Introduction to Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Unit 1
Topics Covered…
• Understanding a robotic process
• RPA history and drivers
• RPA market size, growth forecasts, landscape
• How RPA fits in with other digital initiatives: Machine Learning – Big Data - Artificial Intelligence
• Business value of RPA
• Effect of automation on people
• How to get started
Understanding a robotic process
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can be defined as the automation of high-volume and
repetitive and mundane manual processes, by engaging advanced software robots a.k.a.
‘bots’.
• RPA enables productivity optimization to the maximum by redefining the way work is
executed and reassigning employees to perform customer-centric and higher-value
activities.
• RPA at a higher level can be configured to work on command interfaces as well as, o ine
with SQL databases.
• According to a report by McKinsey & Company, up to “45% of the activities individuals are
paid to perform can be automated using current RPA tools”. Additionally, McKinsey &
Company also predicted that the additional labor productivity of RPA is expected to be
equivalent to the output of between 110 million to 140 million workers. These figures
bring out the importance of RPA as a tool of choice for business leaders, looking to
transform dated functions and achieve business goals.
• Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) or Cognitive Process Automation
(CPA) to leverage the power of AI-based technologies such as
Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Cognitive
Computing.
• When combined with these next-generation digital technologies, RPA
will evolve into Intelligent Process Automation/ Cognitive Process
Automation, delivering additional value by learning and adapting to
optimize its processes.
RPA History and Drivers
• The history of RPA dates back to early 2000 as a growing
technology. However, it depended on artificial intelligence, screen
scraping, and workflow automation.
• Screen Scraping software was the first technology that created a
bridge between newer systems and incompatible legacy systems.
Recently, it has been used to extract data from the web on the
presentation layer.
• It was one of the AI Technologies, that immediately took off into the
market, compared to the other technologies like ML, DL, NLP, etc.
• With the onset of the mass and customized production units
mushrooming all over the world, robotics was a lifesaver for many
of the companies that aimed at low cost and efficient manpower
reduction.
RPA History and Drivers: The 1990s: Adopting automation
for UI testing

• The story of RPA started with the automation of user interface (UI) testing. It
usually means testing visual elements of interfaces to make sure they work
correctly and a user won’t encounter any issues working with the app.
• Back in the 90s, there were few computer models on the market, especially
compared to nowadays. However, the primary typical computer user persona
started to shift from huge corporations’ and governmental organizations’
employees to ordinary home-based users.
• This was largely due to the emergence of Windows 95, the canonical operating
system of that time. As a result, the shift kickstarted UI testing development as
the requirements and screen sizes became more diverse.
• At the end of the 90s – early 2000s, companies came to the agile development
concept, one of the key values of which is the prioritization of people over
processes and tools.
• Organizations also recognized the need to speed up their operations to stay
competitive in the marketplace. Thus, out of necessity, various UI testing and
quality assurance (QA) automation scripts were born.
RPA History and Drivers: The 2000s: Banking and
insurance automation

