Technology Will Assume Center Stage in BPS 4.0 | Market Insights™
February 5, 2021
BPS 4.0
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BPS 4.0
VISIT THE REPORT PAGE
There’s no doubt that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is here to stay. It is leading to the increase of a global digital workforce in every industry. However, traditional automation is not yet 100 percent capable of accessing all company data and information. Much of this information is stored in old-fashioned formats, so human intervention is necessary to make sense of this ‘dark data’ and then feed it into a RPA workflow. In a sense, the digital workforce still requires a helping human hand.
This white paper by the Everest Group highlights the importance of maturing digital workforces merged with AI. In most cases, this means implementing AI into the process at some stage. IQ Bot is one of the simplest ways to get started on your AI automation journey and there are many success stories to draw inspiration from.
Read more in Economic Times
Tuesday, September 25, 2018 | 8 a.m. CDT, 9 a.m. EDT, 2 p.m. BST, 6:30 p.m. IST | Hosted by the New England chapter of IAOP, co-chaired by Foley & Lardner, Sapience, and Everest Group
Robotic Process Automation – RPA – is impacting the very way companies do business. Negotiating the right contracts with your RPA software vendor along with your outsourcing service providers is critical.
In this fast-paced, dynamic market, it’s essential that you stay abreast of the latest market and vendor developments to best harness the power of RPA – at the right cost, and with suitable contract terms. And, with everyone touting their “latest thing,” one must be able to separate the hype from the truth.
Our RPA experts will help to light the path. In this 60-minute webinar, we’ll arm you with the following actionable takeaways:
• Vet the underlying RPA software vendors based upon late-breaking market developments
• Understand impacts of the convergence of RPA and AI (and other key automation tools)
• Learn about key contract pricing metrics so you are prepared for deal negotiations
• Tips for managing the implications on your existing outsourcing relationships
Who should attend?
Enterprise executives responsible for outsourcing and vendor management strategy, and professionals who oversee RPA implementation and operations
Presenters
Sarah Burnett
Executive Vice President and Distinguished Analyst
Everest Group
Michel Janssen
Chief Research Guru
Everest Group
Presentation originally aired on Wednesday, August 8, 2018 | 9 a.m. CDT, 10 a.m. EDT, 3 p.m. BST, 7:30 p.m. IST
Robotic Process Automation – RPA – is impacting the very way companies do business. Negotiating the right contracts with your RPA software vendor along with your outsourcing service providers is critical.
In this fast-paced, dynamic market, it’s essential that you stay abreast of the latest market and vendor developments to best harness the power of RPA – at the right cost, and with suitable contract terms. And, with everyone touting their “latest thing,” one must be able to separate the hype from the truth.
Our RPA experts will help to light the path. In this 60-minute webinar, we’ll arm you with the following actionable takeaways:
• Vet the underlying RPA software vendors based upon late-breaking market developments
• Understand impacts of the convergence of RPA and AI (and other key automation tools)
• Learn about key contract pricing metrics so you are prepared for deal negotiations
• Tips for managing the implications on your existing outsourcing relationships
Who should attend?
Enterprise executives responsible for outsourcing and vendor management strategy, and professionals who oversee RPA implementation and operations
Presenters
Sarah Burnett
Executive Vice President and Distinguished Analyst
Everest Group
Michel Janssen
Chief Research Guru
Everest Group
Moderator:
Alan Wolfe
Senior Vice President
Everest Group
How hot has Summer 2018 been around the globe? Red hot…but not as hot as the RPA marketplace. The speed of evolution in this industry segment is almost without precedent. Firms that had revenues worth tens of millions of U.S. dollars just a couple of years ago are talking about reaching a billion in revenue in just a couple of more years.
So why all the excitement? Some chalk it up to Robotic Process Automation being a clever product idea and others to the even cleverer marketing of sexy robots.
But the reality is that it’s the perfect storm – or heat wave – of innovation and capital intersecting at just the right time.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that enterprises have already captured most of the potential value from offshore labor arbitrage. But when you combine the need for a new source of cost savings with the acute shortage of labor in the U.S. and Europe, you have a market condition in which enterprises are screaming for automation that allows continued productivity improvements for less money, with less human labor-based effort.
These four keys make up the RPA virtuous circle: More sophisticated software platforms, real value propositions, significant capital infusion, and aggressive buy/build decisions. Let’s unpack each one to get the full story.
