Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been the talk of the town for some while now. And for good reason. By using this disruptive technology, a company can say goodbye to time-consuming, error-prone, repetitive manual work, and say hello to a new era of speed and efficiency.

RPA improves workflow productivity, accelerates process execution, reduces process error rates, and improves customer satisfaction. Last but certainly not least, it improves employee satisfaction: free from repetitive, time-consuming tasks, people can focus on true problem-solving.

Now that you’re sold on the why, let us walk you through your options of robotic process automation platforms and providers. When choosing a robotic process automation platform, you need to know:

• The price

• The time required to implement the RPA solution

• The level of coding skills needed to use it (where 1 – small amount, 5 – large amount)

• The level of business know-how needed to use it (where 1 – small amount, 5 – large amount)

• If support is required (where 1 – small amount, 5 – large amount)

Whether the RPA solution you’re considering is: a doer, a learner, or a decision maker

UIPath

This RPA tool, founded in 2005 in NYC, USA, automates any web or desktop application. Businesses use it to design and deploy a robotic workforce capable of administering rule-based tasks.

A strong competitive factor for UIPath is its user-friendly process designer, which enables employees to easily configure a robotic workflow by dragging and dropping activities where they occur – no scripting or coding necessary.

Other useful features include:

• Flexible change management

• Intuitive process modeling

• Remote task scheduling and execution

• Auditing and monitoring in compliance with security standards

• Strengths

• Competitive pricing

The portfolio: clients include top-performing companies, many of which are financial services organizations

UIPath Community Edition, along with the forum, the academy and documentation at no cost is a major step towards building strong skillsets within the industry

Pegasystems

Robotic Process Automation veteran, Pegaystems, was founded in 1983 in Atlanta, USA, and is focused on transforming digital businesses using RPA.

The platform is built on a business rule-management system and a predictive-analytics decision-management engine, which, together, perform a multitude of functions, like:

• Rule processing

• Data handling

• Cross-platform user interfacing

• Content and case management

• Application integration

• Strengths

• The platform is quick to deploy

It integrates RDA and RPA solutions in both attended and unattended scenarios

Increased functionality is provided by the bots extended to its BPM suite

Azure Cognitive Services

Microsoft’s Azure Cognitive Services is a suite of APIs, SDKs and services available to developers looking to boost the intelligence, usability and discoverability of their applications. From emotion and video detection; facial, speech and vision recognition; to speech and language understanding, Microsoft provides developers with a broad range of solutions to take their apps to the next level.

Strengths

• Developing state-of-the-art AI services is substantially easier

• Simple app integration through HTTP REST interfaces

• Built-in support in Azure Data Lake Analytics