Automation Anywhere launches RPA maturity tool

Automation Anywhere today announced a new tool aimed at simplifying how enterprises adopt, deploy, and scale robotic process automation (RPA). Alongside this, the company is introducing a learning and support hub with resources designed to guide customers through process automation development and implementation workflows.

RPA, which uses virtual robots to automate repetitive tasks, is a fast-growing category of corporate software. In 2019, companies spent $1 billion on RPA solutions. And Gartner predicted that in the next two years, 72% of organizations will work with RPA.

But adopting RPA isn’t always a walk in the park, particularly when dealing with large-scale deployments. According to a PEGA survey, breakages or failures of bots and long and difficult deployments aren’t uncommon among RPA customers. Forty-one percent of respondents said that they’re spending more time than expected to maintain RPA bot automations, and 45% said that deployments took between 1 and 2 years.

The “skills gap” in RPA is another barrier to adoption. Deloitte reported that 17% of organizations face employee resistance when piloting RPA. And in a recent Workato survey, 22% of companies said that they’re not comfortable with business users building new automations.

RPA readiness

The goal of Automation Anywhere’s new tool is to provide a customized report that identifies opportunities to launch automation, according to Automation Anywhere senior director Laura Della Torre. Called RPA Maturity Assessment, it evaluates the vision and strategy, process and measurement, organization and people, and architecture and technology of existing RPA programs and delivers recommendations to improve them.

“Automation Anywhere is the first RPA company to have built an RPA maturity assessment tool — and this is the first time anyone in the industry has put a stake in the ground to accomplish this,” Della Torre, who oversaw development of the RPA Maturity Assessment tool, told VentureBeat via email. “We are at a point where the majority of enterprises today either are or plan to adopt automation — and are scaling it. And it’s important because every company adopting RPA needs more rigor, people, processes, and a strategy. And if you are missing any of these components, you will hit barriers.”

Continuing along this vein, Automation Anywhere’s new learning resources include a customer journey map with step-by-step instructions outlining key milestones to implement RPA. A new “citizen developer role” offers a software license that allows users without knowledge of code to create and run bots on their own desktops. New documentation and live training sessions on federated operating policies, procedures, and standards, along with online and live, virtual instructor-led training sessions, help users get up to speed with different aspects of RPA.

“Before this, there has been no industry standard on how to take the necessary steps on developing an RPA strategy and the necessary corporate alignment,” Della Torre continued. “This assessment tool and other resources announced today help organizations to create a culture of automation and empower different businesses like IT, finance, human resources, and more to implement and scale automation within the broader organization and to be successful — but also to turn an RPA program from a silo endeavor and expand automation to every employee.”

Automation Anywhere is among the largest vendors in an RPA market that’s anticipated to increase in worth from $1.89 billion in 2021 to $13.74 billion in 2028. The company, which last raised $290 million at a $6.8 billion valuation, has 54% of the market, and it claims to have enabled the deployment of nearly three million software bots to date.