RPA transformation as a sign of positive changes in business

RPA is a tool to increase business performance

Today software robots become legitimate employees and even the most skeptical persons get used to them. Leading companies have already adopted RPA solutions.

One of the first engineers who was working on developing the prototype of RPA technology was IBM programmer Arthur Samuel. In the 1950s he designed a 'smart checkers game' with allows playing with artificial intelligence and machine learning that later become a foundation for RPA, a program which imitates human's actions.

Since 2017, digital revolution is sweeping the globe and leads to a growing demand for software robots. Over 1 000 pilot projects were implemented in Russia by the beginning of 2018, but only large enterprises were buying licenses.

Companies that are well-equipped with IT-solutions were the first to implement RPA technology. The leaders were oil and gas and metallurgy industries, telecom, finance sector, banks and retail. Today, SME is adopting software robots.

Concerns about robots' ROI and efficiency and employees' worries of losing jobs have disappeared quite fast. It is known that RPA can replace people in some cases, but robots are mostly useful in applying for monotonous and manual work.

The key idea behind RPA is to streamline processes and decrease routine tasks. This includes data migration, reporting, training of new and current workers, system integration, primary documentation, etc. RPA helps to avoid inefficient solutions and make employees' more productive.

For the past few years the implementing of RPA technology rose sharply. At least the pandemic times make companies more motivated to automate processes, mostly the routine ones.

Gartner has recently reported that expenses on RPA software will reach $1.89 billion in 2021 and will even grow twice in the foreseeable future. Earlier Deloitte analytics predicted RPA will get overall recognition in business by the 2023. What for expenses on RPA software they will increase up to 20% in 2022.


RPA market and its key players

Long-term leaders of the market remain the big four of vendors. Thus, UiPath is an absolute leader in profit share and number of sold licenses, next there is Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism and NICE.

First developments of innovative startups appeared on the Russian market in 2018. Today we can name about 30 companies which produce RPA platforms. Let's look at the most relevant among them. See tab.1.

As software vendors have already covered IT-function, they are turning to finance executives and department heads and integrate RPA with different systems. Robots' involvement in business processes grows steadily.

Implementing of RPA

Of course, choosing RPA customer guides business case, clearly aware of the necessity of RPA introduction. Then customer should evaluate a scale of deployment, number of successfully completed projects, expanded features of a platform, technical support availability, level of product localization and platform's ranking.

Now we do not see any Russian RPA-platforms in foreign ratings and reports. But this is clear that market is growing and recent versions of robots will soon be able to perform more complex tasks, integrating with other up-to-date tools and expand the list of covered business processes.

Deloitte study shows an interesting tendency in a way of implementing RPA in Russia: local companies prefer to plan and carry out such projects by their own efforts, while worldwide statistics show that only 15% of respondents have this approach.

RPA projects can be run by in-house IT-department or external providers. It is important to evaluate pros and cons of all ways of implementation on early stages of the project, because alongside investments in platform there are training costs, technical requirements, etc.

At NFP, the process or robotization takes several stages. First, we perform audit and formalize business processes. This is a task for analytics integrator, which visits customer's office to evaluate the scope of work and outline the project. There is another possible scenario when customer sends video with a description of a certain process to integrator.

After that we can assess the benefit of RPA implementation. This includes the profit for company, ROI measures, how much we can save in the first year and later, personnel productivity rates, etc.

Experts develop a plan to install software robots, select the most suitable platform for given business and adjust robot for specific tasks. Then it is necessary to check RPA on errors, test and train employees so they could understand how to interact with software robot.

Ultimate stage is a pilot project release and solution scaling. Often customer decides to create an RPA Center of Competence (RPA CoE), where employees are trained to work with the program. Center merges workers with a will to become skilled, advanced and more competent in high technologies and as a result train newcomers. In general, with a help of a leader or mentor alongside a support from management, it is possible to organize a center of competence on your own without turning to consultants.

Deadlines of robotization project depend on current situation in a company. It takes from two or three weeks to several months to embed RPA, but projects in large enterprises last for years.


Top RPA trends in 2021

Currently, actual performance of the processes already run in the enterprises and its reassessment are of a greater importance than their initial implementation. According to Alex Day, senior vice-president of Signavio, it is not about RPA and its potential growth in 2021, but how to assess the effectiveness of RPA initiatives.

RPA leverage in finance, and accounting departments is wide. It is a starting point for an enterprise to adopt automation, because most computer operations there are repetitive, for example, invoice processing. So they are suitable candidates for RPA.

HR function is also broads its opportunities as RPA allows turning personnel recruitment, adaptation and training to a higher technological level.

RPA is great in working with other smart technologies. It fully integrates with systems and processes and also shows deeper integration and alignment with additional technologies such as process mining, AI, machine learning and computer vision.

RPA is not a cognitive technology, but it has a potential to become 'smarter'. Let's consider a simple example of an RPA bot, which is adjusted to copy data from one source and put it to a specific area in a web-format. Usually this kind of bot breaks down in case we change information in the targeted area of an interface, but do not change rules that bot should follow to make this change happen.

According to Stephen Dewitt, Chief Strategy Officer at Automation Anywhere, autonomous RPA is going to become a trend in 2021, meaning the implementing of unattended robots. They can connect to different applications, interfaces and databases to get information and apply rules to complete processes.


RPA in pharmaceutical industry

Pharmaceutical companies were successfully implementing RPA for quite a long time. International companies run these projects much faster, but Russian branches are gradually learning from their experience, as they have valued high efficiency of business-processes transformation. Mostly robots perform monotonous operations, for example, processing of documents, tasks of accounting, logistics and customer support.

Today large enterprises turn to RPA, because there is a great demand for streamlining business operations of several departments. This includes methodology development and more long-lasting work of experts on the customer's side.

Thus, one of the key players on the Russian pharma market representing a group of companies with an extensive network, applied to our company willing to reduce several repetitive tasks in different departments. We noticed first results of RPA implementation during a launch of a pilot project. Employees got a significant time to focus on more interesting and valuable tasks for business development. For example, there was a backlog of requests. 35 operators were to process more than a hundred of requests manually every day. As a result, now it takes only one employee and two robots to perform this work.

Since implementing robots, it takes much little time to process customers' claims and requests on re-sorting and surplus. 40 operators got rid of monotonous work. One robot covers all issues concerning collecting information from query database, decision-making, and further request processing.


Predictions for the RPA sector development

Shortly and objectively, RPA solutions are going to keep a high demand and continuing growth in future, as introduction by new industries and sectors, and overall spreading remain.

Gartner predicts that in 2021 global income of RPA will reach $1,89 billion, that 19,5 higher than in 2020. Despite economic pressure because of COVID-19, it is expected that RPA market will grow double-digits till 2024. Globally RPA software revenue in 2021 will exceed $1,88 billion, that is much higher than compared to previous years. See tab. 2.

State of global economy in the beginning of 2020, remote workplaces and large-scale changes in business made RPA technology one of the most relevant on the market of solutions for automation.

It is obvious, that many companies are going to gain RPA capacity. Till 2024 they will be able to enlarge their RPA portfolio capabilities at least three times. A great deal of extra expenses will come from large enterprises, which purchase new additional power from initial vendors or partners within one ecosystem. This tendency reflects growing requirements from external markets to key players.

Since the end of 2020 growing demand shows light versions of RPA platforms made specifically for SME. Affordable robots for small companies have a full set of different features enough for process streamlining for this sector of business.