When considering whether to deploy a new technology, chief information officers have to ask themselves many questions. Two of the most urgent are: 1) How long will it take to see results? 2) How painful will the transition be for my users?
When it comes to such truly revolutionary innovations such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), anxiety is to be expected. With such great changes, a third question is asked: if the implementation of this technology fails, could it negatively impact my business?
Research and advisory firm Forrester considered these questions, as well as others, when it conducted a Total Economic Impact (TEI) study of five large and global Automation Anywhere customers. The study involved extensive interviews with these five enterprises, each of which had between nine and 60 months of experience using Automation Anywhere Enterprise platform.
Examining the RPA study results
For the purposes of this study, Forrester created a composite organization to demonstrate the measurable benefits and costs of investing in Automation Anywhere Enterprise. Over a three-year period, the composite organization reaped more than $13.2 million in risk-adjusted present value benefits.
The net takeaway is this: after the dust of implementation settles, enterprises can expect a short payback period – less than 12 months. And when all the benefits and costs are counted, enterprises find themselves with an unheard-of return of 262% on their investment in RPA within three years. Moreover, the bulk of revenue comes from redeploying employees more effectively to do high value work, and the study in general proved deploying RPA is a low risk for businesses. To put this into perspective, Forrester broke down RPA benefits into four distinct buckets:
Digital transformation
Compliance and audit savings
Redeploying staff to improve business processes
Reducing errors
Let’s walk through each of these in turn.
Incremental revenue opportunities from digital transformation
Most of the companies interviewed were in the process of completing their digital transformation. According to them, the Automation Anywhere platform accelerated that journey. Specifically, enterprises were able to capture additional revenue not previously possible without the Automation Anywhere platform. This came from releasing new or expanded products and services for their customers, as well as accelerating previously manual processes, such as data entry and migration, invoicing and credits, sales spreadsheet updates, purchase order issuance and invoice receipts, invoice matching, and inventory accounting.
The total benefits accrued as a result of digital transformation amounted to $1.1 million.
Compliance and Audit Savings
According to the customers interviewed, the Automation Anywhere RPA solution offers a broad range of compliance and audit benefits. First, it reduces compliance risk by eliminating human error - a major win.
Then, it standardizes and automates regulatory processes to mitigate compliance risk. By tracking and managing data to meet regulatory requirements, businesses met stringent regulations and complied with industry-standard frameworks, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Benefits from compliance and audit savings totalled 2.7 million.
Redeploying staff to focus on process improvements
Interestingly enough, the majority of quantifiable benefits that arose from deploying RPA came from the users themselves. Freedom from repetitive manual tasks enabled employees to do other work of more strategic value.
With its investment in Automation Anywhere, the composite organization has increased its productivity and delivers significantly better customer service.
By provisioning a scalable, resilient, and flexible Digital Workforce, the total benefits from process improvements added up to $8.3 million.
Reduced Errors
Designed for business users, the Automation Anywhere Enterprise platform is easy enough for corporations to rapidly adopt it, before applying it to more complex process scenarios.
To offer an example: in its TEI study, Forrester took the risks that threaten RPA projects into consideration and quantified them. The risk adjusted costs, benefits, return on investment (ROI) combined made for a compelling case. With this knowledge, enterprises should have the confidence that global investments are low in risk and high in value.
After all, a 262% ROI over three years is something worth celebrating.
This blog post is an adaption of an article by Automation Anywhere. To read the original article, click here. https://www.automationanywhere.com/company/blog/company-news/forrester-study-huge-rpa-return-in-short-time-frame
