Robotic Process Automation (RPA) automates time-consuming and repetitive tasks for companies across various business functions. Automated processes then.
- Free up employees’ time
- Allow them to focus on higher value issues
- Resulting in cost savings due to reduced manual labor
However, despite the many benefits of RPA, Deloitte research shows that RPA adoption is only 53%. One reason for the low adoption rate is the cost of RPA. 37% of respondents who implemented RPA claim that their cost expectations were not met.
Operating expenses.
Can deter (especially smaller) organizations from investing in RPA and missing out on the benefits of cognitive automation. Business leaders need to find affordable robotic process automation tools that will meet their automation needs without straining their budgets.
In this article, we’ll explain what “affordable RPA” is and provide a list of relevant vendors.
What is affordable robotic process automation?
Affordable RPA tools are solutions that offer the same RPA functionality as expensive ones, but at a lower cost.
Pricing for RPA solutions and RPA deployment costs can be expensive. For example, the basic UiPath package costs ~$5,000/year.
There are free and freemium RPA packages, but they are functionally limited and/or lack customer support. The latest option is open source RPA, but they have limited support, need coding knowledge, and still need momentum to shape the RPA ecosystem.
A new group of RPA vendors is emerging that offers open source robotic process automation tools, but with backend support. These solutions are often provided not by large RPA vendors, but by smaller companies that rely on open source and community-based developments to offer an affordable and affordable RPA solution.
We could not find exact data on the number of businesses that are held back from accepting RPA due to high prices. However, Deloitte’s survey of 372 respondents showed that 27%. 1: said that cognitive automation is very expensive to implement.
If RPA sellers
- Offer more economical licensing packages
- Allow users to pay only for what they need
- Expand their partnerships
They will be more attractive to more organizations.
The global RPA market is growing year by year with +50 RPA current market players.
We cannot test all solutions ourselves. And we can’t make price the only focal point. So we relied on 3 publicly verifiable metrics to whittle down our initial shortlist:
- Price <$2000/year
- +20 employees
- At least one F500 link
Then there were 4 sellers left, which made it easy for us to investigate them in depth;
Argos Labs
Argos Labs’ no-code RPA is built on Python, making it flexible and capable of handling complex automation tasks. It can be integrated with leading AI/ML/OCR engines for intelligent end-to-end automation. Its monitoring feature offers an analytics dashboard that provides users with real-time monitoring for bot status and analytics for bot usage.
AutomationEdge:
AutomationEdge’s RPA technology offers a user-friendly interface for building RPA bots. Its cognitive features include NLP, ML and predictive analytics.
Robocorp
Robocorp is a code-based RPA software that uses Python for automation scripting. So users need programming knowledge. It has a Visual Studio Code extension to integrate development with other Robocorp tools.
Rocketbot
Rocketbot supports a variety of application types with pre-built modules for popular business applications, enabling easy installation and deployment. It also has scheduling options, error handling and monitoring capabilities.
In addition to their price, here are the main features that you can evaluate sellers according to:
1. No-code
When an RPA vendor claims to offer a no-code RPA solution, it means that citizen developers can create attendable and unsupervised RPA bots and undertake RPA reconfigurations with minimal coding knowledge.
The advantage of no-code solutions is that companies can automate their processes internally, relying on lower labor costs. However, even if a company uses a code-free RPA system, they may still choose to work with an RPA consulting firm for several reasons.
1.1. Strategy and Best Practices
RPA consultants can help define an RPA strategy that aligns the automation journey with business goals and helps identify the most suitable processes for automation. They can also guide the organization on best practices for RPA implementation and management.
1.2. Training and skill building
If your teams don’t yet have the skills to automate their workflows, a consultant can provide the necessary training and skill building to better utilize the platform.
Learn more about RPA training.
1.3. Change in management
The implementation of RPA can bring significant changes in the work processes and culture of the organization. A consultant can help with change management and ensure a smooth transition.
1.4. Troubleshooting and Support
Codeless tools are not without complications. An RPA consultant can support these challenges and provide advanced support.
1.5. Scaling:
If an organization plans to expand its automation efforts, a consultant can provide valuable guidance on how to effectively and efficiently develop and deploy RPA in use, including how to manage governance, compliance, and reduce the cost of scaling RPA.
If you want to learn more about how to choose an RPA technology partner that can help you in the RPA implementation and deployment phase, you can download our white paper and read it to learn more:
A guide to choosing an RPA technology partner
2. Cognitive automation
Cognitive automation, also known as intelligent automation, is the ability of RPA bots to interact with other tools such as OCR and NLP to go beyond just automating mundane tasks. Thus, these features enable it to handle both structured and unstructured data and make decisions based on context.
For example, consider entering data from paper invoices into an accounting system;
- A bot without intelligent automation. A process automation robot could only process structured forms where every field is in the same place and in a standard format. If the invoice deviates from the format, the bot will not be able to process the data correctly.
- A bot with intelligent automation. This bot is more flexible. Optical character recognition (OCR) can be used to digitize paper invoices, and natural language processing (NLP) can be used to interpret and extract information from unstructured or semi-structured data. If the invoice format changes, the bot will still interpret and enter the data correctly. ML algorithms also help the bot learn from past actions to improve its accuracy over time.
3. Integration
An RPA system that is integrable can connect, interact, and work with other software applications, systems, and services. This will lead to cost reduction as companies will not need to pay for custom integration.
Integration usually involves using APIs to enable the bot to interact with applications. Thus, an integrated RPA can extract data from email, enter it into a spreadsheet, and upload it to the cloud. RPA platforms equipped with pre-built connectors for public business applications facilitate this integration and enable more automation workflows across different business processes.
Learn more about iPaaS.
More about RPA development
To learn more about RPA development, read:
And if you have more questions, contact us.
Find the right vendors
External sources
- “The robots are ready.” Deloitte. 2017. Retrieved May 22, 2023.
