The adoption of robotic process automation (RPA) continues to spread across industries

The impact of Robotic Process Automation on a company’s operations and competitive positioning is significant on a number of fronts: economic value, workforce advantages, quality and control improvements and flexible execution.  Adoption requires everyone across an org roll up their sleeves and get involved –– decision makers and employees across departments.

RPA allows separate business units within a company to customize solutions to rapidly digitize processes, delivering significant and sustainable value in short timeframes while reducing overall risks. Workers want the means to figure out how to make their jobs easier. Automating repetitive, time-consuming processes can help them do that. Learning how to implement those automations themselves so the payoff directly translates into making their everyday work easier is a winning proposition.

These citizen-built automations can help accelerate digital transformation at scale. Digital transformation is critical for organizations to move faster, solve for complexity and fuel growth. To transform successfully, companies need the right combination of products, automations and people. Two of PwC's latest products share our experience and assets from our own PwC digital transformation journey, so our clients can accelerate from what we have learned firsthand. ProEdge is an upskilling software suite that helps close employee’s digital skill gaps. With ProEdge, organizations get a complete set of capabilities to transform their workforce today and plan for the talent and skills needed for tomorrow. Digital on Demand is a marketplace of curated digital assets that help companies work faster and smarter. Created by PwC people and leveraging assets from joint business relationships like UiPath, this constantly expanding and evolving inventory of intelligent tools enables and transform the finance function and address automation challenges.

In a recent IDC White Paper ‘A Robot for Every Worker: Are We Ready for a People-First Automation Mindset?’ IDC analysts researched whether the goal of a citizen-led automation is realistic and achievable. And if so, what can we learn from the organizations that have already embraced it? IDC conducted a global research study across North America, Europe and Asia with 431 respondents (working in companies of at least 250 employees) from 19 industries, as well as a series of in-depth interviews with organizations that have instituted broad and successful programs of this nature. PwC was one of the companies studied and this recently published report is jointly sponsored by UiPath and PwC.

Suneet Dua, Principal, Chief Product Officer, PwC, said: “Adoption is the new engagement margin. And what we mean by that is if people don’t adopt the automation technologies you provide, then you’re not going to change the business. People have to make adoption of automation the fabric of their job.”