Worldwide RPA software revenue in 2020 was $1.58 billion, an increase of 11.9% from 2019. The revenue is further projected to reach $1.89 billion in 2021, an increase of 19.5% from 2020.
– Gartner
The economic uncertainty of 2020 has led most organizations to reduce their spending significantly. Despite this, the adoption of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has amplified significantly across organizations and industries. In an era when efficiency has become the key for sustained business success, RPA is enabling organizations to free up employees’ time to focus on higher-value work and allowing organizations to get more work done every day. Organizations are leveraging it to rapidly adapt their workflows, services, and business models to the new realities of work.
While 2020 was the year of RPA adoption, experts believe that 2021 will witness a major proliferation of the technology in both scope and span. Consequently, organizations need to rethink RPA and adopt a technology that is simple, secure, robust, and industry-proven. During its virtual Microsoft Ignite 2020, the Redmond giant had announced new RPA capabilities for Power Automate Desktop that enables coders and non-coders alike to automate processes and tasks across desktop and web applications. Power Automate RPA is meant to simplify data transfers between modern and legacy systems, to more complex business workflows. Since then, Microsoft has invested significantly to expand upon the capabilities of the solution. And today, Microsoft Power Automate is empowering more than 350,000 organizations to easily implement Bots and achieve more every day.
What is Power Automate RPA?
Power Automate is one of the most popular cloud-based automation platforms which helps organizations unlock analog data with AI, automate UI with RPA, and automate cloud applications and databases with built-in connectors. Power Automate RPA delivers a comprehensive set of capabilities empowering everyone in an organization to automate mundane, time-consuming, and repetitive tasks by leveraging a low code development environment. It offers both attended and unattended RPA, enabling teams to record and playback actions with or without human interaction.
Power Automate RPA represents the next generation of automation. It breaks down the barriers of traditional automation and drives operational excellence. Power Automate RPA consists of two essential components Power Automate Desktop and Process Advisor (presently in preview).
Easily Automate Processes with Power Automate Desktop
- Accelerate automation with an easy-to-use visual designer: Power Automate Desktop empowers every user to automate tasks and processes utilizing the drag-and-drop visual designer and live debugging tool. Employees can automate processes by logically placing the steps, helping turn ideas into reality in a clear, simple way.
- Simulate multiple scenarios with the web and desktop recorders: Automates favorite web apps with the Web Recorder, or captures on-screen elements for Windows apps with the Desktop Recorder. The recorders track keyboard and mouse interactions and translate them into a clear automation path that can be replayed across web apps and any Windows applications.
- Automate between Windows applications with key actions: Automates both modern, Windows applications and legacy systems with a diverse set of actions without altering the current IT infrastructure. A single flow can support tasks across systems that include SAP, websites, and legacy terminals such as mainframes and AS/400, Citrix, and more.
- Reduce bottlenecks with flexible exception handling: Keeps organizations prepared for the unexpected by leveraging error-handling at any point in the automation process. Ensures that automation runs with precision and speed by setting up safeguards such as retries, alternate execution, or notifications when errors occur.
- Unify on-premises and cloud processes: Extends the automation capabilities to on-premises processes and tasks. It unifies API-based automation with cloud flows (also known as Digital Process Automation) and UI-based automation with desktop flows (previously called “UI flows”).
Understand and Enhance Processes with Process Advisor
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced Process Advisor capability for Power Automate. It introduces process mining ability to Power Automate and provides a deeper understanding of how people work, enabling organizations to fathom which time-consuming processes are best suited for automation. Process advisor helps find opportunities to automate old ways of working with easy–to–use process maps and analytics that provide insights into the areas that need automating across an organization. It provides a guided experience to visualize variations in existing workflows and identify opportunities for optimization.
5 Great Reasons to Choose Power Automate for RPA
Power Automate is an industry-proven, secured, robust, and single intelligent automation platform leveraged by thousands of organizations to easily and rapidly automate everyday tasks to more complex business processes and workflows. Power Automate RPA delivers five appealing benefits to organizations:
1: Delivers Cost Savings
Judging from the pricing aspect, Microsoft Power Automate is far less expensive than most other RPA platforms. Power Automate is included in the service at no additional charge for various Microsoft 365 plans (such as Business Premium, Business Essentials, F1 Plan, and the E1-E5 Enterprise Plans).
2: Blends with Existing Enterprise Architecture
How an RPA solution will work in the existing organization architecture and how it will interact with legacy systems – is an essential judging factor before any RPA implementation. Microsoft Power Automate works seamlessly across various architectures and enables more fluid automation opportunities. Power Automate RPA is an ideal choice for organizations already leveraging Azure servers, Microsoft 365, and SharePoint. Not only does Power Automate slide in seamlessly with existing architecture, but there is significant extensibility that is available as well. For example, you can extend SharePoint’s online capabilities using Azure Cognitive, machine learning, and Microsoft’s AI services.
3: Ensures Optimum Security
While RPA is the new favorite among IT leaders. It can pose certain security risks too. RPA bots handle sensitive data, moving it across systems from one process to another. If the data is not secured, it can be exposed and can cost organizations millions of dollars. Power Automate is built on and powered by Azure, using the services and infrastructure, as well as the Azure directory integration, which enhances cyber-security for RPA-driven automation.
4: Jumpstarts the Automation Journey
Microsoft Power Automate delivers over 275 pre-built connectors to the most popular user and enterprise applications like Salesforce and Workday. Additionally, users can easily connect to the cloud and on-prem data via a data gateway and over 10 gateway connection types. This allows on-prem data sources to be used as part of automation that’s conducted in the cloud.
5: Fosters “Automation for All”
Microsoft’s goal with Power Automate is to empower coders and non-coders alike to leverage RPA by creating automated workflows across apps that do not have APIs or other connectors. It offers an intuitive user interface, boasting a user-friendly drag-and-drop experience (with over 370+ actions) that allows users to rapidly build bots. Power Automate also provides a myriad of supported connectors that accelerate a business user’s ability to build simple automation with an RPA.
Reimagine RPA with AgreeYa and Microsoft
As a Microsoft Gold Partner and Power Platform Partner, AgreeYa has been helping organizations reimagine their business processes through our end-to-end Power Automate services. Recently, we helped a digital imaging leader streamline its business processes with Power Automate. For more details contact us.