Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in Australia and New Zealand is set for a growth explosion with the RPA market predicted to reach $870 million by 2020 – up from just $216 million in 2017.
The forecast growth of the market is expected on the back of the embracing of automation by ANZ across multiple industry sectors in both countries.
According to a newly published study - ANZ Robotic Process Automation – from research firm Telsyte, RPA has many uses across industries with large customer support and request processing requirements like insurance, banking, telecommunications and government.
And Telsyte says finance and insurance operations are expected to be the fastest adopters of RPA in the short term.
{loadposition peter}Telsyte’s RPA maturity model classifies the organisation’s stage of RPA adoption from not using RPA, to a mature, established use of RPA in the organisation - and despite the growth forecasts - shows most organisations are still at the basic stages of adoption.
According to Telsyte, RPA is now being used or investigated by 6 out of 10 ANZ organisations with greater than 20 employees, and already 12% are in production with a RPA strategy in place.
But in larger organisations - with more than 500 employees – just 38% have active RPA programs already, which Telsyte says shows automation is becoming a cornerstone of many business transformation strategies.
According to Telsyte Managing Director, Foad Fadaghi, the business case for RPA is clear, but he says IT and business leaders need to look to partners that can understand their business problems and to improve efficiencies while generating a competitive advantage.
“RPA is not simply about cost cutting, it can drive innovation and change the way organisation’s conduct their business altogether.
“A proof-of-concept is important for organisations to first understand the nature of processes that can be best solved through RPA, before progressing to an enterprise-wide strategy,” Fadaghi says.
“Equally important is to use of pilot programs to understand the change management requirements before a further roll out.”
Telsyte recommends organisations assess the processes to be automated by their level of complexity.
According to Telsyte, complexity has a positive correlation with automation costs and targeting lower-complexity processes initially can result in better initial returns.