It is estimated that 60 per cent of the organisations having revenues of over $1 billion will deploy RPA tools by this year end
Spending on robotic process automation (RPA) software globally is projected to reach US$ 680 million in 2018, recording a growth of 57 per cent year-on-year, said a latest report from global research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc.
Global spending on RPA software is estimated to reach a total of US$ 2.4 billion in 2022, the report stated.
Commenting on the findings, Cathy Tornbohm, Vice President, Gartner, said, “End-user organisations adopt RPA technology as a quick and easy fix to automate manual tasks. Some employees will continue to execute mundane tasks that require them to cut, paste and change data manually. But when RPA tools perform those activities, the error-margin shrinks and data quality increases.”
This emerging form of business process automation technology is majorly adopted by banks, insurance companies, utilities and telecommunications companies.
“Typically, these organisations struggle to knit together the different elements of their accounting and HR systems, and are turning to RPA solutions to automate an existing manual task or process, or automate the functionality of legacy systems,” stated Tornbohm.
Big organisations likely to adopt soon
According to Gartner’s report, it is estimated that 60 per cent of the organisations having revenues of over $1 billion will deploy RPA tools by this year end. By 2022, 85 per cent of large and very large firms will have deployed RPA in some form.
Citing the reason for RPA adoption, Tornbohm mentioned that the growth in adoption will be backed by decrease in average prices of RPA. The RPA prices are estimated to be decreased by 10-15 per cent by 2019. In addition, the adoption is also increased because organisations expect to achieve better business outcomes with the use of technology, like increased accuracy, reduced costs and improved compliance.
However, the research firm said, RPA is not a one-size-fits-all technology. There are various instances where alternative solutions for automation achieve better outcomes.
RPA solutions achieve best results when an organisation requires structured data for automating its prevailing processes or tasks, add automation functions to legacy systems and connect to external systems that can’t be linked through other options of IT, it added.
