Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has passed the tipping point for broad enterprise adoption, entering the mainstream as organization continue to turbocharge digital transformation in the wake of COVID-19, according to the industry’s most comprehensive RPA impact report from Automation Anywhere, which culled data from more than 4,000 customers and surveyed hundreds of technology executives from Global 2000 and Fortune 500 firms.
Now & Next: State of RPA, which provides must read industry data, and explores the present-day impact of RPA and future-looking predictions, uncovered that intelligent automation is growing in popularity, with the majority of companies (63%) surveyed, already deploying RPA or actively scaling, as businesses bolster resiliency in an uncertain climate.
According to the survey, conducted by Enterprise Technology Research (ETR), organizations that either deploy or are planning RPA initiatives said that increasing productivity was their top objective, and an overwhelming majority (78%) have already realized those gains. Where more than 100 bots were deployed, enterprises said they were more likely to achieve their goals. After productivity, moving the workforce to more innovative, higher-value work and cutting costs were the second and third-most popular reasons for deploying RPA. However, among those customers who have deployed RPA over a period of time, the pandemic was the primary reason for increased adoption.
In addition, Automation Anywhere data from the third quarter in 2020 shows that 67% of new customers opted for cloud-RPA due to the speed of deployment and flexibility it provides as remote work remains in effect in many organizations.
“The ETR survey and our own customer analysis uncovered barriers to RPA adoption, such as IT infrastructure requirements and limited expertise. This is why customers are turning to the cloud for answers,” said Mihir Shukla, CEO and Co-Founder, Automation Anywhere. “Fueled by the global pandemic, cloud has become the platform of choice for RPA deployments, lessening the burden on IT resources and providing better security, reliability,  and a lower TCO than on-premise solutions.”
Looking forward, over half (57%) of organizations expect to invest more in RPA and intelligent automation to increase employee productivity and improve the customer experience, with the number of bots projected to double in the next 12 months.
“At Salesforce, it’s important that our employees focus on creative work and innovation instead of manual, routine business tasks,” said Wing Yu, Senior Vice President of Business Technology at Salesforce. “That’s where bots come in. Working with Automation Anywhere we’ve now already saved over 40,000 hours. As we move forward, we plan to enable the entire company with automation solutions that deliver value, reduce errors and increase productivity.”
The Now & Next: State of RPA report combines Automation Anywhere customer data with survey results to bring insights, best practices, trends, and recommendations for organizations currently deploying or planning to deploy RPA and AI.
