here are notable trends for 2022.
Spending On RPA Solutions will Spend
The total spending by companies on RPA solutions will continue to increase. According to a Gartner survey, 80% of companies plan to increase their automation spending this year and in the future. Some of the outcomes businesses would like to see from RPA include growth in revenue, innovation, and the discovery of new business opportunities. Systems such as intelligent document processing have the capacity to speed up businesses while artificial intelligence can unlock new insights for decision-makers in the country. Global e-commerce giant Amazon is already deploying automation to fulfill deliveries to customers.
Adoption of Managed RPA
Complexity has been a major hindrance of the adoption of automation. Small and medium-sized businesses may not have the resources to employ engineers to help build, recommend, or even supervise RPA solutions. RPA vendors have ingeniously begun offering managed RPA services to make it more accessible for smaller businesses to benefit from automation. These solutions are packaged and priced in a manner that businesses can budget for and procure sustainably. This will further increase the number of businesses that are applying RPA in their workflow.
More deployment of Robots
There will more instances of physical robots being deployed to carry out repetitive work in place of humans. In warehouses, robots can scan boxes more efficiently than humans or transfer items from one location to the next without suffering fatigue. Robots have also been deployed to replace humans and eliminate the sanitation problem in food processing. There will be cases of robots being now deployed to address the problem of a lack of enough workers and where manual labor is simply too expensive.
Mining New Process
While technology may be available, businesses must answer the question of where best to apply such technology in their workflow. RPA vendors have now built tools that can intelligently uncover a business’ most ideal processes for automation. These tools help unlock knowledge on how automating one process will affect others. This leads to optimal decision-making.
This heavy reliance on such tools is often called hyper automation. The business reaches a stage where its processes are largely automated. Decisions come from empirical evidence whose collection and analysis is itself automated.
Wider Use of Automation Assistants to Increase Productivity
One major problem that costs workers productivity is having to toggle through applications on their computers. Automation assistants help to set up triggers for events across multiple apps. For instance, each time a sale occurs, you could capture information on an Excel sheet, and send communication automatically to a relevant party. We have likened such automation to an assembly line which significantly improved the productivity of factory workers in the 20th century.
RPA companies are working hard to build out-of-the-box automation solutions that do not require coding or machine learning expertise to interact with. Think about robotic solutions that you can trigger through voice commands or the press of a button to implement a particular command. The complexity conundrum is an issue that’s top on the list of research problems in automation.
Intelligent Automation
We associate automation with repetitive processes that require very little mental effort. However, in the coming years, automation will achieve far more complex results. Currently, RPA relies heavily on rule-based decisions. With artificial intelligence, businesses will do such things as reading emails and crafting answers to customers’ questions. Banks have automated the approval or denial of loans based on available data on creditworthiness. We can only hold our breaths and wait to see what the next years hold.
Creation of New Jobs.
While robots may lead to the elimination of some human jobs, the adoption of RPA will unlock new job frontiers. In fact, The World Economic Forum estimates that 58 million jobs will emerge globally from RPA adoption. These jobs will see humans working in concert with bots to verify output and perform tasks that require critical thinking and emotional intelligence. Indeed some workers will require to reskill and companies might have to invest in the retraining of their workforce for future jobs.
Preparing for RPA Projects
Many RPA projects fall before even being fully implemented and audits have led to the identification of several reasons. While business leaders can cite specific expected results, there may not be a strategy behind the automation project. The solution is to have a list of achievable objectives backed by measurable KPIs. In addition, for every problem where RPA is a proposed solution, the business should consider whether simpler alternatives are available. Finally, on strategy, the business should have a clear plan regarding the scaling of RPA.
RPA projects also require clear assignment of responsibility within the company. It should be clear who is reporting to the board on the achievements, challenges, and failures of automation projects. The lack of ownership is likely to lead to the wastage of company resources on failing projects. Finally, when the business is not relying on managed RPA projects, it must ensure that it has people with the requisite skills to implement and supervise the project.
Our Expertise
Transcendent Software is a leading IT services company that helps business clients understand RPA technology and implement them in their operations. Our team works with clients to identify business cases for RPA deployment. We ensure smooth integration of RPA solutions with other business processes in a scalable manner. Reach out to u for a free consultation on RPA solutions for your business.