Robotics process automation (RPA) company Catalytic has revealed it snagged a $30 million investment, a sure sign of growing interest in this emerging enterprise technology.
RPA systems, like those of Midwest-startup Catalytic, are used to automate tedious and repetitive workplace processesOpens a new window , freeing up resources to focus on more high-value tasks and customer engagement.
The company’s software-as-a-service intelligent automation platform claims to be able to remove as much as 50-100% of manual data processing tasks. CatalyticOpens a new window detailed the more than 200 actions that can be used to process unstructured data from documents, emails, internal systems, websites and other sources by coordinating people, bots and artificial intelligence.
The Series B funding round was led by Intel Capital, with participation from Redline Capital and existing investors NEA, Boldstart and Hyde Park Angels. The funds will be used to expand Catalytic’s engineering, sales and operationsOpens a new window , including opening offices in Palo Alto, New York and potentially London to meet increased customer demand.
“Leading enterprises are embracing our vision of customer-led, Cloud-based process automation. Many customers have found that Catalytic nicely complements existing technology investments such as robotic process automation (RPA), especially with activities involving unstructured data or that require people in the loop,†said Sean Chou, Catalytic’s chief executive and co-founder. “Intel Capital’s global presence, deep enterprise experience, and leadership in digital transformation will be a tremendous asset as we scale our business.â€
Rapid Advances Since 2015 Fuel Continued Momentum
The Chicago-based company has grown to 60 employees since its founding in 2015. Catalytic’s global customer base includes appliance maker Bosch, media group Dentsu Aegis Network, academic medical center Mayo Clinic and consulting and certification company UL.
Prior to co-founding Catalytic, Chou was one of the first employees, and later chief technology officer, at Fieldglass, a provider of Cloud-based software for managing temporary and contract workers. In 2014, it was sold to German software group SAP for an estimated $1 billion.
“We’re excited to lead Catalytic’s Series B round, partnering with its team and investors to further accelerate the company’s rapid expansion. Catalytic’s customers are quickly scaling the solution across their operations, validating the offering and vision†said Wendell Brooks, president of lead investor Intel Capital and Senior Vice President of Intel Corporation, adding that Intel Capital is helping to lead the data revolution powered by Intel, in large part by supporting exceptional entrepreneurs.
“I’ve been amazed by the momentum that Catalytic has built in a very short period of time,†said Peter Barris, chairman and general partner at NEA. “Its innovative and differentiated approach to enterprise process automation has brought significant value to customers across a wide range of industries and functional areas.†Other players in the segment include UiPath, Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere.
RPA Replaces Mundane Legacy System Tasks..and Workers
Scenarios in which RPA can be used vary from basic applications like automatic email responses or document scanning, to deploying thousands of bots, each of which have been programmed to automate tasks in an enterprise resource planning system. Global spending on RPA software is calculated to reach $680 million in 2018Opens a new window , marking a 57% rise year-on-year, according to research from advisory company Gartner. The spend is currently set to total $2.4 billion in 2022.
“End-user organizations adopt RPA technology as a quick and easy fix to automate manual tasks,†says Cathy Tornbohm, a Gartner vice president. “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.â€
So far, the biggest adopters of the technology include banks, insurance companies, utilities and telecoms groups. Usually, such organizations might have difficulties knitting together disparate elements of their accounts and human resources systems and turn to RPA technologies to automate manual tasks or processes, or the functionality of older, legacy systems, Ms Tornbohm adds.
While Gartner estimates that by the end of 2022, 85% of large and very large organizations will have deployed some form of RPA, it also warns the technology is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It works best for companies that need structured data to automate their tasks, add automated functionality to legacy systems and connect with external systems that cannot be linked via other information technology solutions.
Meanwhile, Forrester Research calculates that RPA software could threaten the livelihoods of at least 230 million so-called knowledge workers, or approximately 9% of the workforce worldwide.