● 84% of the Australian organisations agree that automation will be a critical requirement for business excellence, customer experience, and competitive success within the next 3 years ● 74% of the organisations in Australia have increased their automation spending in 2021 (vs 2020), including 30% of the organisations that have increased automation spending by 20%. ● Over 98% of the organisations in Australia underscore their shifting focus toward Intelligent Process Automation
UiPath (NYSE:PATH), a leading enterprise automation software company, announced today the results of the IDC APJ Automation Survey 2022, commissioned by UiPath, revealing that 60% of the organisations in Australia will scale up their robotic process automation (RPA) initiatives or achieve an enterprise-wide RPA by 2025. The survey also shows that 84% of the Australian organisations today do not have an enterprise-wide RPA program in place despite recognising the importance and benefits.
The survey polled organisations 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 organisations, and how enterprises can scale automation to achieve business growth and outcomes. Fundamentally, 84% of the organisations in Australia agree that automation will be a critical requirement for business excellence, customer experience, and competitive success within the next 3 years.
“APJ business leaders are increasingly acknowledging the pivotal role of automation in resolving their pain points and accelerating growth across the region, against the backdrop of an intensifying competitive climate and turbulent macroeconomic environment. While improving operational efficiencies and enriching customer experience have been top of mind for leveraging automation, many organisations also believe that automation is a pathway towards meeting ESG and sustainability goals, which will be a gamechanger for corporate trustworthiness,” said Michael Araneta, Associate Vice President, IDC Financial Insights. “However, despite securing these unprecedented benefits, most organisations have been slow in taking the leap into implementing an enterprise-wide automation program due to myriad yet addressable challenges, including finding automation skills and talent, identifying the right automation software, and ensuring robust security and governance.
The new survey also found that automation has become an important accelerator as enterprises look to achieve exponential growth.
Acceleration of investments in automation in the next 3 years
Between 2020 and 2021, automation spending has continued to accelerate as 74% of the Australian organisations have increased spending. The top business priorities for implementing automation across Australian businesses includes improving insight and governance across the company of data, people, process or culture (50%), improving operational efficiencies (46%), streamlining processes (46%) as well as digitising processes and workflows (46%).
“Going forward, automation will play a larger role for Australian enterprises by driving new revenue streams, deepening existing relationships with customers, and achieving operational efficiencies. At a regional level, automation is becoming a discussion at the C-suite level, with about one in four (26%) Australian respondents acknowledging that their CIOs or CTOs are leading the automation drive towards enterprise-wide adoption,” adds Araneta. An equal percentage of respondents also underscored that their Head of Automation or AI or Head of Analytics Center of Excellence is driving their automation drive.
Additionally, with growing significance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and sustainability, there is a massive upsurge expected in APJ organisations to garner automation investments for related use cases. The survey found out that 40% of the Australian organisations will automate ESG and sustainability use cases next, an increase from 30% in 2022.
Paradigm shift to Intelligent Process Automation
Today, 98% of organisations in Australia underscore their shifting focus and discussions toward Intelligent Process Automation (IPA). 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 a comprehensive end-to-end process automation at scale. In the next 3 years, 63% of the Australian organisations will use IPA in over 20% of the total deployments.
Lack of skilled talent hampers enterprise-wide scaling of automation
However, the talent crunch has become a significant business challenge as many APJ organisations point to the shortage of automation skills and talent as a major challenge they face in scaling automation. 38% of the organisations in Australia said that the availability of skilled automation talent and strong implementation partners’ support are key when selecting automation solutions, while 58% said they look out for an end-to-end solution with a modern and modular architecture.
Citizen-led development and training become hygiene needs in the future of work
Across Australia, 48% of the organisations already have non-IT domain employees involved in automating aspects of their work in 2022, while 42% plan to get their employees involved. In particular, the banking and insurance industry is leading the pack in APJ, with 56% of non-IT domain employees already involved in automation, followed by the telecommunications (50%) and retail (49%) sectors.
As more Australian organisations integrate automation in the work of non-IT domain employees, Australian respondents highlighted that approval from senior leadership (26%), collaboration with IT (24%), and clear guidance on best practices (22%) are the key requirements for successful implementations. Additionally, organisations will need to develop a comprehensive training and development plan with a focus on reskilling and upskilling across teams and units, which 62% of Australia organisations are currently doing, significantly higher than the APJ average of 38%.
“Australian businesses clearly recognise the need to make enterprise-wide automation a reality. One of the key challenges organisations face today is to scale automation across departments. However, companies can achieve this by accelerating investments and creating an effective automation strategy that includes adequate employee training and development plans.” said Mark Fioretto, Area Vice President for Australia and New Zealand at UiPath.
“With its benefits of increased productivity, cost savings, and enhanced customer experience, automation is a crucial requirement for businesses to achieve excellence and a competitive edge,” said Fioretto.
About the Survey
The IDC APJ Automation Survey 2022, commissioned by UiPath, was conducted between February and March 2022. It polled 350 organisations with 1,000 or more employee size, across Australia, China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.
This IDC InfoBrief methodology includes a combination of the data analysis and insights from the survey results, vertical-specific research, country-specific research, and the analyst interviews with the tech buyers in the APJ region.
For more information, please download the InfoBrief here.
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UiPathCategory: Business Intelligence Software Profile: UiPath has a vision to deliver the Fully Automated Enterprise™, one where companies use automation to unlock their greatest potential. UiPath offers an end-to-end platform for automation, combining the leading Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solution with a full suite of capabilities that enable every organisation to rapidly scale digital business operations.
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