50 RPA Statistics from Surveys: Market, Adoption & Future [2024]

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been in our lives with various use cases since the early 2000s, yet fast implementation times and shift to digital transformation made RPA more popular among businesses. According to Gartner, the RPA ecosystem was the fastest-growing segment of the global enterprise software market in 2018.

This article is a collection of 50+ up-to-date RPA statistics from the surveys and research of reputable sources as of Q1 2024. In this list, you will find RPA stats about:

Market size forecasts

There are various estimates on the market size but most sources point to a ~$2 billion market in 2021 and strong (30+%) growth rates for the next years.

• The RPA industry will grow from $250 million in 2016 to $2.9 billion in 2021. (Forrester)
• Robotic process automation (RPA) software revenue grew 63% in 2018 to $846 million. With nine of the top 10 vendors changing market share positions in 2018. (Gartner*)
• The RPA software market revenue was expected to reach $1.9 billion in 2021 (Gartner****)
• The global RPA market size is already valued at $1.40 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach $11 billion by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 34% from 2020 to 2027 (Grand View Research).
• By 2025, the market for collaborative robotics is expected to reach $12 billion (MarketsAndMarkets)
• The potential economic impact of knowledge work automation is expected to be $5-7 trillion by 2025. (Automation Anywhere)

Why does RPA matter?

Currently, the level of automation is still limited compared to the level of automation that can be achieved with existing technologies. However, it is hard to put numbers on this gap and RPA vendors of course want to quote high numbers here so please take these stats with a grain of salt:

• Employees spend 10%-25% of their time on repetitive computer tasks. (Automation Anywhere)
• IT departments spend 30% of their time on basic low-level tasks (Automation Anywhere)
• 50% of companies spend between $5- $25 dollars for manual invoice processing (Automation Anywhere)
• A typical rules-based process can be 70%-80% automated. (Automation Anywhere)

Business RPA adoption

Current adoption

• Due to Covid-19 and the shift to remote work, 76% of organizations have embraced automation and will endure the shift to automation even post-covid. (PwC)
• As of June 2021, 20% of all organizations have adopted RPA 2021, rising from the 13% adoption rate in 2020. (Computer Economics)
• 53% of respondents have already started their RPA journey and a further 19% of respondents plan to adopt RPA in the next two years. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• Around 80% of finance leaders have implemented or are planning to implement RPA. (Gartner**)
• RPA is increasingly becoming an enterprise-level opportunity: for 64% of respondents on the RPA journey, it is a strategic or enterprise-wide initiative. This figure has grown significantly. Just 12 months ago, only 15% of respondents reported RPA being a part of a wider corporate initiative. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• 98% of IT leaders say automating business processes is vital to driving business benefits. (Automation Anywhere)

Adoption by industry

• Manufacturing is the top industry to leverage RPA in 2021 (35%), followed by: (Acceleration Economy)
  • Technology (31%)
  • Healthcare (10%)
  • Retail and CPG (8%)
  • Finance (8%)
  • Public sector (5%)
  • Education (3%)

Estimates of future adoption

• 78% of those who have already implemented RPA expect to significantly increase investment in RPA over the next three years. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• If this RPA growth trend continues, RPA will achieve “near universal adoption” in the next 5 years.  (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)

Adoption of cognitive RPA

• As organizations progress in their adoption of RPA, they tend to become more ambitious with cognitive technologies. More than a quarter (28%) of those implementing and scaling RPA is also implementing cognitive automation, while only 6% of those that have not implemented RPA are progressing with cognitive automation. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• More than 90% of C-level executives report some level of intelligent automation already exists within their organizations. (IBM)

Results of RPA adoption

• A total of 61% of participants reported their expectations of cost reduction being met or exceeded. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• 63% of participants plan to engage with an RPA implementation partner to support their RPA implementation, while 19% plan to use RPA vendors for support, and 15% will handle RPA internally. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)

To learn more about picking an RPA technology partner, download our whitepaper:

