In recent years, companies that offer robotic process automation (RPA) services have been focused on getting the general market to understand the business value RPA offers while gauging the willingness of prospects to give it a try.
Efforts on this “demand” side of the equation have been generally successful, so it’s time for RPA companies to shift their focus to the “supply” side managing the demand that was created with capable RPA software and knowledgeable RPA leaders.
In this vein, here are 10 ways the RPA market will continue its rapid and dramatic maturation in 2019:
1. Customers will demand more from RPA
As the market matures, it will take more than a one-off proof of concept demonstration for businesses to completely by in. RPA providers need to develop custom use-cases and scenarios that can offer organizations both scalability and quantifiable results.
2. Credentialing will become biometric
Security is an evergreen concern for most businesses, and RPA vendors are looking to enhance security features while also improving the customer experience. Biometric authentication is an answer that can provide an ultra-powerful enterprise-secure RPA platform.
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3. Regulatory compliance will drive innovation
Many organizations across a variety of industries need to satisfy regulatory requirements, such as those needing to comply with GDPR. To do so, many will turn to RPA solutions that offer offer layers of auditability in order to meet these requirements.
4. The need for dedicated servers will be eliminated
RPA vendors will continue to improve their architecture and licensing models, which in turn will allow businesses to run as many bots as they need and when they need the, without having to account for server capacity.
5. RPA pricing will trend downward
As is the case in many industries, increased competition, commoditization and efficient licensing models will drive the price of RPA downward while also improving the aforementioned capacity usage levels for customers.
6. Large software companies will continue to build RPA capabilities
SAP’s recent acquisition of Contextor exemplifies the trend of large software companies “buying in” on RPA in order to lower their overall total cost of ownership. This enables them to provide more automation capabilities out of the box.
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7. RPA’s focus on unstructured data will continue
The shift from “data collection” to “data analysis” will continue, driving a focus on algorithms that transform unstructured data into structured data that is then scored and delivered back to the enterprise for improved decision-making.
8. Business processing output (BPO) will openly embrace RPA
BRO providers will begin to partner with RPA vendors as both consumers and resellers in order to retain work and prevent projects from being reallocated.
9. Businesses will create formal RPA roles
To truly scale RPA, organizations will create new positions such as Bot Trainer, Bot Developer and RPA Manager, mainly for existing RPA-educated employees. Over time businesses will laos market their automation capabilities to help attract more RPA talent.
10. The rollout of 5G will allow for more data on mobile devices
With greater mobility thanks to next-generation 5G networks, top RPA vendors will develop mobile software development kits that will allow customers to manage their RPA bots from anywhere.
As it stands, RPA is positioned for a huge year in 2019. We’re on the brink of a continuous cycle in which more organizations will adopt RPA, driving down prices and, in turn, encouraging even more businesses to embrace RPA. The real winners will be those organizations that take RPA for what it is: a platform that automates mundane and time-consuming processes and helps build team morale and work productivity as a result.
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