Falling prices drive RPA adoption, says Gartner

The price for robotic process automation solutions will fall by as much as 15 per cent this year

Six in 10 organisations with annual revenues of $1 billion or more will have deployed tools for robotic process automation (RPA) by the end of 2018. By 2022, 85 per cent of large and very organisations will have done the same, according to Gartner.

Cathy Tornbohm, VP at the research firm, said, "The growth in adoption will be driven by average RPA prices decreasing by approximately 10 per cent to 15 per cent by 2019, but also because organisations expect to achieve better business outcomes with the technology, such as reduced costs, increased accuracy and improved compliance."

Global spending on RPA this year will reach $680 million, a 57 per cent increase from 2017, and $2.4 billion by 2022.

RPA is only one path to automation, mimicking the manual path a human worker would take, using a combination of UI ‘interaction describer' technologies. It is best used in cases where an organisation needs structured data to automate existing tasks or processes; add automated functionality to legacy systems; and link to external systems that can't be connected through other IT options.

The largest adopters of RPA today are vertical organisations like banks, insurance companies and telecoms.

To make RPA projects successful, Gartner writes, business leaders must evaluate its use cases and focus on generating revenue, rather than only reducing costs. The next step is to identify ‘quick wins' to prove its benefits. Above all, though, it is important to choose the right automation tool for the job.