More than 4 in 5 Indian Organizations to achieve RPA Deployment by 2025: UiPath Survey

UiPath, a leading enterprise automation software company, announced the results of the IDC APJ Automation Survey 2022, revealing that 84% of the Indian organizations will scale up their robotic process automation (RPA) initiatives or achieve an enterprise-wide RPA deployment by 2025. The survey polled organizations in nine countries across Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), including Australia, China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.

It examined the level of automation maturity for APJ organizations, and how enterprises can scale automation to achieve business growth and outcomes. The survey also highlighted that 90% of Indian organizations today do not have an enterprise-wide RPA program in place despite recognizing the importance and benefits.

Fundamentally, 88% of the organizations in India agree that automation will be a critical requirement for business excellence, customer experience, and competitive success within the next 3 years. Between 2020 and 2021, automation spending has continued to accelerate as 82% of the organizations in India have increased spending. 32% of the Indian organizations have increased automation spending by 20%. The top business priorities for implementing automation include improving operational efficiencies (82%), delivering effective customer experiences (76%), and streamlining processes (70%).

Scott Hunter, Vice President- Strategic Engagements & Transformation, Asia Pacific, and Japan, UiPath, said, “In the next couple of years, we expect Indian organizations to fast-track automation implementations alongside an increased focus on intelligent process automation. While finding the right talent and automation skill remains one major challenge today, it is critical for organizations to focus on training and development plans to help with reskilling and upskilling across teams and units.”

About 65% of the Indian organizations intend to use Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) in over 30% of the total deployments in the next three years. Given that the IPA Software market in APJ is estimated to grow to USD5.5 billion in 2025, this highlights the necessity and potential to go beyond RPA to achieve comprehensive end-to-end process automation at scale.

74% of the organizations in India said that finding automation skills and talent is their top challenge. As a result, 50% said that the availability of skilled automation talent and strong implementation partners’ support are key when selecting automation solutions, while 84% said they look out for end-to-end enterprise grade solutions with a modern and modular architecture.

Across India, 38% of the organizations already have non-IT domain employees involved in automating aspects of their work in 2022, while 40% plan to get their employees involved. In APJ, the banking and insurance industry is leading the pack, with 56% of non-IT domain employees already involved in automation, followed by the telecommunications (50%) and retail (49%) sectors.

Respondents in India highlighted that collaboration with IT (54%), approval from senior leadership (20%), and clear guidance on best practices (14%), are the key requirements for successful implementations. Additionally, organizations will need to develop a comprehensive training and development plan focusing on reskilling and upskilling across teams and units, which only 46% of the Indian organizations are currently doing.

Michael Araneta, Associate Vice President, IDC Financial Insights, said, “While improving operational efficiencies and enriching customer experience have been top of mind for leveraging automation, many organizations also believe that automation is a pathway towards meeting ESG and sustainability goals, which will be a gamechanger for corporate trustworthiness. In India, automation is becoming a discussion at the C-suite level, with about one in two (48%) Indian respondents acknowledging that their CIOs or CTOs are leading the automation drive towards enterprise-wide adoption.”