Top 10 robotic process automation benefits, barriers, and adoption trends

Top 10 robotic process automation benefits, barriers, and adoption trends

March 22, 2023

Kate Aleksandrovich
by Kate Aleksandrovich, Head of RPA Center of Excellence

The robotic process automation (RPA) market has been steadily growing over the past few years, enabling bots to take on tedious and repetitive tasks, freeing employees' capacity, and, therefore, boosting business performance. Adopting robotic process automation services brings significant business and financial benefits.

RPA is a popular form of business process automation, enabling ‘robots’ – codified systems – to perform various rule-based tasks. RPA software emulates human actions and can perform more high-volume tasks in less time.

Table of contents

10 RPA solutions

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The state of the robotic process automation market

Scheme title: Top AI capabilities embedded in products or business processes (in %)

Data source: mckinsey.com — The state of AI in 2022—and a half decade in review

Robotic process automation, empowered by AI technologies, has remained the leading AI-enabled solution organizations implement, followed by computer vision, natural language processing, virtual agents, and deep learning, according to McKinsey.

Scheme title: Proximity to an ideal organization, transformed by intelligent automation

Data source: deloitte.com — Automation with intelligence, 2022 Note: N = 341

74% of the latest Deloitte survey respondents are already implementing RPA. This number is supported by McKinsey research, stating that 70% of respondents are at least piloting automation technologies, up from 66% in 2020. Have they reached their ‘ideal’ automation transformation? Not yet, but they passed the midpoint in 2022. The organizations’ self-assessment scores surged from 4.41 out of 10 in 2020 to 5.04 out of 10 in 2022.

Top 10 RPA benefits

Will RPA implementation bring businesses a competitive advantage and significant financial gains? First, let's delve into the top capabilities unlocked by RPA adoption.

Reduced costs

The need to lower operational costs is one of the main driving factors for the RPA market. Robotic process automation technology has already proven the ability to cut the cost of a full-time offshore employee by half, according to ResearchAndMarkets. In addition, it has created a shift from labor arbitrage to lower labor costs from 25 to 40% in IT environments and other business processes. The study also highlighted that an RPA bot could substitute two to five employees and take up their workload, improving operational efficiency and reducing costs.

For example, Gartner estimates that the average amount of rework caused by human mistakes in accounting departments can take up to 30% of employees' overall working time. By deploying bots with a zero-error rate, it's possible to save 25,000 hours per year, which results in an $878,000 cost cut for a company with 40 full-time accountants.

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Successful RPA implementation examples

RPA bot for HRM system

RPA bot for HRM system

Itransition developed an RPA bot that helps to automate HR processes. The solution implementation resulted in 4x faster candidate processing with 0% errors.

less human interaction

Video title: RPA for talent acquisition: automated CV processing

RPA adoption results

The list of RPA use cases expands across various industries, including financial services, telecommunications, logistics, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail. According to Protiviti’s Global RPA Survey, the primary three benefits, regardless of the industry and the implementation stage, included increased productivity, better quality, and a stronger competitive position.

Scheme title: Top benefits of RPA by industry

Data source: protiviti.com — 2019 global RPA survey Protiviti. Taking RPA to the next level

Weighted average for importance of RPA benefits by industry. The average was derived by assigning a weight of 3 to the top benefit, 2 to the second most important benefit, and 1 to the third most important benefit, then dividing by the number of weights (6) and multiplying by 100

Meanwhile, in its 2022 survey, Deloitte highlights that organizations are adopting intelligent automation solutions mainly to benefit from cost reduction, increased productivity, improved accuracy, and better customer experience. By adopting automation solutions, organizations anticipate average cost savings of 31% over the next three years (up from 24% in 2020) and increased revenue of 24% (up from 15%).

Scheme title: Increased revenue, cost reduction, and payback period

Data source: deloitte.com — Automation with intelligence, 2022

Note: 2019: N = 302; 2020: N = 320; 2021-22: N = 341

Barriers to scaling intelligent automation

Organizations adopting automation solutions continuously face significant challenges, holding back their digital transformation. Although there is no band-aid to all the challenges, here are some practical steps companies can take.

Barrier

Solution

Process fragmentation

Barrier

Fragmented and immature processes that are difficult to manage

Barrier

Solution

Cut down process fragmentation, moving towards an end-to-end automation approach

Drive standardization across processes; consider using process mining and process monitoring

Clear vision

Barrier

Lack of enterprise-wide automation strategy and vision

Barrier

Solution

Work with C-suite to develop a clear vision and strategy; build a robust automation roadmap

Persuade stakeholders by quantifying all the automation opportunities

IT readiness

Barrier

Lack of IT readiness to adopt various automation technologies

Barrier

Solution

Attract IT representatives from the early automation stages, cutting the gap between business and IT needs

Adapt to the new technological landscape and automation initiatives

Resistance to change

Barrier

Employees do not always support RPA automation

Barrier

Solution

Engage and empower employees with low-code and citizen-led automation development

Communicate the changes and arrange training for all the affected employees

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Automation works: make it work for you

Almost all the organizations which tapped into the automation process consider it a key component of their digital transformation strategy. RPA benefits and results proved the solution’s viability in various economic sectors, highlighting the need for further scale, development, and transformation efforts. Whether a newbie or an experienced automation adopter, you need a professional RPA and intelligent automation partner. Itransition is ready to step up and come up with an ultimate automation solution suitable to your most deliberate business needs and objectives.

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