Why Is RPA Growing?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been a red-hot item for the past couple of years. Just this year, for example, UiPath announced its IPO with a valuation of nearly $26 billion. And, the RPA market continues to grow at a rapid pace with expectations of about $1.6 billion in 2021, and about to $7.6 billion by 2028.
But, why is Robotic Process Automation growing so quickly?
Much of this growth can be attributed to citizen developers adopting Robotic Process Automationto solve business challenges. According to BluePrism, they feel “that business users should be enabled to create their own automation“. This leads to business users feeling empowered, reducing their errors, and reducing the overall organizational risk.
Business Applications and RPA
Cloud-powered business applications have truly changed how businesses operate over the past decade or more. And, Robotic Process Automation has added another dimension to many of these application suites.
According to “The State of RPA Report“, mid-market and SMB companies are now utilizing Robotic Process Automation at a greater pace than enterprise organizations. Robotic Process Automation is now within reach for non-enterprise companies as the price, scalability, and use cases are bringing faster ROI.
Fueling RPA Growth
The robotic process automation race will continue to heat up as many organizations realize the benefits of cost savings and time savings. This realization is what Salesforce is counting on. They have been falling behind some of their competitors by not providing end-to-end solutions for business challenges.
Salesforce recently announced their acquisition of Servicetrace to strengthen their business cloud suite. However, Salesforce isn’t the only company to up their RPA game. UiPath, the gorilla in the Robotic Process Automation arena, broadened its platform by acquiring CloudElements. And, ServiceNow recently acquired Intellibot to compete with their operation tools.
Time will tell if Salesforce positions the Servicetrace Robotic Process Automation solution in the right way and make it easy to utilize across the Salesforce suite.
Closing Thoughts
If you are a Salesforce customer, now is the time to examine your processes to see how Servicetrace could be a factor. Some customers will see this as a huge disruptor to their current enterprise stack. However, for mid-market or SMB customers, this could be the opportunity they have been waiting for.
A few closing things to consider:
- If you are still not sure what RPA is all about, then check out the wealth of RPA content on the Acceleration Economy site.
- If you are currently evaluating RPA for your company, does this acquisition change your evaluation process?
- Do you already have strong RPA processes in your organization, will this impact any of the current RPA processes?
- If you are using a different RPA solution, will this cause you to switch?
Lastly, consider bringing leaders from your financial, operational, technical, and other lines of business into the conversation. Any impact on the business should be collaboratively evaluated.