WhY enterprISeS ShoUld adopt roBotIC proCeSS aUtomatIon

Cognitive technologies that learn, recognize and process languages, design and imagine like a human, are poised to transform the IT and BPO industry, with the global market expected to touch $5 billion by 2020

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Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology is emerging as one of the key forces to drive benefits across multiple dimensions in an organisation– cost savings, efficiency, accuracy, scalability, and compliance by automating key aspects of highly skilled knowledge work. Cognitive technologies that learn, recognize and process languages, designs and imagine like a human are poised to transform businesses globally. The implications of such capabilities are expected to drive revolutionary transformations in every industry, particularly IT and BPO. Considering these opportunities, the global RPA industry is expected to reach a market potential of $5 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 60.5 per cent.

40% savings in labour costs

In the last decade, ERP and shared services concepts fuelled the emergence and growth of IT services as a key enabler for driving cost savings and improving service efficiency. IT services industry has for long been looking at the next level of radical ideas which will bring quantum savings and service improvements. Broadly, these initiatives have been have been plugged under the non-linear umbrella. The evolving capabilities of robotic process automation (RPA), cognitive technology fuelled by big data, analytics, cloud, AI and machine learning hold the promise of transforming business services and creating a new category of digital labour. In fact, while the transformational powers of robotics and cognitive automation are only in their infancy stage, the work of more than 100 million knowledge workers across the globe may be impacted by automation over the next 10 years. Cognitive powered RPA will help purge and automate the tedious and routine aspects of jobs and allow workers to concentrate on bigger tasks at hand and make good decisions and innovate. Instead of tying up talent with monotonous tasks, businesses can automate more activities and access the most appropriate and expensive skills and talent to provide input and handle exceptions on demand.

An excellent example would be how an end-to end automation solution for a large apparel company helped reduce labour costs. After deployment, the manual process which took close to 5.6 hours was