The Robotic Process Automation Handbook
A Guide to Implementing RPA Systems
Robotic process automation, or RPA, is the fastest-growing enterprise software segment in history. Much like his last book in this series,Artificial Intelligence Basics , Tom Taulli has managed to capture the essence of a highly complex and fast-changing market in thirteen brief chapters. Anyone getting started with RPA would be well served to start here.
RPA’s arrival could not have been better timed. RPA products went mainstream just as the world’s economy was booming, employers faced the tightest job market in memory, and rising labor costs made business process outsourcing no longer an attractive solution. This confluence of forces set the stage for a tech breakout, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Netscape.
The RPA value proposition is seductively simple – a tireless army of software robots (bots) that will work night and day to tackle the mountain of labor-intensive data entry work that sustains our digital world. And RPA should be fast to implement – no more waiting months for expensive APIs to be developed for legacy integration since bots interface with your systems by logging in just like humans do. Watch a bot cut and paste a few hundred fields for you in a split second, and it’s hard not to get a little excited.
In three short years, the current leading vendors in the stand-alone RPA market, UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, have defied all the cynics and grown from small start-ups to multibillion dollar valuations, thousands of employees and corporate clients, and they continue to post triple-digit revenue growth. They have also left behind mixed business results, layoffs, and questions about what use cases are actually best suited to RPA and which are better served with other low-code automation technologies.
To cut through the hype, Tom has interviewed leaders and expert practitioners from across the RPA space and brought together their collective wisdom and real-world experience in this single volume. The result is a practical guide to successfully deploying RPA in your business. As a technology partner to many of the pure-play RPA vendors covered in this book, I found Tom’s treatment of the market useful and objective.
In these pages, you will progress rapidly from selecting the right use case for RPA vs. other automation methods to scaling your RPA program. You’ll learn how RPA integrates with technologies like AI and low-code automation to provide complete solutions. You’ll also read examples of how companies are establishing new organizational models to govern and manage a successful, enterprise-scale robotic workforce.
As with any revolutionary new technology, starting with RPA has proven relatively simple but scaling RPA projects is proving more challenging. The result is enterprise deployment timelines sometimes extend to twenty-four months and higher than normal failure rates reported by industry analysts. Experienced leadership and best practices are hard to come by because the market and its participants are so new and immature, and the demand for their expertise is explosive.
Exaggerated expectations and marketing hype make up a substantial portion of the problem Tom’s book addresses. RPA is “robotic” automation, but these aren’t robots; they can’t sense and respond to change anything as humans do. In the right applications and hands, RPA is a powerful tool to augment a human workforce, transform the customer experience, and accelerate digital transformation. RPA programs require planning and governance to ensure they continue to deliver the results you expect.
Where does the RPA market go from here? We can see the future in how the largest adopters of RPA are increasingly viewing it as part of an overall automation program that includes human workflow, API integration, and AI in a unified platform. Digital transformation is only truly enabled when organizations break down the process and data silos to orchestrate work among digital workers, humans, and algorithms. RPA is also moving off the desktop into the cloud for better security, governance, efficiency, and scalability – top CIO priorities.
Customer demand for full-stack automation can be seen in both the addition of basic human workflow capabilities and cloud options being introduced by RPA vendors. It is also happening by acquisitions – like PEGA’s purchase of attended automation specialist OpenSpan, covered in this book, and in Appian’s recently announced acquisition of Jidoka RPA, the top-ranked Gartner Peer Insights RPA product. While too recent to be included in this book, Appian’s addition of RPA to its existing Robotic Workforce Manager epitomizes the convergence we are witnessing between the RPA and low-code automation markets as well as the migration of RPA from the desktop to the cloud.
Michael Beckley
Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Appian
In Silicon Valley today, one of the buzziest categories is RPA, or robotic process automation, as venture capitalists have been investing huge sums in the category. The reason is simple: the software providers have been ramping at a staggering rate.
In fact, according to a recent survey from LinkedIn, RPA is the second fastest growing career category, up 40% in 2019. The report notes: “Careers in Robotics Engineering can vary greatly between software and hardware roles, and our data shows engineers working on both virtual and physical bots are on the rise.” 1
But as with any rapidly growing industry – especially in the technology sector – there is lots of misinformation and hype. It’s inevitable.
Yet this can make it difficult for companies to evaluate the technology. What are the best solutions? What are the success factors for implementation? What are the gotchas?
Well, in this book, we’ll help to answer these questions – and many more. Yes, it is your handbook for navigating the noise in the RPA marketplace.
