Premise
Robotic process automation (RPA) will become a fundamental means for organizations to increase productivity over the next five to ten years. We believe the market is poised to grow from approximately $1B in worldwide spending today to more than $10B by 2023.
The Employment Picture
The most recent job data shows there are a record 7.14 million openings in the U.S. Government statistics released this month indicate that there are just over 6 million unemployed workers. The so-called “quit rate” is at an all time high and the gap between job openings and the number of people to fill those jobs appears to be widening at an alarming pace. Business are worried that wage pressures will continue to increase as inflation faces upward momentum.
What we Learned at UiPath Forward
theCUBE covered the recent UiPath Forward event in Miami. We interviewed executives, customers, RPA practitioners and ecosystem partners who are driving robotic process automation towards closing the labor and productivity gaps. Here are some of the key takeaways:
- Customers are concerned about the perception that robots will replace humans and are managing this issue by introducing robotic process automation with RPA “bot-a-thons” and PoCs designed to generate ideas and ease concerns;
- Customers consistently report that once they got past these initial concerns, RPA users became excited and engaged in developing new automations;
- These automations are being targeted at repetitive, manual tasks. Customers and experts report they’re applying robotic process automation for a variety of use cases that help in factory automation, supply chain examples, back office financial applications, contact center augmentatoin and numerous other tasks.
- Customers are reporting upwards of 75% productivity improvements and dramatic quality increases in business processes. For example one client reported taking numerous mainstream business processes from 3 Sigma-class (~95% accuracy) to Six Sigma (99.9997% accuracy) as a direct result of robotic process automation;
- Robotic process automation is becoming increasingly simple to use. Companies like UiPath are leading the way toward putting “software robots” in the hands of line-of-business workers by delivering low code and simplified approaches to deployment;
- RPA initiatives require both top/down support for C-level executives as well as zealous bottoms/up adoption from line of business professionals and domain experts.
New Ways to Work
As Wikibon has previously stated, for decades, enterprises have been organizing work around applications; building systems that are hardened and often stove-piped. Digital transformation is causing businesses generally and technology operations specifically to rethink how they approach work streams. So-called data-driven organizations don’t want to lock processes into applications because it creates constraints and restrictions. Rather organizations want to shape the automation around the ideal business process. This is especially critical as business processes in the digital world are often new, untested and sometimes experimental. Having a technology foundation that can quickly adapt is critical.
Increasingly, robotic process automation (RPA) tools are allowing enterprises to integrate application functionality where users want it most – at their point of work. This opens the possibilities of automatin at scale. The possibility (and mandate) to restructure work with the explicit goal of automating mundane and low value work streams – we believe – will have dramatic impacts on productivity improvements over the next decade.
Video Summary of UiPath Forward
Here’s a cliplist of some of the highlights from UiPath customers, partners, execs and analysts from the event:
