What’s on the radar for next year? Let’s take a look:
“Larger players are entering the market. One notable case is ServiceNow, which bought Element.ai. This will bolster workflow automation to compete with Automation Anywhere and UiPath. ServiceNow wants to have document scraping, build a knowledge graph, and perform analytical queries against the knowledge graph.
“Then there is Adobe, which bought Workframe. Adobe is the ‘Document Maker’ and owns knowledge and PDF creation as well as document scanning. Adobe wants to own the whole automation process for documents.”
“The digitization of work at this new scale will cause tech leaders to rethink enterprise security and the increasingly popular zero trust strategy will take center stage.”
“Next year, we’re going to see a fall-off of RPA vendors as they try to diversify their solutions and expand into other markets. Businesses are waking up to the fact that RPA has not lived up to the hype and delivered the promised value. Standalone RPA vendors are going to be scrambling to rebrand themselves.”
“RPA will become part of the AI solution set. While less complex in nature, RPA will be a foundational component of an array of AI solutions.”
“As the market transitions from point deployments within a specific business unit to wider adoption across an enterprise, the issue of data security and privacy will get bigger and suppliers will face greater scrutiny. Suppliers will need to be able to mask sensitive corporate data and personally identifiable information (PII) to meet requirements.”
“2020 was about buying RPA bots and AI services. 2021 will be about organizations looking to scale those technologies, realizing the full value of those investments by unifying the modern workforce–with humans in control.”
“The largest RPA providers will be forced to explore new verticals, and the small-to-medium enterprise (SME) sector will be one of them. I expect to see RPA vendors will go all-out to appeal to SMEs. But if they’re going to gain any traction with this market, they have to revamp their entire user interface. The UX will have to be far less complex and onboarding needs to be more straightforward.”
“We will witness the rise of the digital co-workers, with AI and machine learning augmenting human workers and helping with human + machine collaboration. This includes not just chatbots, for example, but AI assistants helping with project management, testing or data management. Paired with a culture of modern engineering (Agile, DevOps) and a continuous innovation mindset, automation in software development and application management are opening the door for IT to be an innovation partner to the business.”
“AI-infused automation will increasingly be linked to core strategic initiatives such as improved customer focus, revenue growth, capital allocation, supply chain management, risk management, cost and operational efficiency and more. AI-powered digital workers will be leveraged as primary tools for executing on corporate strategy and managing enterprise scale risks.”
Read more here: RPA (Robotic Process Automation): Predictions For Next Year
