Ten trends in the development of the RPA industry in 2022, 6,000 words long to help you understand RPA
How will the RPA industry evolve in 2022? Ten trends to help you understand the future of the RPA industry
Here are the top ten trends in the development of the RPA industry in 2022, and friends who pay attention to RPA will definitely collect!
Text/Wang Jiwei
From the beginning of the first year of RPA in 2019, to the current financial, e-commerce, government and enterprise fields everyone talks about, the development of RPA in China has only taken three years. This speed is faster than previously expected.
RPA not only shows the "Chinese speed", but also is in a stage of rapid development on a global scale.
HFS Research research data shows that the annual growth rate of the global RPA market size from 2016 to 2018 exceeded 50%, and the global market size is expected to reach 4.308 billion US dollars in 2022.
While the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the global economy and shown signs of regression in many industries, it has also indirectly stimulated the demand for automation and intelligence in major organizations. Gartner expects that 90% of the world's large organizations will apply RPA in some form by 2022. Through 2024, the RPA market will continue to maintain double-digit growth.
More relevant data predicts that from 2019 to 2029, the global robotic process automation market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 33% in 10 years.
This suggests that the RPA industry will be one of the fastest growing software markets over the next 3-5 years.
As more areas learn more about RPA, it also penetrates more from the original technology field to the business area. In the past, most of the people who paid attention to RPA were CIOs and CTOs, but now business executives in finance, human resources, sharing centers and other fields are becoming avid fans of RPA.
Fanaticism means demand, and when there is demand, it is natural to buy. Which technologies and tools are preferred by major organizations depends on the CPO's procurement list. According to Deloitte's 2021 Global Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) Survey Report, RPA has become the focus of procurement for CHIEF Procurement Officers in the field of innovative technology procurement. The RPA procurement rate rose more than 10-fold from 2.4% in 2019 to 27.5% in 2021.
Multiple reports and multiple sets of data indicate that the RPA market will show super-high growth in the next few years. To adapt to such a rapidly developing market, RPA vendors must seize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to continue to innovate and break through to development. It is even more necessary to see the future development trend of the industry, combine its own advantages to do specialization, refinement, and strengthening, and constantly consolidate itself to move forward more steadily.
What are the development trends of the RPA industry in 2022? What are the actions of RPA vendors? In this article, Wang Jiwei channel summarizes and predicts the top ten trends in the industry in the future, helping everyone to further understand the RPA industry.
Trend one: RPAaaS will go further
In recent years, RPA is gradually migrating to the cloud. At the same time, cloud-native RPA launched by cloud computing, big data and other manufacturers has its own SaaS or PaaS attributes. Under the trend of "everything is service", in order to make it more convenient for the majority of small and medium-sized enterprises to apply RPA, the RPA field has also produced a unique RPAaaS (Robot Process Automation as a Service) model.
Using RPAaaS is as simple as using other SaaS applications, as long as you log in to the web client, you can easily develop, configure and manage business processes, which greatly reduces the difficulty of developing and applying RPA robots. Organizations using RPAaaS gain business process automation capabilities without having to invest in expensive infrastructure, upfront licensing costs, and high consulting costs for large-scale implementations.
These characteristics make more organizations, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, more inclined to RPAaaS in the choice of business process automation solutions. Enterprises that have already gone to the cloud will also prefer RPAaaS in business scenarios that do not involve core data.
We see that after Automation Anywhere (AA), more RPA vendors are actively expanding RPAaaS from the technology through self-research, investment and acquisition models. Many vendors have introduced automated clouds or actively promoted cloud-based RPA deployments, thereby reducing the difficulty of RPA deployment and use by users, so as to promote the ultimate vision of RPA "available to everyone".
At present, AA, UiPath and other products have realized web-side login, and other manufacturers have also implemented different degrees of SaaS based on the client. It is foreseeable that more manufacturers will go further in RPAaaS in 2022.
Trend two: AI deep integration makes RPA more intelligent
The reason for this wave of RPA fever is that AI has given RPA new life. The integration of AI and RPA has achieved the dual value of RPA application market and capital market. The higher the integration of AI and RPA, which means that RPA can be applied to more scenarios, and its commercial value will naturally be higher.
The fusion of AI and RPA technology, the first two years were called AI + RPA, RPA + AI or IPA, and now some manufacturers have begun to focus on intelligent automation (IA). RPA-based intelligent automation that combines RPA and artificial intelligence to enhance end-to-end processes and accelerate digital initiatives.
Enterprises that use AI-enhanced RPA expand the possibilities of business process automation to cover almost all scenarios. Of course, the implementation path of IA is not only AI+RPA, but the solution of AI and RPA integration is the easiest and most effective to implement.
