The market for RPA software is still relatively small, albeit with substantial potential for growth. In 2016, the market for RPA was only 250 MUSD. The IT markets analyst Forrester projects the market to reach 2.9 BUSD by 2021. With such continuous exponential growth, the market could reach a volume higher than 8 BUSD by 2025.
The market is still affected by the rapid growth of RPA as a discipline and the parallel discussion of what constitutes RPA. As a result of this, the definition of RPA is not used consistently in the market, which is reflected in the somewhat substantial differences in the features that RPA software suppliers offer.
As a consequence, the market can seem as something of a jungle and it can be difficult to assess the pros and cons of the different RPA solutions. As a potential buyer of RPA software, it is therefore essential to be aware of the level of workflow automation needed and which core RPA features the solutions offer.
In this report, we have limited our analysis of the RPA suppliers to those who are either specialised in RPA or dedicated to developing extensive RPA as an addition to their existing software suite. We have also limited our focus to the French market.
This choice is made knowing that traditional suppliers of standard solutions such as ERP, CMS (Content Management System) and CRM systems often contain software components applying elements of RPA.
Furthermore, we have not included software solutions and platforms targeting the discipline of data science and data-driven automation such as Watson and Antworks as well as the Cloud platforms from Google, Amazon and Microsoft.
RPA software suppliers
The RPA software suppliers included in this assessment are:
- Automation Anywhere (US – privately owned) – automationanywhere.com
- Blue Prism (UK – listed on the London Stock Exchange) – blueprism.com
- Epiance RPA (India – privately owned) – epi- plex500.com
- Jacada (US – listed on OTC Markets – OTCQB) – jacada.com
- Kryon Leo (Israel – privately owned) – kryon-systems.com
- Kofax Kapow (US – part of, and owned by, Lexmark, formerly ReadSoft) – kofax.com
- Nice RPA (Israel – listed on Nasdaq) – nice.com
- OpenConnect (US – privately owned) – open- connect.com
- Pegasystems Pega Robotics (US – listed on Nasdaq) – pega.com
- Redwood Software Robotics (NL – privately owned) – redwood.com
- UIPath (UK – owned by private equity funds) – uipath.com
- WorkFusion (US – owned by private equity funds) – workfusion.com
- Thoughtonomy (UK –privately owned) – thoughtonomy.com
Implementation partners
There is a wide variety of implementation partners, ranging from small local companies to the large consulting firms and IT integrators that have formed partnerships with the RPA software suppliers.
The implementation partners are companies with a formal implementation partnership with the software suppliers. This does not cover independent management consulting firms advising on the use of RPA.
A consolidated list of the large implementation partners and IT integrators is provided in table 1. Please note that not all RPA software solutions are represented. Also note that this is only a listing of the known partnerships, not a list reflecting actual RPA revenue generation or customer base. We do not have numbers for the different partners’ revenue, customers or other types of the market data.
Table 1 : Implementation & Consulting Partners
Assessing the RPA software suppliers
There is not one single RPA software solution that is best for every RPA scenario. The solutions all have different advantages, features and tools. Which solution will fit your organisation’s needs depends on the IT and business contexts, the scope, and the business objectives of implementing RPA. Does the process handling need advanced tools, what are the points of attention in terms of the general IT portfolio, potential pitfalls, etc.?
We have based our assessment of the different suppliers’ software on what we consider core features of RPA software:
- Attended Automation: Automation requiring human interaction.
- Unattended Automation: Automation not requiring any human interaction.
- Performs end-to-end: Automation on entire end-to-end processes.
- Machine Learning: The ability for the robots to enhance the performance of their tasks on their own without human influence.
- Analysing data: The robots provide analytics and insights of their work or other processes to be improved.
- Pattern recognition: The robots are able to recognise patterns in large amounts of data using advanced algorithms.
- History collection: The automation reports on historic changes in processes and data handling for the customer to review.
Table 2 offers our assessment of the software’s support of those core RPA features. The assessment is based on the information available on the suppliers’ websites.
