RPA or Robotic Process Automation involves the computerization of tasks that are typically mundane rules-based business processes carried out manually. These tasks are often data-heavy and include, but aren’t limited to, data entry, transactions, and compliance. Wikipedia defines it as, “an emerging form of business process automation technology based on the notion of software robots or artificial intelligence (AI) workers.”
Research conducted at Hadoop reveals that the potential savings that companies can hope to experience with the adoption of RPA by 2025 can be anywhere between $5 trillion and $7 trillion. They also forecasted that RPA software will be able to perform tasks equal to the output of 140 million Full-Time Employees (FTEs) by the same year.
Further, as per Statista, the RPA industry is estimated to be worth $3.1 billion by 2019 and $4.9 billion by 2020. According to Forrester, this figure is likely to hover around $2.9 billion by 2021.
Of course, employees are the backbone of any startup. And employee performance is critical to the flawless functioning of business processes. While this aspect remains crucial, the role of technology is undeniable. And that’s why businesses are adopting Artificial Intelligence to streamline operations and reduce costs.
B2B businesses can certainly harness this technology to serve their clients better.
As B2B firms grow, they will want to:
- Automate their day-to-day processes
- Remove repetition
- Enable quick data entry and calculations
- Maintain records and transactions
- …and last but not least, replace human effort with software solutions to reduce the scope of errors.
Analysts forecast that in a few years, 40% of large global organizations will use RPA to automate work activities.
Players in highly-regulated industries such as finance, insurance, banking, healthcare, and manufacturing can particularly benefit from RPA. It also provides a cheap and quick way of dealing the problem of and adhering to the necessary industry compliance to maintain standards.
Every business wants a bright future, and RPA is the way to go ahead if you’re serious about achieving this. Several companies have realized this and are offering suitable solutions to startups.
Want to know which ones are changing the way startups function? Read on.
1. UiPath
Headquarters: New York
Established in: 2012
UiPath already enjoys a global presence and has plans to keep growing. One of the biggest names in RPA, it says, “Versatile and scalable, the UiPath robot automates >99%, while most robots automate 70%, and some, around 80%.”
UiPath caters to several industries including finance, insurance, healthcare, and manufacturing. It leverages third-parties like SAP, Oracle, Citrix, and Mainframe automation to give their robot intelligent “eyes” to “see” how objects relate, just like us humans. It lets them find screen elements contextually, and instantly adjust to screen changes.
UiPath also says its robots are about four times faster than other robots due to their ability to process screen changes in less than 100 milliseconds. It is on its way to becoming a leader in enabling back-office automation.
The company has been named the RPA provider with the strongest current offering in The Forrester Wave
2. Blue Prism
Headquarters: United Kingdom
Established in: 2001
Blue Prism’s RPA software enables businesses to respond to changes quickly and cost-effectively by automating manual, rule-based, administrative tasks and processes. This goes a long way in enhancing the accuracy of the outcome.
Blue Prism also creates virtual workforce comprising the operational teams or certified partners that use their robotic automation technology to enable processes. IT-governed frameworks and complex arrangements are harnessed to manage automation.
Organizations such as The Co-operative Banking Group, Shop Direct, RWE npower, Fidelity Investments, the NHS, and O2 employ Blue Prism’s technology to respond promptly to business changes through agile back office and administrative operations.
3. IntelliCog Technologies
Headquarters: New Delhi
Established in: 2016
IntelliCog is an end-to-end consulting and outsourcing firm that uses RPA and AI to provide solutions. Their offerings include RPA consulting and integration capabilities with the help of their proprietary frameworks.
They’re still a budding company that’s working towards ensuring zero-downtime and business continuity by deploying their knowledge, know-how, experience, and methodologies related to RPA and AI.
4. Kryon Systems
Headquarters: New York
Established in: 2009
Kryon Systems boasts of four offerings namely process discovery, unattended automation, attended automation, and hybrid automation, all of which are related to RPA. The level of automation, obviously, varies in each offering with unattended automation requiring the least human input. The hybrid level involves a human starting a job which is carried forward to completion by robots.
In the future, Kryon Systems aspires to create its own platform to be able to identify and automate a higher number of tasks and business processes and produce zero-error mistakes for immediate gains.
5. Automation Anywhere
Headquarters: San Jose, California
Established in: 2003
Automation Anywhere is the global leader in RPA technology. It employs both, software bots and human effort to get a lot of the repetitive work done across industries. It has empowered over 1,000 organizations with the aid of high-end technologies such as RPA, cognitive and embedded analytics. This, in turn, has led to reduced operational costs and errors, and better scaling.
The company has been the leading AI-enabled solutions provider of automation requirements in industries such as finance, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, technology, telecom, and logistics.
Recent reports about Automation Anywhere and its “historic $1.8 billion valuation” after spending 15 years in the industry have been encouraging. It has also been recognized as a leader in RPA by The Forrester Wave
6. Autologyx
Headquarters: United Kingdom
Established in: 2011
Formerly known as NowWeComply Limited, it changed its name to Autologyx in 2017. Autologyx provides “Automation as a Service” with a view to enabling clients to automate their business processes easily. Whether it is about performing repetitive tasks or sorting advanced processes that require expertise, Autologyx has its cloud platform for process automation ready.
The company has recently bagged a major player, global law firm Eversheds Sutherland Ignite as a client. The law firm is harnessing Autologyx’s robotic process automation platform to produce 3,000 leases that entailed going through numerable mails. Other noteworthy clients they boast of are T-Mobile, Boeing, Luxottica, and Adecco.
