With each passing year, automation – and specifically robotic process automation (RPA) – is becoming more common amongst businesses. This growth is exciting, but, as with any technology, there can be unforeseen downsides like restrictive user controls, limited functionality, and unpredictable availability.

Dedicated to ensuring RPA users receive the best technology and solutions, Robocorp conducted a State of RPA survey, which uncovered the need for change in the industry – specifically, a need for open-source technology.

Unlike the traditional licensed-based RPA solutions that are common today, open-source technology empowers teams to securely automate any process or technology - with exceptional speed and elasticity – with no licensing fees and a consumption-based pricing model.

The State of RPA Today

The State of RPA survey found that 67% of respondents have invested in the technology in the past year and 81% plan to invest within the next year. This impressive growth can be attributed to the benefits the technology presents.

Top RPA benefits include the speed of task completion, handling of repetitive tasks, and accuracy of task completion. In addition, 34% said that they were investing in RPA because of the ability to adapt their current technology to meet evolving needs, and 33% said it's the improved customer service it provides them to get up and running quickly.

However, we’re also seeing frustration with RPA technology. Sixty-nine percent of survey respondents experience broken bots at least once a week - and 41% said it takes over 5 hours to fix a broken bot - with some taking more than 24 hours. These issues were particularly high in healthcare, finance, and manufacturing.

Lastly, more than half (56%) of the respondents said they would benefit from the speed and flexibility of open-source RPA solutions but, unfortunately, most of them (81%) said less than half of their current RPA technology is open-source.

While we are seeing more people implement RPA to take advantage of its benefits, we’re also seeing a call amongst users for new technology that better serves their needs. This is where the opportunity for open-source RPA begins.

Sixty-nine percent of survey respondents experience broken bots at least once a week - and 41% said it takes over 5 hours to fix a broken bot - with some taking more than 24 hours.

Open-Source Technology and the Next Generation of RPA

Open-source technology is openly distributed program code that affects how an application or program functions. People like open-source software because it allows software engineers and programmers to have access to source code, allowing them to collaborate on features, improve on utility, and optimize the program in question.

Drawing from open-source software, open-source RPA allows users to build and customize digital workers in a more collaborative and efficient way while also avoiding expensive commercial vendors. For many, licensing a full-on RPA tool is costly, especially if the company is new, and being stuck in a contract with one provider can be prohibitive.

Open-source allows developers to easily edit and customize bots, creating the optimal technology for their own specific use cases. Additionally, with open-source RPA, you only pay for bots when you use them.

With the flexibility, reliability and power of open-source RPA, Robocorp decided to build the next generation of RPA, where everything needed to build a sustainable bot is open-source: Gen2 RPA. Gen2 RPA is a better, faster, and more cost-effective automation solution than we see today. It utilizes an open-source framework as well as parallel processing to run digital workers faster on a fraction of the infrastructure.

Further, as many survey respondents reported spending considerable time fixing broken bots, Gen2 RPA provides full control over digital workers and detailed logs that help developers quickly find and resolve any issues, which cuts down on the 24+ hours it takes some teams to fix their automations.

Gen2 RPA offers usage-based pricing, so customers avoid upfront licensing costs and only pay for what they use. It’s a more flexible and less risky version of Gen1 RPA, which allows developers to build automations in an optimal way - running on as many machines as they want, with the ability to ramp consumption over time and not commit up-front.

Open-source allows developers to easily edit and customize bots, creating the optimal technology for their own specific use cases.

Joining the Gen2 RPA Future

As RPA continues to become more popular, The State of RPA survey makes it clear that we should take a serious look at open-source solutions moving forward. Not only are RPA users eager for better technology that helps them do their job more efficiently, but switching to open-source RPA can also save companies a lot of money in the long run.

Open-source technology and, ultimately, Gen2 RPA create an elevated experience for customers as it is faster, more accessible, easier to scale, and drives innovation and growth across industries.