More sophisticated software platforms – the software platforms underlying RPA are not new; some of them have been around for many years. But as interest and revenues in the segment grow, the vendors are investing in better software and getting invaluable real-life implementation experience. And great use cases and robust feedback loops will drive enhanced software innovation.
Real value propositions – while a great idea is always fun to talk about, the story quickly fades if the economics are insufficient. In RPA’s case, enterprises are finding real savings and, probably most important, operational improvement. What makes this such an exciting story is that RPA doesn’t apply to just one aspect of the enterprise – it applies anywhere human resources are being deployed for labor-intensive services. So not just G&A functions, but also core business operations.
Significant capital being infused – where there is monetary value creation, Wall Street and Silicon Valley will certainly be found nearby. In the RPA segment, multiple investments in excess of US$100 million have been made. In total, we have seen more than a half billion dollars in investments in just the past six months. These are huge flows of capital, especially considering that in many cases they far exceed current revenues.
Aggressive buy/build decisions – of course, when that much capital is deployed, there’s tremendous pressure to take action to generate real, quantifiable results. The most obvious is to deploy larger sales/account teams to support the growth. But, there will be also significant development needs as use cases expand. We also anticipate that RPA firms will go on a buying spree of niche competitors or companies that increase automation functionality for items like OCR, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing.
Right now, the velocity of the Virtuous Circle is increasing…better software, increased enterprise value propositions, and another round of investments.
To learn more about Everest Group’s take on RPA, view the replay of our popular August 8 webinar on the latest developments and implications for enterprises. By registering, you will also receive a a copy of the presentation and deck for download after the webinar.
72% of enterprises cite IT infrastructure services as a key hurdle to becoming digital-first enterprises; new Everest Group report describes how ‘Aware’ automation—underpinned by AI and analytics—can solve this problem
According to Everest Group, aware automation can help achieve more than 35 percent cost savings as compared to traditional automation approaches and can help enterprises realize significant improvements in business operations and user experience.
With IT infrastructure complexity at an all-time high, Everest Group has found that 72 percent of enterprises cite infrastructure services (IS) as a key hurdle in becoming a digital-first enterprise. Most enterprises believe that their IT infrastructure services are not moving fast enough to support and drive the future of their business.
“Aware” automation holds promise for resolving the challenges and complexity of traditional IT infrastructure. Aware automation is a concept wherein automation systems are underpinned by artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics, making them conscious of the environment and capable of driving self-configuring, healing and evolving IT infrastructure services.
“The trinity of analytics, automation and AI can make the infrastructure run the way business needs it to, without requiring significant oversight or bandwidth,” said Ashwin Venkatesan, practice director at Everest Group. “So, in essence, this next-generation automation can make infrastructure services ‘invisible’ rather than a glaring nightmare that causes executives to lose sleep at night. Already in the last two to three years, we’ve witnessed intelligent automation making enterprise inroads, backed by a rapid proliferation and maturation of solutions in the market.”
Everest Group offers a featured analysis of aware automation in its newly released annual report on Cloud and Infrastructure Services: “AI Stands to Make IT Infrastructure Services ‘Invisible’.” This research deep dives into the cloud and IS landscape. It provides data-driven facts and perspectives on the overall market. The research covers cloud and IS adoption trends, demand drivers, and buyer expectations. The research analyses buyer challenges, describes trends shaping the market, and provides an outlook for 2018-2019 for the broader IT as well as cloud and IS market.
Highlights of the Cloud and IS market analysis:
***Download a complimentary 12-page abstract of the report here.***
“Max, please send our new terms and conditions’ letter to all our Prime current account holders,” said Louise, a customer contact manager in a retail bank.
“I will ask Alf to do it. Is there anything else I can do for you today Louise?” Asked Max, the personal virtual helper on Louise’s desktop computer.
“Yes, please tell Alf to update Elsa.”
You may have guessed that Alf and Elsa are robots too – one processes letters for mailshots, the other makes records for regulatory compliance.
Are colleagues going to be electric? Everest Group data indicates that by 2021 there will be as many Robotic Desktop Automation (RDA), attended robots running on users’ desktops, assisting agents, and employees, as there are people currently delivering contact center outsourcing services globally; that means about three million attended robots by 2021.
There will also be a huge rise in the number of virtual workers or unattended Robotic Process Automation (RPA) robots, running on servers in data centers and delivering end-to-end process automation without the need for employees to activate them. Exhibits 1 and 2 highlight the projected rise of both attended and unattended robots through to 2021. These estimates are for robots purchased on license from independent third-party RPA software vendors. They exclude robots provided by vendors at no charge for proof of concepts, and training, etc.