• More than 90% of C-level executives using intelligent automation say their organization performs above average in managing organizational change in response to emerging business trends. (IBM)
• 75% of organizations profiled reported that they had already realized cost-saving targets by leveraging labor arbitrage in 2016. (Deloitte Global Outsourcing Survey)
• 80% of the automation effort which is focused on exception handling, can be improved thanks to better process understanding. (QPR)
• Automation will not displace employees, however, it is expected that 861,000 public sector jobs will be lost to automation by 2030 saving £17 billion off the public sector payments in 2030 compared to 2015. (Deloitte State of the State report)

RPA Benefits/ Results of implementation

Financial benefits

• By 2024, organizations will lower operational costs by 30% by combining hyper-automation technologies with redesigned operational processes. (Gartner***)
• Organizations that have piloted RPA expect, on average, a 9-month payback period while, in reality, the payback achieved by those that have implemented and scaled RPA has been 12 months. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• On average, an RPA bot costs 1/3 of an offshore employee and 1/5 of an onshore employee. (Gartner*****)
• There is an expectation that robots could deliver a significant portion of current transactional activities. On average, the expectation is that 20% of FTE capacity could be provided by robots. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• This expectation matches the reality of those that have already implemented RPA. In fact, those that have scaled RPA appear to have had such a positive experience that their expectations are even more ambitious: they believe that 52% of FTE capacity could be provided by robots. This can enable the human workforce to be redeployed to more value-adding activities. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• RPA can reduce labor-intensive tasks by 80%. (Automation Anywhere)
• Top performers earned nearly 4X on their RPA investments, while other enterprises earned nearly double. (Everest Group)
• RPA can provide cost savings ranging from 20%–60% of baseline FTE costs for financial services. (EY)

Other benefits

• By 2024, endpoint analytics and automation will help digital workplace service staff shift 30% of time spent on endpoint support and repair to continuous engineering. (Gartner******)
• 85% of respondents report that RPA met or exceeded their expectations for non-financial benefits such as accuracy, timeliness, and flexibility. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• More than 50% of C-level executives using intelligent automation have identified key operational processes that can be augmented or automated using AI capabilities. (IBM)

RPA Challenges

• Lack of internal and IT resources is the top challenge facing RPA adoption, followed by staff resistance, process fragmentation, lack of clear vision, cost of implementation, data readiness, and finally fear of disruption. (Acceleration Economy)
• Only 17% of respondents faced some employee resistance when it comes to piloting RPA. This dropped to only 3% with respondents who were implementing or scaling RPA. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• The time and cost to deliver RPA tend to be underestimated by organizations. 63% said their expectations of time to implement were not met and 37% said their expectations of cost to implement were not met. (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• For the majority of organizations (63%), implementation will involve working alongside a dedicated third-party partner due to a lack of specialist skills.  (Deloitte Global RPA Survey)
• Most executives believe that their organization does not have the necessary data science, machine learning, and other AI/cognitive skills for process automation. Percentages of executives who think they lack a specific skillset for each automation capability are:

• 90% for basic process automation
• 89% for advanced process automation
• 75% for intelligent process automation (IBM)

• Only 20% of executives surveyed have yet to establish plans to retrain or reskill their workforce. (IBM)

For more RPA challenges and pitfalls, please see our RPA challenges article.

Top RPA vendor funding stats

• Uipath raised $1.2 billion in funding in 6 funding rounds. (Crunchbase)
• Automation Anywhere raised $840 million in funding in 4 rounds. (Crunchbase)
• Blue Prism Group raised $182 million in funding in 5 funding rounds. (Crunchbase)
• Workfusion $180 million funding in 6 rounds. (Crunchbase)

For more information on RPA companies’ funding and popularities, feel free to read our article.

Also, don’t forget to check out our comprehensive and data-driven list of:

• RPA Software
• RPA Consultant

If you’re looking for an RPA vendor but you don’t know which vendor to chose, you can read our RPA vendor selection guide or contact us:

Sources:

• Acceleration Economy: State of RPA Survey 2021-2022
• Automation Anywhere
• Computer Economics
• Deloitte Global RPA Survey
• Deloitte Global Outsourcing Survey
• Deloitte State of the State report
• Everest Group
• EY
• Forrester
• Gartner*
• Gartner**
• Gartner***
• Gartner****
• Gartner*****
• Gartner******
• Grand View Research
• IBM
• MarketsAndMarkets
• PwC
• QPR