RPA: Should We Believe The Hype?

In June 2015, British newspaper, “The Daily Mail”, ran an article with the headline “Will YOUR job be stolen by a robot?” The piece was accompanied by a calculator – created using an Oxford University research study – which estimated the probability of a role being automated in the future.If you’re a lawyer, painter or curator, it’s good news. Loan officers, legal assistants and accountants should look away. According to the calculator, the accountant role is almost guaranteed to be taken over by machines moving forward.At no point did the study mention exactly when these roles would be automated. Instead, they claimed that the process would occur in waves. Production, administration and transportation roles will be the first to go. After that, however, it’s dependant on the rate at which robots learn social intelligence.Once robots can think, what happens then? Will there be a universal basic income? An uprising? It’s easy to let your imagination run wild.Our research indicates that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is not hype, nor is it a catalyst for the “Jobocalypse” or a new world order. It is, however, an issue that many organizations are thinking about.At SSO Week Dublin 2016, research from Alsbridge – which operates as a transformation advisor for Fortune 500 companies – supports this. According to a poll taken at the event data, just 19% of practitioners felt that RPA was hype. The overwhelming majority believed that it was real, and a business driver moving forward.Despite this, just 12.5% of respondents had their RPA program in full flight, with a further 10% running a pilot in production. Interestingly, while 19% believed that RPA was hype, just 12.5% weren’t thinking about its implementation at all. That implies that contingencies, even for the companies that don’t believe in RPA’s capacity to change the business landscape, are being made. The largest chunk stated that they were in the researching phase – which indicates that we might have to wait a year or two until the first wave of automation is upon us.In addition to these findings, 47% of Alsbridge’s poll participants stated that the minimum ROI time period on their projects worth less than one-million dollars was 1-2 years. This bodes well for RPA. The same research indicated that 46.2% believe that they will start to see the benefit of their RPA program in around 6-12 months. This implies that the majority of companies would deem RPA a worthy investment, due to its potential to reap rewards quickly.But what do these companies believe the main benefit of RPA implementation to be?In conjunction with much of the research in this space, the data shows that RPA isn’t just about cost savings, but about quality improvement. Again, this would indicate that robots aren’t going to displace humans, but instead enrich their roles so that they are more strategically pertinent.When combined, the data from Alsbridge’s poll paints a rosy picture for RPA. Companies believe that RPA delivers improved quality, with a positive ROI obtainable within a relatively short period of time. There are, however, some which remain unconvinced. According to the poll, 19% of the participants still believed that robotics is all hype.In a way, they are right. RPA isn’t, just yet, going to change the workforce’s role – even though the media’s coverage often implies that disruption is imminent. As a business driver, however, companies should believe in robotics’ potential. It promises to improve company performance, reduce costs, while also freeing staff to work on more important tasks.Source: Alsbridge poll taken at SSO Week Europe 2016[inlinead]If you are interested in learning how YOU can benefit from RPA, sign up now for our FREE RPA World Series 2016. Online, Sep 6-9 2016. REgister now to save your place.Note: As an important driver of innovation, SSON’s Dart research has also looked at the five key trends affecting the RPA and Artificial Intelligence space. Like the Alsbridge data, the research indicates that the majority of companies haven’t implemented RPA, but that uptake in the last six months has been extensive.

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