There are certainly many factors that help explain the surge in RPA. But perhaps the most important is the need for digital transformation. Simply put, companies do not want to be flat-footed when a disruptive start-up upends an industry, as seen with Uber.
As former Cisco CEO John Chambers has written in his bookConnecting the Dots : “But I also now understand the fears because this disruption will be so brutal that 40-plus percent of businesses today won’t be here 10 years from now.”
However, if companies take the initiative to craft the right strategies and carry them out, the future can be bright, even for those that are in traditional industries. If anything, they have certain advantages that can be leveraged: trusted brands, extensive distribution and customer bases, and talented employees.
No doubt, automation will be critical. “The disparity between automated and non-automated companies will grow,” said Prince Kohli, who is the CTO of Automation Anywhere. “Research has shown more than half of businesses in North America have already implemented some type of automation solution – meaning that we have now reached the tipping point of adoption for this transformative technology. Given the dramatic increases in productivity, reductions in cost and improvements to employee satisfaction that RPA provides, we’ll soon see the gap widen between early adopters and holdouts – in terms of revenue, customers, talent acquisition and retention – making it much harder for the latter to compete.” 2
OK then, so what will we cover in this book? Let’s take a look at a quick outline:
Chapter 1 – RPA Foundations: This is a high-level overview of the RPA industry, with coverage of assisted/unassisted automation, the history of the technology, the benefits and drawbacks, and comparisons to other automation technologies.
Chapter 2 – RPA Skills: This chapter takes a look at core technologies like on-premise software, cloud computing, OCR (optical character recognition), databases, APIs (application programming interfaces), and AI. There are also explanations of programming techniques, such as Agile and DevOps. Finally, there is a tutorial on flowcharts, which are crucial for RPA.
Chapter 3 – Process Methodologies: Before implementing RPA, a company may want to ensure that its processes are in good shape. This can be done by using methodologies like lean, Six Sigma, and lean Six Sigma.
Chapter 4 – Planning: This chapter provides help on assessing processes, determining what to automate, and how to measure ROI. We also show how to hire an RPA consultant.
Chapter 5 – RPA Vendor Evaluation: Here you will find the steps in selecting the right RPA software, such as looking at costs, training, functionality, and security.
Chapter 6 – Center of Excellence (CoE): This is a group that helps manage an RPA implementation. So in this chapter, we’ll show how to assemble one and how to best utilize it. We also take a look at the main roles for RPA (business analysts, developers, managers, etc.).
Chapter 7 – Bot Development: You’ll get a fundamental understanding of how to create a bot, such as developing the structure, using variables, structuring workflows, and debugging. The chapter focuses on the UiPath software system.
Chapter 8 – Deployment and Monitoring: Here you will see how to put bots into production and make sure they are functioning properly. Some best practices on scaling are also explained.
Chapter 9 – Data Preparation: RPA can be a great way to transition to AI. But to do this, there needs to be a strong data strategy. This chapter shows a technique for this, called the CRISP-DM Process.
Chapter 10 – RPA Vendors: This is a review of not only the large RPA software developers, like UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, but also the smaller ones.
Chapter 11 – Open Source RPA: This category of RPA is small but it is poised for growth. This chapter will highlight some of the more notable open source projects.
Chapter 12 – Process Mining: What started as an academic area of research has recently turned into a large industry. The technology helps to map and optimize processes – and has become increasingly important to RPA.
Chapter 13 – Future of RPA: Here we look at some of the major trends in the industry, like the changing of the business model, the growth of cloud systems, and the importance of AI.
At the back of the book, you’ll also find an appendix of resources for further study, a glossary of common RPA terms, and a list of RPA consultants.
Accompanying Material
Any updates will be provided on my site at www.Taulli.com .
has been developing software since the 1980s. In college, he started his first company, which focused on the development of e-learning systems. He created other companies as well, including Hypermart.net that was sold to InfoSpace in 1996. Along the way, Tom has written columns for online publications such as BusinessWeek.com, TechWeb.com, and Bloomberg.com. He also writes posts on artificial intelligence (AI) and RPA for Forbes.com and is an advisor to various companies in the space. You can reach Tom on Twitter (@ttaulli) or through his web site (Taulli.com) where he has online courses.
is a founding partner of Knowledge Capital Partners, a global consultancy offering research, executive education, and advisory services. With a 35-year career as senior executive and advisor in technology industries, he currently serves as vice-chair of the IEEE 2755 Working Group on Intelligent Process Automation. John holds a doctoral degree from Vanderbilt University and publishes extensively in business, trade, and academic media. His most recent book, with Leslie Willcocks and Mary Lacity, isBecoming Strategic with Robotic Process Automation .