Expect RPA to continue exponential growth in 2022 and beyond

COVID-19 permanently altered the way in which we all do business in a multitude of ways, not the least of which may be the unprecedented growth robotic process automation (RPA) has experienced over the past two years. Using the latest analytics to rapidly change priorities in order to improve both production and back-office operations, the RPA market took off in response to the remote working conditions and surges in supply and demand brought on by the pandemic.

Today, RPA continues to grow exponentially. According to Gartner, RPA remains the fastest growing category in enterprise software, with more than 60 software vendors now part of the RPA landscape and revenues expected to surpass $2 billion in 2021. But with 2022 on the horizon, is RPA still evolving and can the record-setting growth experienced over the past two years continue in the future? 

One thing can be said with absolute certainty: Regardless of whether you are a mature RPA program evaluating other new vendors or a new adopter looking to get your automation efforts off the ground, there have never been more RPA platforms from which to choose. RPA vendors are increasingly offering an ever-widening range of features, capabilities (including key pieces of the automation toolchain, such as process discovery tools), and price points to suit the specific needs of companies, regardless of where they are in their automation journey. Just as important, RPA platforms are simplifying the development and deployment of automated processes in an effort to make automation more accessible to the average business user – a change necessitated by the citizen developer concept failing to firmly take hold.

The vendor making the most strides in this category is Microsoft. With an intuitive user interface and user-friendly drag-and-drop experience that enables attended bots to be built quickly, Microsoft Power Automate is making a strong bid to dominate the small- to medium-sized RPA market in which it is already providing a host of products and services. Beyond Microsoft, Forrester predicts a new wave of AI-based vendors will likely encroach on the process automation market in 2022, challenging the domination of established companies such as UiPath and Tibco-Blue Prism. In addition, enterprise application cloud providers like Saleforce have added RPA to their toolkits, which could precipitate a platform convergence in the year ahead while simultaneously slowing RPA growth. 

All of this activity is leading more businesses to evaluate their current RPA vendors and, in at least some cases, migrate their entire digital workforce to a more effective platform. It is also convincing many organizations to move beyond simple rule-based task automation to tackle more complex, end-to-end processes to achieve even greater cost savings and efficiency. By combining RPA, AI, machine learning and other technologies, these companies are accelerating the shift to hyperautomation in order to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many of their processes as possible under a unified, intelligent system. 

Gartner projects the hyperautomation market will surpass $596 billion in 2022. By 2024, the drive toward hyperautomation is expected to lead organizations to adopt no less than three of the 20 process-agonistic types of software currently being used to enable hyperautomation. Forrester, meanwhile, anticipates that 5% of the Fortune 500 will adopt automation fabric – loosely defined as a framework that links AI-based and traditional automation components to build, orchestrate and govern a hybrid workforce of human and digital workers – to fuel extreme innovation in 2022. These companies, according to Forrester, “will obliterate, not merely beat, the competition.” 

Not to be left out, small- and medium-sized businesses, which are looking to use Microsoft Power Automate or other packages to take advantage of the benefits offered by RPA, are likely to see pricing models in 2022 that will make automation both affordable and accessible. While Microsoft set the bar for competitive pricing very high by including Power Automate for free in Windows 10, other RPA vendors are starting to offer consumption-based pricing, including prices based on timed utilization of bots, free RPA components out of the box, and unlimited bots at a fixed price. These competitive pricing models are not only unlocking the RPA market to small- and medium-sized organizations, but also contributing to a growing desire among smaller users to switch RPA platforms. For many of these companies, this represents an alternative that better serves both their interests and budgets.

It also seems likely to fuel the growth in service-worker automation. Forrester predicts 35% of service companies will introduce physical robot workers in 2022, simply because healthcare, food service and warehouse businesses can’t fill the number of job openings they are now facing. With this trend continuing to accelerate over the next decade due in part to the low wages and often difficult working conditions accompanying these jobs, service companies will have little choice but to invest in automation to handle a wide range of job vacancies, from customer self-service, grounds maintenance and delivery robotics to food preparation, surveillance and janitorial work. 

Clearly, the answer as to whether the RPA market will continue to grow and evolve in 2022 is a resounding yes. It is becoming apparent that more companies will increasingly get it right when it comes to automation and the returns they can realistically expect to realize from employing the technology. So much is happening so fast as the market steadily moves toward integrated automation that it is fair to assume 2022 will see more companies progressing beyond simple rule-based automation to embrace more complex technological pursuits, from hyperautomation to automation fabric.