Exhibit 1 – Attended robots
Exhibit 2 – Unattended robots
Our calculations are based on data from multiple Everest Group databases including but not limited to:
Everest Group analysis indicates that many colleagues will indeed be electric by 2021, a shift that will impact enterprises, not only in operations but also in terms of HR policies, recruitment, succession planning, process knowledge and other skills development, process and program document management, IT investment, management and maintenance, and business and IT continuity.
Sarah Burnett will be discussing this topic and other RPA trends during her talk at Symphony Venture’s Robotic Operations Centre Launch in Krakow, Poland on June 27.
Everest Group conducted a comprehensive study on enterprise Robotic Process Automation (RPA) adoption. The study provided us with important insights into what allows companies to realize value from investing in RPA. For instance, at the outset, executives believe RPA is an easy way to automate tasks and thus increase productivity. But the study participants’ experiences reveal that, in theory, RPA is simple but, in practice, it’s difficult. Why? Because RPA is a digital transformation journey, and there are complications when trying to unleash digital transformation.
A company that wants to realize much value from implementing RPA must invest in the capability to drive automation. This involves more than configuring the robots. It requires process redesign, navigating the different stakeholders that have purview (security, IT, audit compliance, etc.) and navigating the business unit with the problem. Often the opportunities and problems span multiple business units, which requires coordinating and focus on multiple units and departments.
The technology itself is simple, but the problem of driving change is difficult. To overcome this, companies are establishing RPA Centers of Excellence (CoEs) – one of the best practices evident among 52 participants in our Enterprise RPA Pinnacle Model study. Getting IT involved early in the adoption effort is another best practice.
It’s very clear that companies that make the commitment and invest in resources to enable change to achieve a higher return on their investment. Pinnacle Enterprises™ – those that achieved superior outcomes as a result of their advanced capabilities – achieved 4X greater ROI than enterprises that didn’t take the RPA opportunity seriously by investing in such success factors as a COE, partners to do the configuration and coordinating the numerous stakeholders that need to be aligned to drive change. 4X is a huge difference in benefits!
In our detailed interview discussions with the companies participating in the study, we found significant frustration among the executives sponsoring RPA adoption. They discussed their struggles in trying to communicate with boards of directors and with the business units the need for adequate investment, support resources and the amount of change necessary to capture the value of RPA. The depth of the change and the extent of the investment is difficult for executives to convey to their organizations and their boards.
Interestingly, companies get a robust return from these investments in driving change. But because of the perception that the technology is simple, executives expect that value can be extracted without investment, without resources and without stakeholder alignment. This study clearly proves that is not the case.
One of our goals in the Pinnacle study was to investigate the participating companies across six dimensions of change required for RPA success so that they and other companies can learn from their experiences. A second goal was to develop an assessment tool. Any company can take the 30-minute questionnaire, followed by a four-hour workshop, and compare its RPA journey results against others’ experiences and against the Pinnacle companies, which are the most mature and achieving the most value from their investments.
We anticipated that people would compare their experiences against others, which would then give a practical road map where people can understand the investments and activities they needed to do to get a greater return from their RPA investment. In fact, this happened. Clearly, the people who take the assessment quickly identify the gaps they have against the best practices and build a road map to close the gaps.
The surprising outcome is that we didn’t anticipate how effective the assessment tool is for the executive sponsors of RPA to help communicate the level of effort and resources required. It’s a helpful communication vehicle for justifying the kind of investment and budget necessary to be a high-performing organization in extracting value from RPA and for getting the support for change and aligning stakeholder interests.
If your company is undertaking an RPA adoption journey, we believe you’ll get great value from going through this assessment process. Comparing your company’s results to other industries and leading companies will help you understand what you’re doing differently and help you build a road map to close the gaps. It will also provide a tool to help you discuss the business case for the appropriate amount of investment and the appropriate amount of resources necessary for top performance.
Each company progresses down the RPA adoption curve at its own pace. But there’s always something a company can learn from others. Even the best-performing companies – the Pinnacle Enterprises – benefited seeing what others had done and knowing where they should double down on investments and activities that capture value from RPA.
See how leaders are differentiating from peers – visit our digital transformation resource page.
Digital transformation of front- and back-office operations using a next-generation workforce
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