RPA market ‘small, but growing fast’ in Australia

Large vendors now partnering with or acquiring RPA software providers

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Australia’s robotic process automation (RPA) software market almost doubled last year as organisations attempt to speed up their digital transformation efforts. 

According to Gartner, the local RPA industry generated a total revenue of $52.3 million in 2018, a 48 per cent rise from $27.4 million the year prior.

Although the Australian market remains small within the overall global market of $1.2 billion, it is “growing fast” according to Gartner.

Globally, North America dominated the RPA software market, holding more than half of the market last year, followed by Western Europe with 23 per cent.

According to Gartner, business digitisation is driving the adoption of RPA, in particular for banks, insurance companies, telcos and utility companies — organisations with a lot of legacy systems and want to ensure integration functionality.

The demand for ‘straight-through’ processing, a method to speed up financial transactions, remains a particular factor in adoption, the analyst firm noted.

“The ability to integrate legacy systems is the key driver for RPA projects,” said Fabrizio Biscotti, research vice president at Gartner.

“By using this technology, organisations can quickly accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, while unlocking the value associated with past technology investments.”

Competition remains tight between RPA vendors, as UiPath, Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism take the top three spots with 13.6 per cent, 12.8 per cent and 8.4 per cent of the global market respectively.

According to Gartner, large vendors such as IBM, Microsoft and SAP are now increasingly partnering with or acquiring RPA software providers, while new vendors are looking to adapt traditional RPA capabilities for areas such as event stream processing and real-time analytics.

“This is an exciting time for RPA vendors,” said Biscotti. “However, the current top players will face increasing competition, as new entrants will continue to enter a market whose fast evolution is blurring the lines distinguishing RPA from other automation technologies, such as optical character recognition and artificial intelligence.”

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