1. RPA market is expected to hit $2.5 billion in 2020

The RPA market in 2020 is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 70–85 per cent between 2018 and 2020, according to Everest Group. By the end of 2020, there will be around 0.8 million unattended RPA robots running on both cloud and on-premise servers, with a growing customer base across industries, geographies and organisation sizes.

2. Improved integration driving RPA market growth

Improvement in how RPA tools are integrated into conventional business processes is helping to drive the technology’s growing adoption, according to a report from Market Research Future. Another factor is how RPA makes business processes easier.

3. CTOs face 5 top automation challenges in 2020

Forrester principal analyst Chris Gardner says CTOs face multiple automation challenges: recognising that rote white-collar work must be replaced by RPA, a growing need for services to support RPA initiatives, an automation paradox that will slow progress, a collision of automation tools in different sectors and a need for agile strike teams focused solely on automation acceleration.

4. Automation leads 2020 development goals

According to research about professionals’ top software development goals and objectives, automation will top the list this year.

5. ‘Acceleration from automation to autonomy’

Looking at the technologies expected to mature in 2020, Thomas Visti, CEO of Mobile Industrial Robots, said Industry 4.0 “will become more of a reality than a vision”, as smart machines get better at connecting to other machines and systems.

6. Expect a shift to more comprehensive solutions

The coming year will see a shift from point solutions to more comprehensive automation offerings as users recognise that RPA “streamlines and enhances legacy processes and results in high returns on investment”, according to Neelish Kriplani, Senior Vice President and head of the Center of Excellence at Clover Infotech.

7. Intelligent automation gains the RPA spotlight

‘Intelligent automation’ – which blends process automation with increasingly cognitive AI disciplines such as machine learning – will get far more attention in 2020. RPA is also likely to be a gateway to other automation, AI and analytics technologies and could play a role in improved security.

8. Further big investments in RPA ahead

The coming year is likely to see further significant investments in RPA, in large part because the technology has been shown to generate “quick and high levels of ROI” (return on investment) for companies deploying it.

9. Automation could save financial services billions by 2025

Intelligent automation technologies could result in cost savings and productivity gains worth up to $140 billion for the North American financial services sector between 2018 and 2025, says an Accenture study released in December.

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