Blue Prism has released findings from its survey report titled RPA In The APAC Financial Services Sector.
The report finds that while there is growing momentum in automation efforts by organisations across Asia Pacific (APAC), there is significant disparity of robotic process automation (RPA) adoption within APAC's financial services industry.
While Australia leads the way with 78% of organisations currently using RPA solutions and technologies, India is second with 49%, followed by Hong Kong (47%), Malaysia (44%) and Singapore (28%).
While some respondents indicated familiarity with RPA, there is potential for better comprehension and perception around this technology, the researchers state.
Blue Prism vice president financial services APAC Robert Dewar says, "While RPA adoption across global industries grew at tremendous speed, this report revealed the disparity of RPA adoption within the APAC financial services industry, indicating a long roadmap before the region reaches RPA and Intelligent Automation maturity.
"Presently, the use of RPA adoption remains largely a tool to improve efficiency and cut costs, rather than a catalyst to accelerate digital transformation.
"As markets look to scale up enterprise RPA and Intelligent Automation deployments, our aim is to empower companies to fulfil their vision for strategic business automation and achieve faster, better organisational outcomes.
Almost all of the organisations (95%) surveyed felt that the adoption of RPA has improved overall business operations, which includes error and cost reduction (7% each), empowering the workforce to concentrate on higher value tasks (24%) and increasing efficiencies and speed within the organisation (61%).
The report also revealed that across the areas surveyed, the top two areas that companies leverage RPA are the finance and IT departments.
Within the next two to three years, companies in Australia and India expect to continue leveraging RPA the most in the finance and IT departments, while Hong Kong companies expect the same in the finance and customer service departments.
Other key findings for Australia includes the following:
- 99% of organisations believed that RPA has improved overall business operations, including cost and time savings (88%) and increased accuracy and quality of output (76%)
- Organisations ranked top considerations when drawing RPA budgets to implementation costs (77%) as the most important factor, followed by maintenance costs (70%) and ancillary costs (67%)
- Of the organisations that are not currently using RPA solutions and technologies (22%), 8% are planning to implement such technologies within the next six months, and 4% are planning to do so within the next year
- Almost nine in 10 (89%) organisations said that the future growth of RPA is promising
Other key findings for Hong Kong includes the following:
- 96% of organisations felt that RPA has improved overall business operations, with significant benefits in cost and time savings (69%) as well as increased accuracy and quality of output (69%)
- In terms of factors that organisations consider when drawing up an RPA budget, most organisations ranked implementation costs (65%) as the most important factor, followed by ancillary costs (60%) and maintenance costs (59%)
- 52% of organisations are not currently using RPA solutions and technologies; 31% are planning to implement such technologies within the next six months, and 8% are planning to do so within the next year
- 85% of organisations said that the future growth of RPA is promising
Other key findings for India includes the following:
- 95% of organisations felt that RPA has improved overall business operationscost and time savings (83%) as the most significant benefit associated with RPA adoption, and RPA as a catalyst for driving digital transformation (76%)
- In terms of factors that organisations consider when drawing up an RPA budget, most organisations ranked implementation costs (75%) as the most important factor, followed by maintenance costs (62%) and ancillary costs (44%)
- Of the organisations that are not currently using RPA solutions and technologies (50%), 27% are planning to implement such technologies within the next six months, and 11% are planning to do so within the next year
- More than nine in 10 (93%) organisations said that the future growth of RPA is promising