• The first key elements for RPA, as we know it now, emerged in the early 2000s.
A big part of this was screen scraping technology, which is the automation of
extracting data from an application to use it for other purposes. It turned out to
be a significant boost to the efficiency and effectiveness of businesses that had
to handle large amounts of data of all sorts.
• No wonder that banks and insurance companies were among the first ones to
embrace the idea. Industries like these were becoming more subject to
regulation, and RPA was a good way to reduce the amount of paperwork and
improve compliance.
• Another reason why banks and insurance companies were the pioneers of
automation is that they had resources available. However, automation
technologies still had their drawbacks. One of them was a high entry threshold.
If a company wanted to automate its processes at that time, it would likely
result in building a complex IT environment. The latter required expensive
engineering skills and time-consuming integrations.
RPA History and Drivers: The
2010s: Enterprise automation
• The real pivotal point for the RPA technology occurred around
2012 when the technology was finally officially recognized by
large-scale businesses. There was a combination of factors that
made it possible, such as:
• Businesses were looking for ways to reduce their expenses in
light of the recent financial crisis.
• Businesses realized the need for digital transformation, and
RPA was considered an easy and affordable (in corporate rates,
of course) solution for going digital.
• These factors led to RPA taking the world by storm, as more
and more enterprises started adopting RPA for their mission-
critical tasks.
RPA History and Drivers: 2020s: Mid-market
and SMB automation
• The 2020s are truly the time of RPA democratization and the growing impact
of RPA on all segments of economics.
• The democratization is possible through the gradual departure from costly
licensing fees previously only affordable to enterprises, to
building partnerships with managed service providers to enable the RPA-as-a-
service model.
• It allows the RPA technology to expand to smaller businesses and provide
SMBs with massive productivity outcomes.
• In fact, we already see more and more evidence of RPA in SMBs moving from
pilots and proof of concepts to real-time production in much shorter times than
Enterprises do.
• According to the 2021 report by Xerox, one of the largest ElectroNeek’s
partners, 80% of SMB leaders saw automating tasks and processes as
important to their survival with two-thirds planning on upgrading their
automation tools.
Proven Results of RPA Adoption
• A total of 61% of participants reported their expectations of cost reduction being met or
exceeded. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• 63% of participants plan to engage with an implementation partner to support their RPA
implementation, while 19% plan to use RPA vendors for support, and 15% will handle RPA
internally. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• More than 90% of C-level executives using intelligent automation say their organization
performs above average in managing organizational change in response to emerging
business trends. (IBM)
• 75% of organizations profiled reported that they had already realized cost-saving targets by
leveraging labor arbitrage in 2016. (Deloitte Global Outsourcing Survey)
• 80% of the automation effort which is focused on exception handling, can be improved thanks
to better process understanding. (QPR)
• Automation will not displace employees, however, it is expected that 861,000 public sector
jobs will be lost to automation by 2030 saving £17 billion off the public sector payments in
2030 compared to 2015. (Deloitte State of the State report)
RPA Market Size
• There are various estimates on the market size but most sources point to a ~$2 billion
market in 2021 and strong (30+%) growth rates for the next years.
• The RPA industry will grow from $250 million in 2016 to $2.9 billion in 2021. (Forrester)
• Robotic process automation (RPA) software revenue grew 63% in 2018 to $846
million. With nine of the top 10 vendors changing market share positions in 2018.
• The RPA software market revenue was expected to reach $1.9 billion in 2021
• The global RPA market size is already valued at $1.40 billion in 2019 and is expected
to reach $11 billion by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 34% from 2020 to 2027 (Grand
View Research).
• By 2025, the market for collaborative robotics is expected to reach $12 billion
(MarketsAndMarkets)
• The potential economic impact of knowledge work automation is expected to be $5-7
trillion by 2025. (Automation Anywhere)
RPA Future Adoption: Growth
forecasts
• Manufacturing is the top industry to leverage RPA in 2021
(35%), followed by: (Acceleration Economy)
• Technology (31%)
• Healthcare (10%)
• Retail and CPG (8%)
• Finance (8%)
• Public sector (5%)
• Education (3%)
Adoption of cognitive RPA

• As organizations progress in their adoption of RPA, they tend to

become more ambitious with cognitive technologies. More than
a quarter (28%) of those implementing and scaling RPA is also
implementing cognitive automation, while only 6% of those that
have not implemented RPA are progressing with cognitive
automation. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• More than 90% of C-level executives report some level of
intelligent automation already exists within their organizations.
(IBM)
RPA Vs AI

Simply put, we can compare RPA vs. AI with “doing vs. thinking” or muscles
and brain. The difference between these two notions lies in their focus:
•RPA → process-centric
•AI → data-driven
Above, we mentioned RPA’s capability to automate routine work by the example of
invoice processing. Whereas RPA is able to retrieve and download the invoices and create
the bills via “copy and paste” actions, AI algorithms are required to extract the relevant
data (i.e. supplier name, invoice number, product description, etc.) and intelligently
interpret and manage the variability.

