Why Robotic Process Automation Is Coming to the Cloud

The market for cloud robotic process automation (RPA) is growing rapidly as enterprises increasingly realize that the cloud allows them to intelligently automate business processes faster, more securely, and at a lower cost than on-premises RPA, explains Prince Kohli, CTO, Automation Anywhere. 

If you are involved in digital transformation initiatives at your organization, chances are you have heard about robotic process automation (RPA), the IT industry’s fastest growing enterprise software sector for the third straight yearOpens a new window , according to Gartner.  

RPA enables organizations to create software bots, digital workers that automate manual, repetitive business tasks, improving productivity, increasing customer satisfaction, and freeing employees to focus on higher-order business problems and other more creative, empathic, and fulfilling work. 

The use of RPA, in combination with AI, to create and deploy bots able to complete tedious front-office, back-office, and other processes faster and with fewer errors is gaining traction. IT, operations and finance, and customer support departments, in particular, are increasingly adopting RPA. 

For example, in a recent survey of hundreds of enterprise technology decision-makers, by Enterprise Technology Research (ETR) more than a majority of organizations were using RPA to automate processes in their:

• •  IT (66%)
  • Operations (65%)
  •  Finance (56%) 
  • Customer support (53%) 

At the same time, their use of RPA in these departments is expected to grow, with at least 75% of organizations saying they expect to use RPRA to automate over the next 12 months:

• • IT (84%), 
  • Operations (84%), 
  • Finance (75%) and 
  • Customer support (76%). 

Learn More: How RPA Can Transform ERPs Performance Potential

A Pandemic-Led Transition to the Cloud

However, today what’s accelerating at an even a faster rate than the RPA market in general is the market for cloud RPA. In fact, cloud has exploded as the platform of choice for RPA deployment with 5 times as many new customers opting for cloud deployment over on-premises, according to Enterprise Technology Research (ETR).

The pandemic prompted a digital transformation essential for business survival in the new normal and cloud automation became a core aspect of this transformation. Cloud-based RPA can intelligently automate processes more securely and at a lower cost than on-premises RPA. Additionally, scaling RPA is much faster and easier. 

According to ETR’s research, more than half of the survey’s respondents stated that they have deployed RPA either solely to the cloud or to a hybrid cloud environment. Meanwhile, only 10% of respondents are considering deploying RPA purely on premises over the next 12 months, down from 36% who have it deployed purely on premises today.

The Cloud Makes Intelligent Automation Faster, Easier, and Less Expensive

Unlike on-premises RPA solutions, RPA solutions designed for the cloud enable organizations to:

• • Quickly deploy RPA, as there is no need to purchase, install, or maintain any on-premises RPA hardware or other infrastructure. 
  • Inexpensively manage and easily scale RPA systems to thousands of users, as updates to cloud-native RPA systems are made automatically by their provider, and customers can add more users and other capacity without having to buy more infrastructure. 
  • Accelerate development and deployment of bots used to automate processes, with cloud-native RPA systems always providing users with their latest capabilities.
  • Quickly find and start using bots to automate processes, thanks to the arrival of cloud-based bot stores, where both business process and industry specific bots of all types can be purchased, modified by customers if needed, and then deployed. 
  • Automate remote employees’ processes, with cloud-native RPA’s ability to be accessed by employees wherever they are located. 
  • Easily use cloud-native RPA to automate processes associated with the growing number of SaaS and other cloud-based applications that enterprises are increasingly using.

The cloud’s ability to accelerate companies’ RPA journeys helps explain findings from a recent report from Reports and Data. The report forecasts that the global automation-as-a-service (AaaS) market will grow at a rate of 29.7% and reach $15.47 billion globally by 2026. 

Learn More: How Purpose-Built Intelligent Automation Solves the Shortcomings of RPA

Success Factors for Faster RPA Adoption

However, as with any digital transformation initiative, finding and adopting technologies (like cloud-native RPA) is the easy part. The hard part is using the technologies in a way that actually transforms how the organization does business in a way that maximizes the return on the digital transformation investment.

Fortunately, results from ETR’s recent RPA survey reveal some of the best practices that companies should adopt if they want to increase their intelligent automation ROI. While survey respondents reported achieving an average return of 250% on their RPA investments, a subset of respondents – the top performers reported returns that were 100% higher, at 380%. 

What characterized these top performers? They were more likely than other companies to invest in Artificial Intelligent (AI) or Machine Learning (ML) as part of their automation initiatives and have director level executives strongly advocating for RPA. In addition, pointing again to the benefits of cloud-RPA, they are more likely to deploy RPA on hybrid (cloud and on-premises) environments. These and other factors such as encouraging citizen developers and automation projects to business units allowed them to increase productivity, cut costs and move employees to higher-value work more than other companies, raising their intelligent automation ROI.

Run, Don’t Walk To Automate Your Organization With Cloud RPA

Investment in organizational changes like these are not easy, but are getting harder to ignore. Enterprises that do not embrace automation are now likely to find that cloud-native RPA solutions allow their competitors to quickly, easily, and inexpensively embrace it instead. These organizations may find themselves racing to keep up with competitors who are using intelligent automation to be more productive, improve their employees’ experiences, and better engage with their customers.

As the sun rises on cloud RPA, the question is no longer whether your organization should intelligently automate tedious, repetitive processes, it is how it can use the cloud to intelligently automate more of these processes faster and less expensively than your competitors.

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