Of businesses that are using RPA to automate their business processes, the average annual spend on the technology is nearly half a million dollars, with the largest companies investing more than $1 million each year, according to a new report. The survey of 400 executives, conducted by Sapio Research for RPA service provider Blueprint Software, also found that 40 percent of businesses use multiple RPA providers depending on the use case.
The State of Automation in 2022 also found Microsoft has made significant inroads in the RPA space, with more than three quarters of RPA users reporting that Power Automate was one of the tools they used—the most of any technology provider.
The survey focused mostly on midsize businesses to large enterprises and found the average number of automated processes reached 120, with the top 10 percent of companies having automated more than 250 processes.
As they examine the future path of their automation programs, business executives polled in the survey said they are focused on improving RPA governance, automating more complex processes, and applying RPA more broadly across the business and achieving scale.
“With larger automation estates, the total cost of ownership for RPA and a strong desire to automate more complex, end-to-end business processes, organizations are looking to newer generation, intelligent automation platforms,” says Dan Shimmerman, president and CEO of Blueprint. “The automation space is quickly moving beyond task-based automation to complete, end-to-end intelligent automation with the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence to automate decision-based business processes.”