7. LarcAI
Headquarters: South Africa
Established in: 2015
Another young company that’s making waves in the global RPA industry is LarcAI. It relies heavily on UiPath as its RPA platform of preference for providing its services. This is because UiPath’s open architecture makes it possible to scale up, opening up new horizons. Also, business processes and third-party technologies can be integrated; but most importantly, UiPath is affordable.
LarcAI leverages top technologies from organizations like IBM Watson, Microsoft Cognitive Services, ABBYY, and Merlyn TOM for creating the best performing solutions and to gain competitive advantage.
8. RapidRPA
Headquarters: New York
Established in: 2016
RapidRPA, also known as Echelon|RPA worked in “stealth mode” for a while since starting operations. It employs “the nexus of Lean Six Sigma, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence” to deliver “unique and powerful capabilities to automate a range of mission-critical business processes, empowering the next-generation workforce to focus on more core activities that deliver greater value.”
The company claims that it is different from other solution providers as it makes use of intuitive user experiences to improve productivity instantly. Their cloud-based solutions involve the use of robots that work with multiple vendors and offer quick, easy and low-cost delivery. It also promises 500% ROI on productivity from Day 1 of its use.
9. Daythree Business Services
Headquarters: Malaysia
Established in: Information not available
Daythree transforms repetitive service processes, day-to-day manual work, and rule-based tasks into automated digital work with the help of software robots. The robots help in redesigning business processes to keep them simple and sound. The company claims that “We deliver benefits quickly where ROIs between 300–700% are common.”
Their RPA technology betters existing company software applications instead of replacing them, thereby working in harmony with the ongoing business processes.
They also offer IT and Knowledge Process services to help you stay head and shoulders above your competition. They have been the recipients of the GBS ISKANDAR Avant-Garde Award in 2017.
10. Sanbot
Headquarters: China
Established in: 2012
QIHAN Technology’s cloud-enabled intelligent service robots enable customizable applications across industries like healthcare, education, hospitality, security, and retail. These robots are powered by IBM Watson’s AI and feature Android SDK for open customization to improve customer experience and business growth.
CIO Advisor magazine named QIHAN Technology as one of the Top 10 APAC Robotic Process Automation Companies of 2017.
Sanbot Innovation is all set with more than 200 patents in technology including Machine Vision Recognition, Multi-axis Automatic Control, Big Data Analysis, and Cloud service to create abundant artificial intelligence solutions.
11. Softomotive
Headquarters: United Kingdom
Established in: 2005
This world-class RPA technology solutions provider claims to offer the most reliable and scalable automation, thereby combining the benefits of the best technology and constant innovation for optimal business transformation. Softomotive does this by providing a potent automation platform that empowers businesses to develop, manage and track their digital performers.
Sofotmotive’s RPA solutions help reduce business costs by 90% for regulated industries. They support all compliance regulation processes such as PCI-DSS, GLBA, FISMA, Joint Commission and HIPAA.
12. Cinnamon
Headquarters: Japan
Established in: 2016
Erstwhile Spicy Cinnamon and a photo-sharing app, the company decided to turn to robotic process automation and renamed itself, Cinnamon. It was reported that the startup was successful in raising large funds from several renowned angel investors.
Cinnamon’s main offering is a smart scanner called the Flax Scanner, which can mine information from documents like emails and agreements. It has the ability to decipher the data and digitize it. It can then fill up a database or other systems automatically with significant accuracy.
13. Kofax
Headquarters: California
Established in: 1985
Kofax was established with the aim to automate and transform manual processes across front and back operations, thereby resulting in improved customer engagement, reduced operating costs, meeting compliance requirements, and accelerating business growth.
It offers an array of software and solutions related to robotic process automation, business process management, multichannel capture and other important features that can be used on the cloud and on-premise.
Kofax boasts of over 20,000 customers across industries such as finance, insurance, healthcare, supply chain, government, BPOs, among others. Its products are available in over 70 countries. Kofax has been named as a Strong Performer in Forrester Wave
14. Pegasystems
Headquarters: Massachusetts
Established in: 1983
Pegasystems is a cloud-based unified platform that promises “321% ROI in less than 12 months. 75% cost savings. 75% productivity improvements.” It is powered by RPA and AI. They produce software bots that automate menial jobs that go on forever and call them “productivity bots.” These bots help simplify and enhance employee experiences and focus on increasing the business’s ROI.
Their solutions also help businesses deal with unforeseen industry changes, new applications, process re-engineering, and collaboration. Further, they automatically find processes to optimize and mitigate problems even before they arise.
15. WorkFusion
Headquarters: New York
Established in: 2010
WorkFusion merges together on one platform the main capabilities of business process management, robotic process automation, workforce orchestration, and AI-powered cognitive automation, workflow, intelligent conversational agents, crowdsourcing, and analytics. These help digitize complex business processes and transform them into world-class products built to simplify operations, increase productivity and improve service delivery.
WorkFusion has been named a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave
Conclusion
RPA is yet another outcome of advancing technology. It is mainly used to automate business processes based on logic and controlled inputs. RPA tools can help companies capture and understand applications for communicating with digital systems, triggering the desired responses, modifying data, and processing transactions. The above RPA startups are progressive in that they’re continually advancing and disrupting existing business practices.
Over To You
Are you excited about RPAs? Is this something you see yourself including in your business in the short to medium term? Are there any other RPA companies that you feel deserve a mention? (Note: if you include a link in your comment, it will be queued for moderation rather than auto-published).
You may also want to read: How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Can Be Used for Marketing
4 Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Impact The B2B Industry
Featured image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-white-and-brown-cardboard-box-toy-figure-678308/
Avinash Nair
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