RPA-based intelligent automation, now more often called intelligent RPA, also known as cognitive RPA, cognitive automation, semantic automation or intelligent process automation (SPA), refers to RPA enhanced by natural language processing (NLP), optical character recognition (OCR), deep learning, machine learning and other artificial intelligence technologies.
Intelligent RPA enables businesses to automate not only repetitive, rule-based tasks, but also forecasting and forecasting based on structured and unstructured data.
According to statistics, since 2014, about 90% of C-level executives have said that some degree of intelligent automation already exists in their organizations. In terms of the way of implementation, it is clear that more SMEs will choose smart RPA with lower costs. According to other data, the RPA and intelligent process automation market will reach $35 billion by 2023.
As a result, more organizations, especially small and medium-sized organizations, will adopt smart RPA in 2022.
Trend Three: More RPA vendors are embracing hyper-automation architectures
Hyperautomation is defined by Gartner as "the application of advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), to increasingly automate processes and empower people." ”
Super automation not only covers a range of tools that can be automated, but also involves all the implementation steps of automation (i.e. discovery, analysis, design, automation, measurement, monitoring, re-evaluation, etc.).
It is born in the market demand, a large number of organizations lack technology and experience, can not be based on the business strategy to expand and implement automation, so it is necessary to use RPA vendors and other organizations to provide them with complete end-to-end automation to further enhance business processes.
Hyper-automation is an automation methodology and comprehensive solution that helps companies quickly automate business processes.
At present, most of the strategic planning and product portfolios of overseas RPA vendors are based on super automation architecture, and domestic RPA vendors are also developing in this direction.
For example, Hongji Cyclone released the super automation product matrix in October, Huawei released weAutomate 3.0, an enterprise-level super-automation architecture RPA product covering all scenarios and full life cycles, and the latest product strategy of Cloud Expansion Technology is also to build a super-automation platform with RPA+LCAP.
At the same time, from the latest product lines of other manufacturers, it can also be seen that they are also building a richer product portfolio based on the super-automation architecture.
Gartner predicts that by 2022, the global market for supportable hyper-automation software will reach nearly $600 billion, or 4 trillion yuan. At the same time, in terms of efficiency and cost reduction, by 2024, the combination of ultra-automation technology and redesigned operating processes can reduce operating costs for enterprises by 30%.
It is foreseeable that more RPA vendors will embrace hyper-automation architectures in 2022.
Trend four: automation first becomes the thinking of enterprise management
As RPA increasingly becomes an important solution for enterprise digital transformation, the significant efficiency gains and cost reductions brought by RPA are being staged in more and more business scenarios. Gradually, automation first mindsets began to influence managers in more organizations and became increasingly popular.
Automation-first thinking is a methodology, a new kind of business management thinking. It requires organizations to prioritize automated solutions when designing, improving, or converting workflows, leaving it to automation to solve problems that can be solved with automation.
Automation-first thinking only focuses on business process automation itself, focusing on the fact that all the business that can be done with automation is done with automation, and it can be compatible with top-down and bottom-up synchronization. This allows the standardization of the previous organizational management framework to be paralleled with more flexible automation, thereby solving the problem of cost, efficiency and stability being out of sync.
The emergence of automation-first thinking is the inevitable popularization of intelligence and automation in major organizations, and it can also promote more organizations to promote business process automation faster. Organizations that applied RPA in the early days have now made automation-first thinking the main thinking of enterprise management, based on which to manage more business processes in business operations, and have upgraded them to the strategic layer.
Automation-first thinking not only accelerates the process of business automation of organizations, but also helps the rapid promotion and popularization of RPA in various fields. Starting in 2022, it will become the methodology for the digital transformation of more organizations, and it will also become a guiding "artifact" for RPA vendors to expand their territory.
Trend Five: The digital transformation field is more receptive to RPA
Wang Jiwei channel has always had a view: business process automation is the best entry point for digital transformation. The reason for this is that business process automation can quickly help enterprises achieve efficiency and cost reduction from the bottom up, eliminating the common problem of large investment, long construction period and slow effect of traditional digital solutions.
At the same time, RPA-based business process automation can also rely on non-intrusive, highly scalable and other characteristics to enable the IT equipment and technology previously invested by the organization to return to work. Large organizations introduce RPA, in addition to its flexibility and scalability that traditional automation does not have, to a certain extent, it is used as a binder to connect more enterprise management systems and IT equipment through RPA, thereby achieving higher ROI.
