Gartner forecasts revenue from sale of robotic process automation (RPA) software will reach $1.3 billion in 2019, driven by digital business demands as organisations look for ‘straight-through’ processing in response to intensifying digital competition.
Although RPA software can be found in all industries, the biggest adopters are banks, insurance companies, telcos, and utility companies. These organisations traditionally have many legacy systems and choose RPA solutions to ensure integration functionality.
“The ability to integrate legacy systems is the key driver for RPA projects. By using this technology, organizations can quickly accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, while unlocking the value associated with past technology investments,” said Fabrizio Biscotti, research vice president, Gartner.
The top-five RPA vendors controlled 47% of the market in 2018. The vendors ranked sixth and seventh achieved triple-digit revenue growth (see Table 1). “This makes the top-five ranking appear largely unsettled,” Biscotti added.
Table 1: RPA Software Market Share by Revenue, Worldwide (Millions of Dollars)
Source: Gartner (June 2019)
“This shows that RPA software is appealing to organizations across the world, due to its quicker deployment cycle times, compared with other options such as business process management platforms and business process outsourcing,” said Biscotti.
Gartner expects the RPA software market to look very different three years from now. Large software companies, such as IBM, Microsoft, and SAP, are partnering with or acquiring RPA software providers, which means they are increasing the awareness and traction of RPA software in their sizable customer bases. At the same time, new vendors are seizing the opportunity to adapt traditional RPA capabilities for digital business demands, such as event stream processing and real-time analytics.
