'Automation Anywhere' Aims At Getting 3M Software Bots On Board, Alongside Human Employees By 2020

Automation Anywhere was founded in 2003, creating the robotic process automation (RPA) category. Robotic Process Automation is software bots used to automate the more mundane business process tasks, liberating humans to think, create and innovate.

Today, Automation Anywhere delivers the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise-grade RPA platform with built-in cognitive capabilities and embedded analytics. Over 500 of the world's largest enterprises use the platform to manage and scale their business processes faster, with near-zero error rates, while dramatically reducing operational costs.

The company is based in San Jose, Calif., with regional offices worldwide including three in India. We currently have about 250 employees in our Mumbai, Baroda and Bengaluru offices.

BWDisrupt interacted with Ankur Kothari, Co-founder & Chief Revenue Officer, Automation Anywhere, to know more about the challenges in the automation sector.

Edited excerpts-

Tell us about the unique feature/services you offer?
We offer the most comprehensive RPA platform with built-in cognitive capabilities and analytics that allow enterprises to manage and scale their business processes. With Automation Anywhere, customers typically see. A demonstrable impact on productivity within a single quarter, 80 percent gains in employee productivity (plus the 24/7 productivity gained from bots), immediate ROI of at least 40 percent, near-zero error rates.

What are differentiating factor from other players?
Automation Anywhere provides the industry's only comprehensive Digital Workforce Platform that addresses an organization’s entire automation journey. We have been identified as the industry leader by both Forrester Research and Everest Group.

Automation Anywhere has the most extensive global partner and alliance network, and more than 10,000 people trained on the platform worldwide. Customers find our platform the easiest to use and the most intuitive in designing, creating, deploying and running bots.

We offer unparalleled scalability. Customers can scale business processes up and down with a click. They can deploy and redeploy bots in days, not months. Our platform is ultra secure, trusted by the world’s largest and most secure banking, financial services and insurance organizations, meeting their highest security standards. Automation Anywhere is easy to deploy in any technology environment to meet business needs across the entire enterprise - cloud, hybrid cloud, on servers and on desktops. Automation Anywhere is privately owned and self-funded so far.

Share with us your future plans for the startup?
As enterprises begin to further explore and implement RPA technology, we will see bots’ abilities grow beyond automating routine tasks. RPA combined with advances in AI and machine learning is just the starting point for enterprises as they move away from legacy processes and integrate this rapidly growing technology that has the potential to disrupt how we work across all industries. Automation Anywhere is focused on helping our customers navigate this dramatic shift and ensuring they thrive.

We provide our solutions to some of the world’s largest companies. Our objective is to become the world’s largest “employer,” with 3 million software bots running by 2020, working alongside humans to create the new Digital Workforce.

What kind of challenges are faced in the space you are functioning?
One of the largest challenges facing the industry is the perceived threat of job losses. Automation Anywhere believes the real promise of automation can only be realized when bots and humans work side-by-side. Bots do the repetitive, mundane, task-based work, liberating human workers to do what they do best – using their intellect, creativity and talent. In a January 2017 report by management consultant McKinsey, they found that less than 5% of jobs can be completely replaced by technology.

There has never been a time when technology has entirely eliminated jobs. New technologies have created a need for different work skills required for new kinds of jobs. We’ve witnessed this in the past and this dynamic of innovation will continue in the future. Our customers tell us that new roles for human workers are indeed being created and filled by existing workers who are trained for these new roles.

Can you talk about the urrent market size and the opportunities in the sector?
Given our large, global customer base, we have an estimated 60 percent market share. Now incorporating AI and machine learning technology into RPA is pushing the industry forward at a rapid pace.

A recent report by Market Research Engine projects that the RPA industry will reach $13B by 2022 and is gaining in support as users turn away from more traditional business process automation (BPA) systems that often take hundreds of work hours and millions of dollars to deploy. RPA by comparison is an easier and faster system to implement, and can be deployed more cost-effectively through small incremental, very specific projects and then expanded to large-scale implementations.