RPA makes business process automation no longer the prerogative of large enterprises, and the majority of small and medium-sized enterprises can use RPA to achieve business process optimization simply, quickly and at low cost. You can even use the free community version of some vendors for business process optimization all the time. For example, a local branch of a large state-owned enterprise has used more than 100 uibot community editions.
The ultimate goal of digital transformation is to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and business process streamlining and optimization are the main contents. Currently, using tools like RPA to optimize business processes is the easiest and most efficient than any solution.
While optimizing your business processes with RPA, RPA will also allow your organization and management to be digitized simultaneously. In this way, the digital transformation of the organization can be balanced with the indicators, making the digital transformation more effective.
In 2022, as RPA moves into more organizations, it will also gain more recognition in the field of digital transformation.
Trend Six: More organizations establish RPA Centers of Excellence
The RPA Center of Excellence (RPA CoE) is the central organization responsible for implementing RPA in the organization. RPA CoE's functional roles include IT specialists, RPA consultants, process managers, and functional specialists. The role of RPA CoE is to establish governance models, best practices and expertise to optimize return on investment.
Establishing an RPA CoE has several benefits, such as increasing the efficiency of the robot development cycle and integrating RPA with IT, along with RPA training, service, and support.
A successful RPA center of excellence or automated CoE can not only guarantee the implementation of RPA technically, but also deeply embed the RPA operating architecture, analyze, mine and optimize business processes, release enterprise labor resources with the principle of automation priority, and ensure that enterprise operations are faster, more efficient, and less error-prone.
Horses for Source 2020 research data shows that 18% of enterprises have established dedicated CoE models for RPA implementations, and 88% of them have effectively increased business value through CoE. From this set of data, we can see the importance of CoE for enterprise applications of RPA.
In 2019, about 40% of companies and organizations established automation centers of excellence. Currently, these centers of excellence are transitioning to RPA CoE with the massive adoption of RPA. The more companies recognize the value of RPA, the more they recognize the importance of RPA CoE.
At present, many enterprises with more applications of RPA in China have established centers of excellence or similar functional departments, and the sharing centers of some organizations have begun to transform into RPA CoE. RPA CoE is indispensable for RPA to deliver more value, and it can also help enterprises better complete their digital transformation.
UiPath has an "enterprise automation flywheel" model that lists 10 steps to implement automation, the first of which is to establish an automated process from a center of excellence. Other manufacturers such as Laiye Technology and Yisaiqi have also launched RPA Center of Excellence solutions, which can help enterprises quickly establish CoE to ensure that the application value of RPA is maximized.
Market demand coupled with vendor guidance, there will inevitably be more organizations to establish RPA centers of excellence in 2022.
Trend Seven: RPA will converge and integrate with more technologies
Wang Jiwei has repeatedly mentioned that RPA is not the only way to automate. There are many types of automation, such as BPA, iPaaS, low-code, workflow, and AI. However, from the perspective of cost, efficiency, and difficulty of implementation, RPA is the best way to achieve automation.
According to Gartner, RPA was the fastest-growing enterprise software in 2019 and 2020, with revenue growing by 38.9% in two years. As RPA capabilities evolve and improve, organizations, including RPA vendors, need to integrate them with other technologies to build on this advantage.
The RPA pandemic means that the process automation of organizations will focus on RPA, integrate and integrate more technologies and tools, and integrate the functions of adjacent business process technologies to provide users with more complete solutions.
Integrating RPA with non-IT systems (e.g., HR systems, financial systems) can help minimize human error, maintain data accuracy, and improve data visibility. As a result, RPA can be applied to more business scenarios and have a lasting impact on the overall business transformation of the organization.
RPA-based system integration is in full swing in many organizations, the most common of which is the integration of RPA into the original ERP system and CRM system to break down data barriers and optimize legacy system performance. For enterprises with hundreds of management software, after abandoning API solutions, they are more dependent on RPA-based data processing, and integration and convergence are more important for them.
Starting in 2022, organizations are more concerned about how RPA can be used better, and RPA will inevitably integrate and integrate more applications under this demand.
Trend Eight: RPA ease of use continues to increase
In terms of the market, RPA has been extending in two directions: one is for large and medium-sized organizations on the B-side such as governments and enterprises, and the other is for individual users of small and medium-sized micro and even C-end. Almost all RPA vendors are striving to expand C-end users while ensuring large customers.
On the one hand, large and medium-sized organizations are committed to making front-line business personnel become civilian developers, technicians do not pay too much attention to the business, and only business personnel in various departments can develop the RPA robots that are really needed. The ease of use of the product determines whether business personnel can quickly and stably use RPA to develop various applications.
