Over the last couple of years, robotic process automation software has gone mainstream and is seeing a shift from being an on-premises application to one that is cloud-based.
Automation Anywhere, a cloud-native robotic process automation software and services provider, recently published a survey of 263 IT decision makers on the state of robotic process automation. The respondents came from a wide range of organizations including Global 2000 companies, Fortune 500 companies, and smaller firms.
More than two-thirds of the survey respondents indicated they are active in their efforts to scale up the use of cloud-based robotic process automation software, according to Prince Kohli, Automation Anywhere’s CTO.
“The speed, security, resiliency, and other benefits of cloud RPA are leading enterprises to increasingly deploy RPA in the cloud, with more than half of survey respondents stating that they have deployed RPA either solely to the cloud or to a hybrid cloud environment,” he said.
Kohli said that on-premises-only deployments of robotic process automation tools have declined sharply since last year's survey, with only 10% of respondents planning to deploy automation tools to their on-premises footprint. Instead, respondents are planning to target exclusively cloud-based RPA or take a hybrid approach. In the next 12 months, cloud-only deployments will make up 38% of all RPA deployments – a 50% increase compared to today.
Key findings from the survey show the explosive growth of this area of technology across a broad range of industry sectors including financial, industrial materials and manufacturing, technology, retail and consumer, services and consulting, healthcare, life sciences, government, and telecom.
- One in four organizations are actively looking for opportunities to scale their robotic process automation tools and one-third are deploying to multiple business units.
- Spending is going up on robotic process automation software and services with organizations planning to increase spending over the next twelve months. More than 60% of those surveyed plan to increase spending by approximately 25% in that timeframe.
- Productivity continues to drive the adoption of robotic process automation software. More than half of the surveyed organizations stated they have been able to shift employees to higher-value work which helps with employee retention and company innovation.
- The average return on investment (ROI) when shifting workloads to robotic process automation software and services was 250% with top performers in the survey reporting an ROI of 380%.
The survey findings did point out that lack of skills and the need to train employees are the most significant barriers to implementing robotic process automation software and services. However, the survey found that low-code/no-code tools are proving to be the preferred method for adopting these automated processes because the barrier to their efficient use is much lower.
The entire report on robotic process automation software and services is available directly from Automation Anywhere.
