Nearly 50% of firms likely to invest in RPA to boost productivity: Automation Anywhere

Nearly 50% of firms intend to invest in intelligent automation and robotic process automation (RPA) to improve business productivity and cut operational costs in a post Covid-19 world, as per a study. 

San Jose, California-based RPA provider Automation Anywhere surveyed over 5,000 senior executives from midsize and large organisations in India and about 20 other countries across the Middle East and emerging markets in Africa and Southeast Asia, for the study. 

Additionally, over 80% of those surveyed plan to use digital technology to build resilience for their future business plans, the report said.

“The pandemic has encouraged a new wave of digitisation that will revolutionise our life as we know it. Organisations are transforming their engagements with customers, employees, suppliers and other stakeholders and will leverage the current crisis as an opportunity to drive innovative digital models to gain increased efficiencies,” Milan Sheth, executive vice president for the India, Middle East and Africa (IMEA) region at Automation Anywhere, said. 

Watch: Five use cases for RPA in manufacturing in the post Covid-19 world

More than 70% of the respondents anticipate that nearly half of their workforce will consist of digital workers, while over a quarter expect at least 80% to be a digital workforce, the study said.

The estimates come on the heels of layoffs across sectors, as organisations choose to shuter physical offices and restructure their operational and functional strategies from a digital perspective.

In this light, about 57% of the respondents sought to acquire skills in RPA and artificial intelligence, while 28% and 15% chose analytics and machine learning, the report said. 

The aforementioned trends are likely to be seen in sectors such as banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), pharma, healthcare, life sciences and global capability centres (GCCs), the report said. 

Read: About a third of enterprises seek better IT infrastructure: Wipro

Earlier this month,  Automation Anywhere announced new additions to its digital workplace platform and launched a private bot store.

Last month, it collaborated with Amazon Web Services in India to offer its cloud native digital workplace platform to enterprises.