On the other hand, in fact, most of the individual users on the C side are individuals in an organization, and they may be front-line business personnel, who are enough to promote the application of RPA throughout the organization. To capture more individual users, you need to continuously reduce the difficulty of application development and continuously improve the ease of use of RPA.
RPA vendors are now improving the ease of use of RPA through various means.
These means include the launch of RPAaaS, the integration of super-automation architecture, the introduction of intelligent document recognition and other more AI-based functions and the improvement of the developer ecosystem, the purpose is to create more convenient process identification and orchestration operations, simpler non-standard data conversion, more specific business requirements scenarios, more practical auxiliary development gadgets, etc., so that users can use RPA more simply.
Now, "one robot per person" and "making RPA available to everyone" are the common vision of manufacturers. To realize these visions quickly, manufacturers need to first make a fuss about product ease of use. Only when everyone can get started with RPA as quickly as using a mobile phone can it be possible to achieve a real RPA available to everyone.
In 2022, RPA vendors will further improve the ease of use of RPA through technology, products, ecology, etc.
Trend Nine: The RPA ecosystem is more open
Enterprise ecological capacity refers to the ability of enterprises to build an economic community and form service output to the outside world. The stronger the ecological ability, the faster the scale of the enterprise develops and the stronger the profitability.
For RPA vendors in the enterprise service sector, the importance of ecology is self-evident.
Participants in the RPA ecosystem include RPA vendors, RPA developers, consultants, system integrators, technology vendors, technology partners, agents/channel providers, and enterprise customers.
There are sub-ecologies under the total ecology, and the operation of multiple sub-ecologies supports the operation of the total ecology.
To quickly expand the scale of the market, it is necessary to build a market ecology that covers partners in more fields. If you want to build a continuous iteration of technical capabilities, you can't do without a technology ecosystem that includes more technology partners. If developers want to quickly learn and improve their development skills, there can be no shortage of developer ecosystems that help developers grow. If you want to provide customers with more comprehensive solutions, it is inseparable from the product cooperation ecology jointly with various manufacturers.
For RPA vendors, each ecological player is an important factor in their ability to build an ecosystem. The ecological ability determines the development of RPA manufacturers.
The genes of each manufacturer are different, and the focus of ecological capabilities is also different: those with technical genes may have a stronger technology ecology and developer ecology; And those with marketing and marketing genes, often the market ecology will be more perfect. However, no matter how to build a sub-ecology, the overall ecological ability determines the future of RPA manufacturers and is also the embodiment of their core competitiveness.
The more open the ecosystem, the more vigorous the vitality and the stronger the ecological capacity. The RPA industry is also showing this trend, for example, the UiBot 6.0 community version has opened up a free use of the whole process of design, execution, management, and AI capabilities, and the developer ecosystem has been further opened.
It is believed that with the leadership of Laiye Technology, more manufacturers will further increase ecological openness after 2022.
Trend 10: RPA has become an important enterprise management software
ERP was once one of the main systems for the development of informatization in various organizations, but now ERP and various legacy systems have become one of the main challenges facing the digital transformation of organizations.
ERP stores a large amount of critical business data that is difficult to extract and migrate, and manually entering data into an ERP system is laborious, time-consuming, and error-prone. Under the new technology impact, the traditional integrated automation has become obsolete, and RPA has become the best automation tool to solve the PROBLEM of ERP data extraction and migration.
Analysts at many institutions, including Gartner, predict that ERP will undergo a huge shift, in which RPA, artificial intelligence and automation will play an important role. The implication of this prediction is that RPA will take over ERP. RPA not only automates routine repetitive tasks and business processes, but also creates the entire process of data entry and output as an executable program.
Not only the human operation of ERP, but also the human operation of CRM, BPM, HR, PM, KM, OA and other management systems can also be automated with RPA. At the same time, RPA can replace human transportation data between various systems, connecting various systems into an orderly operation of the whole.
From manual operation of ERP to RPA operation of ERP, in fact, a human-computer collaboration layer is formed between people and software. Simple and repetitive processes are handled by RPA, and decision-making processes are left to people.
This human-computer collaboration model is becoming the mainstream mode of enterprise operation, and in the future, the process form centered on RPA for each management software will become the main body of organizational operation, and RPA will take over more and more enterprise management software. While taking over more management software, RPA will also become an indispensable enterprise management software for organizations.
Starting in 2022, the enterprise-level application attributes of RPA will be further enhanced and become the standard for enterprise operations.
[Wang Jiwei Channel, focusing on TMT and IoT, focusing on digital transformation, business process automation and RPA.] 】