Cost and time savings with the implementation of RPA will expected to boost the RPA (robotic process automation) software and services market from $13.9 billion to $22 billion by 2025, a new report from Forrester shows.
“It is the very direct ROI that still attracts enterprises or C-suite executives,” said Leslie Joseph, principal analyst at Forrester. “RPA continues to be compelling since pre-pandemic because you have a raft of legacy applications that don’t typically allow for automation,” Joseph added.
Report further states that RPA software market to grow from $2.4 billion in 2021 to reach $6.5 billion by 2025. Growth is expected because of pandemic-induced automation demand and ongoing push for digital transformation programs through 2022, before slightly flattening due to technology evolution and inflation in 2023.
RPA vendors such as Blue Prism, UiPath, and Automation Anywhere iwill drive RPA adoption, segment growth in the next few years, Joseph said.
As stated by authors, “Embedding RPA into enterprise software suites or making RPA part of a broader intelligent automation play is a long-term trend as enterprises build a heterogeneous automation fabric. Forrester predicts that in 2022, 5 percent of Fortune 500 companies will adopt an automation fabric to drive automation fuelled business transformation.”
RPA services market to reach $16 billion
The RPA services market is expected to increase from $11.5 billion in 2021 to reach $16 billion by 2025, backed by major consultancies, global systems integrators, and business process outsourcers who in turn have a track record of using RPA not only to support cost reduction, but also to extend their clients’ broader transformation goals.
Vendors are also shifting their focus towards automation-based solutions, rather than standard RPA, the report reveals.
The report, which further divides the services market into implementation services (60%) and consulting (40%), which includes strategy, process selection and governance, forecasts that spending on consulting and support will decline as integrated product capabilities start to show maturity and cloud deployment and as-a-service models drive down support costs.
North America and Europe are expected to dominate RPA growth, followed by Asia-Pacific, which Joseph said was “catching up fast.” Financial services, followed by public services and healthcare, will lead RPA adoption.
What will happen to top RPA vendors like Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere and UiPath?
Joseph: All these guys that are in the RPA business are critically aware that when automation starts moving to this more differentiation-centric, transformation-centric kind of construct, these guys are the first guys who are going to go under the ax. They are the most brittle form of automation. Nobody’s building durable, long-lasting enterprise applications using RPA. They’re just using it as a Band-Aid.
There’s this whole movement within the RPA industry to start to integrate more capabilities to be an automation fabric platform more than just an RPA platform.
While the report expects to see RPA growth flatten from 2023, Joseph said that uptake of RPA will be replaced by what Forrester calls automation fabric — a broad weave of technology via platforms that bring together current automation options such as BPM (business process management), RPA, low-code development software, iPaaS (integration platform as a service), and AI — in order to enable employees to orchestrate workflow as required.
“By 2022, 5% of Fortune 500 companies will adopt an automation fabric to drive automation fuelled business transformation,” Joseph said.
“Any enterprise should democratize the understanding of processes and how to use automation to improve them,” Joseph said. “Otherwise, applying automation technologies will lead to redundant, low-quality, noncompliant, unsustainable automations that can risk your company’s reputation. Therefore, we strongly believe in the rise of citizen process experts who use task and process mining tools as naturally as business developers build and run automations.”