The main features provided by the software are marked by an x, whereas features that are only partly supported are marked by (x).
Table 2 : Assessing the RPA software solutions
Categorising the RPA software solutions
The solutions are categorised looking at two factors:
- Whether the solutions are specialised in RPA or develops RPA as an addition to their existing software suite.
- Whether the solutions can be considered as leaders or pursuers on the RPA market.
The four categories that emerge from this view on the RPA software solutions are:
- The leading RPA specialists
- The pursuing RPA specialists
- The leading other software providers that include RPA in their solutions
- The pursuing other software providers that include RPA in their solutions
The software solutions included in our assessment are situated according to these four categories as shown on figure 4.
Figure 4. Overview – RPA software suppliers
The leading RPA specialists
This category of RPA solutions is characterised as being well-known solutions with a strong holding in the RPA market. The solutions are generally characterised by offering both attended and unattended automation of end-to-end processes with a variety of advanced RPA tools.
The tools of these solutions enable flexible process automation, thereby supporting a wide range of automation possibilities.
The tools include the ability to accumulate large amounts of data “experience” that can be used to analyse patterns in order to refine the process handling.
Automation Anywhere has, since 2003, helped customers to automate repetitive processes, both attended and unattended. The product suite includes add-on modules for analytics and Machine Learning for intelligent automation and complex decisionmaking. Automation Anywhere aims to shield users from the complexity of building RPA robots and has the aim of enabling non-technical users to build automations without the involvement of IT.
UiPath’s RPA Enterprise Platform allows both attended and unattended automation. Through partnerships with ElasticSearch and Kibana, insights and analytics are monitored, collected and visualised. Partnerships with Microsoft and Google allow intelligent automation with Machine Learning capabilities and real-time learning among language meaning and emotions, and use it for complex decision-making.
Blue Prism delivers RPA which is designed towards enterprise organisations and built for multi-environment deployment. Their service allows attended and unattended automation and has code-free configuration. Analytics and Machine Learning are incorporated into the service and provide a full end-toend solution, while storing historic data on access, configuration changes and process execution.
Furthermore, the solutions in this category are able to apply Machine Learning using advanced algorithms in order to analyse data and improve the process execution without human intervention.
UI Path, Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere are dedicated RPA solutions known for these features and current leaders on the market.
The pursuing RPA specialists:
The pursuing RPA specialists also include dedicated RPA software solutions. At this point, these solutions do not possess as strong a hold on the market as the leading RPA specialists. They are, however, dedicated to supporting the RPA discipline as their main objective and some solutions in this category are expected to potentially gain a leading position in the market in the coming year.
The solutions also offer both attended and unattended automation of end-toend processes with advanced RPA tools. Accumulation of experience and Machine Learning are among the tools offered in these solutions.
OpenConnect, Kryon, Epiance, Thoughtonomy and WorkFusion are placed in this group.
The leading other software providers that include RPA in their solutions:
This category of RPA solutions is characterised by providing RPA as an addition to their existing software suite.
The RPA features and tools of some of these solutions enable both attended and unattended automation of end-toend processes and advanced features such as accumulation of experience, data analysis and Machine Learning.
Furthermore, some of these solutions are well integrated into the software, which supports the core business processes to which the systems are dedicated. This enables highly effective appliance of RPA on the processes this covers.
Kofax Kapow applies RPA as their support of Digital Workforce.
Kapow can handle many different kinds of data in different formats and automate processes, both when attended and unattended.
When combined with Kofax’s other services, the solution is also able to integrate Machine Learning into document classification, separation and extraction of all document types. Kofax Kapow is a part of the many services Kofax provides, of which most were integrated and benefit from each other.
The pursuing other software providers that include RPA in their solutions:
This category of RPA solutions is characterised by providing RPA as an addition to their existing software suite. These solutions are characterised by including less mature RPA tools than the similar solutions leading the market. However, some of the solutions in this category are well on the way to offering more sophisticated tools and are in the process of securing a stronger position on the market.
Pegasystems, Redwood, Jacada, Nice and Verint are some of the solutions assessed to be in this category.