With explicitly scripted activities in robotic process automation, it is not feasible for the
bot to extract specific information for each received invoice. Therefore, AI comes into
action to decipher the data as a human can do.
RPA Vs ML
Business Value of RPA: The
suitability of RPA cases
RPA suits the following incidences in the organizations:
• The task is highly manual and tedious
• There is a high likelihood of human error
• The task is rule-based with low exceptions
• High volume and time consuming
• Human judgment is not involved
• Repetitive in nature
• Involves two or more document formats
Enhancing the business values thru RPA
Effect of Automation on people:
Improved Mental Health
• Initial anxiety that RPA would take over jobs has largely
been relieved with employees benefiting from RPA
solutions. Although RPA has indeed made some jobs
redundant, in most cases, it has led to human workers
and RPA bots co-existing and allowing human
employees to work intelligently while the heavy lifting,
in terms of repetitive tasks, is performed by bots. This
leads to happy employees which means they are more
productive and willing to work harder.
Effect of Automation on people: New
Career Opportunities
• RPA not only augments the workforce in their everyday
work but also unlocks new opportunities to expand the
workforce. While some jobs may be taken over by RPA,
several new positions like robot monitoring, automation
specialists, data scientists, and other roles will be
created. According to Forrester, in the US alone, 14.9
million new jobs are expected to be created by 2027
because of RPA automation.
Effect of Automation on people:
Increased Interpersonal Relationships
• Employees working in repetitive, high-volume tasks
often spend a lot of time working in isolation which can
affect productivity and employee experience. As RPA
takes over menial work, employees are able to engage
with others more and share information and experience
which can be helpful for individual growth and overall
company culture.
Effect of Automation on people:
Consumerized Experiences
• Employees are used to getting quick, accurate
responses from say, an e-commerce website. They
expect the same level of service and responsiveness
from their work too, especially when requesting
information from HR and IT departments. In
organizations that have implemented RPA in IT and HR,
meeting these expectations is easy. An
RPA-enabled IT service desk or HR department can
provide quick responses to employee requests.
How to get started
How to get started
How to get started
How to get started
How to get started
 Examples
RPA can Never Replace Humans – Savita Hortikar, Head of Talent
Acquisition, ThoughtWorks India
• Automation, a popular emerging technology has an assured place in the
future of global businesses. Its impact extends not just to core IT services but
also people management and talent acquisition functions.
• When it comes to the changing nature of jobs; the shift is towards new
productivity-enhancing processes alongside the creation of entirely new roles.
• Specialist roles such as AI, ML or IoT specialists, Big Data specialists,
automation experts, security specialists, machine interaction specialists,
robotics engineers are on the rise.
• In relation to hiring, while RPA will and can never completely replace human
interaction, it can save time when carrying out repetitive tasks like a
candidate or resume screening, scheduling interviews, and rudimentary email
responses.
• As the tech evolves, a deeper level of interaction will be possible with the help
of chatbots or voice-bots to conduct initial rounds of interviews.
 Examples
RPA will Enable Humans to Focus on more Sophisticated Skills – Faisal
Husain, Ceo- Cofounder, Synechron

• Today, innovation in automation technologies have ushered in a new age of

corporate robots using RPA and AI to automate manual, repetitive work.
• Advances in RPA and AI technologies have the potential to change fundamentally
the way enterprise workforces operate.
• RPA can have relevant use cases in all enterprise functions such as Customer
Service, Operations, HR, IT and Finance that will transform workforce designs and
create hybrid structures where robots and humans work together.
• As these robots automate the most mundane, repetitive tasks, humans will need
to refocus their efforts or acquire more sophisticated skills to thrive in this new
model.
• Robots, on the other hand, will require scalable and more advanced AI
innovations to enable them to learn and become increasingly effective across the
enterprise. This is an area where skilled humans can add new value.
 Examples
RPA will Lead to Upskilling – Kalki V Yasas, Senior Director –
Services, Salesforce India
• “The World Economic Forum believes workforce shifts will be
significant, with up to 35% of the skills currently in demand likely
to change by 2020.
• As the adoption of AI and automation becomes more widespread,
businesses need to adapt quickly to workforce transitions.
• India is home to some of the best technology talent in the world
and is known for its innovation potential – It is our prerogative
therefore, as businesses, to empower employees & our extended
ecosystem with skills for the future.
• Widespread job displacement in the future will not be because of
technology or automation, but because of our inability to train and
upskill the workforce (& our ecosystem of employees, partners &
customers) to embrace the positive impact of automation.
End of Unit 1