Businesses globally will spend more than $20 billion annually on RPA software and services by 2030, up from less than $5 billion last year, according to a new report from Global Data. According to Thematic Research: Robotic Process Automation ($), organizations have responded to the disruption caused during Covid-19 by investing in RPA technology that reduces their “dependency on a human workforce.”
The report notes that RPA has evolved from a standalone technology into a key component of intelligent automation that provides businesses with a relatively easy way to kickstart digital transformation initiatives.
“Covid-19 highlighted the necessity of coordinating automation across a business,” said Nicklas Nilsson, consultant for thematic research at GlobalData. “This has accelerated the development of RPA as companies move away from stand-alone automation capabilities and instead offer RPA as part of a broader toolkit of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, allowing for end-to-end automation of more complex business processes.”
The GlobalData research indicated much of the expansion in the market is the result of software giants like Microsoft and Salesforce integrating RPA capability through M&A activity and early RPA pioneers like Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism and UiPath bolstering their offering with “adjacent business process technologies” like process mining and intelligent document processing.