Is Robotic Process Automation (RPA) losing its gilt?

Since the term Robotic Process Automation (RPA) was coined only a handful of years ago, the fervour of activities have been frenetic. How do things look today?

Robotic Process Automation is the use of software robots that replicate the actions of human operators freeing up capacity to perform more valuable activities. If the number of industry seminars and job advertisements (288 on SEEK Australia at the time of writing) are anything to go by, RPA conversations have picked up significantly in Australia over the last twelve months.

Financial Services organisations have led the charge so far; finance, accounting, human resources and other shared services functions adopting widely. Leading service partners have established significant delivery capabilities including global competency centres and hundreds of people trained in the core RPA technology platforms. The prospect of implementation within months with relatively low upfront investment and payback within the year are hard to ignore in the economic climate we live in.

However, conversations are bubbling up on whether RPA has delivered to its promise. I have heard ‘burnt by the Bots’ in many conversations over the last fortnight. What is the reality? Is it a natural progression to more mature conversations or another hype meeting the inevitable?

Despite many successes, the last couple of years of RPA around the world have provided important learnings. Scaling up from a Proof of Concept or Pilot taking longer than anticipated, economic outcomes not always as attractive, ongoing costs of maintenance, product licensing conditions and production-grade infrastructure requirements increasing the entry barrier.

These conversations are expected and are being worked through. One particular topic gathering momentum is around the investment models - to be able to start small and scale up, have greater predictability of ongoing costs and greater certainty of financial returns.

A global financial services institution is ensuring minimum payback by forcing a ceiling on implementation cost as a proportion of anticipated benefits for each process. An entertainment company is pursuing a gain share model with the service partner with a Min-Max cost model. Many others are pursuing a model of deferred investment or co-investment with gain share arrangements.

Another model that addresses the major stumbling blocks is RPA as-a-service. In this utility model, an experienced service partner provides all services (or parts) from opportunity identification-to-deployment, infrastructure and ongoing maintenance including licensing costs for a service usage fee.

This is not a surprise in our sharing economy. The collective scale and experience of the eco-system drastically improves efficiency and predictability, thereby reducing costs and increasing the certainty of outcome.

As the as-a-service model matures, it has the potential to accelerate adoption of RPA in organisations of all sizes. Having processed over five million RPA transactions for our clients and the going by the interest locally in Australia and around the world, we anticipate a significant progress over the next six to twelve months.

How is your RPA initiative going?