50 RPA Statistics from Surveys: Market, Adoption & Future

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. RPA has become the third-fastest-growing area, following process mining and integration platform as a service (iPaaS). Among all 81 software categories, RPA ranked as the seventh-fastest-growing segment in 2023.¹

This article is a collection of 50+ up-to-date RPA statistics from the surveys and research of reputable sources as of Q3 2024. In this list, you will find RPA stats about:

Market size forecasts

• The potential economic impact of knowledge work automation is expected to be $5-7 trillion by 2025. ²
• The global robotic process automation (RPA) market was valued at USD 13.86 billion in 2023. It is expected to grow from USD 18.18 billion in 2024 to USD 64.47 billion by 2032, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.1% during the forecast period.³

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.
• IT departments spend 30% of their time on basic low-level tasks.
• 50% of companies spend between $5- $25 dollars for manual invoice processing.
• A typical rules-based process can be 70%-80% automated.⁴

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.⁵
• 53% of respondents have already started their RPA journey and a further 19% of respondents plan to adopt RPA in the next two years.
• 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.⁶
• Around 80% of finance leaders have implemented or are planning to implement RPA.⁷
• 98% of IT leaders say automating business processes is vital to driving business benefits.⁸
• The global RPA software market grew from $2.6 billion in 2022 to $3.2 billion in 2023.
• RPA experienced a growth rate of 22.1% in 2023, outpacing the AIM market growth rate of 13.2% and the global software revenue growth rate of 11.1%.⁹

Adoption by industry

• Manufacturing leads RPA adoption (35%) due to its focus on optimizing production processes, followed by:
  • 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.
• If this RPA growth trend continues, RPA will achieve “near universal adoption” in the next 5 years.¹⁰

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.¹¹
• More than 90% of C-level executives report some level of intelligent automation already exists within their organizations.¹²

Results of RPA adoption

• A total of 61% of participants reported their expectations of cost reduction being met or exceeded.
• 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.¹³
• 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.¹⁴
• 75% of organizations profiled reported that they had already realized cost-saving targets by leveraging labor arbitrage in 2016.¹⁵
• 80% of the automation effort which is focused on exception handling, can be improved thanks to better process understanding.¹⁶
• 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. ¹⁷

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.¹⁸
• On average, an RPA bot costs 1/3 of an offshore employee and 1/5 of an onshore employee.¹⁹
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.²⁰
• RPA can reduce labor-intensive tasks by 80%.²¹
• Top performers earned nearly 4X on their RPA investments, while other enterprises earned nearly double.²²

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.²³
• 85% of respondents report that RPA met or exceeded their expectations for non-financial benefits such as accuracy, timeliness, and flexibility.²⁴
• More than 50% of C-level executives using intelligent automation have identified key operational processes that can be augmented or automated using AI capabilities.²⁵

RPA Challenges

• 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.
• 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.
• For the majority of organizations (63%), implementation will involve working alongside a dedicated third-party partner due to a lack of specialist skills.²⁶
• 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
• Only 20% of executives surveyed have yet to establish plans to retrain or reskill their workforce.²⁷

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.
• Automation Anywhere raised $840 million in funding in 4 rounds.
• Blue Prism Group raised $182 million in funding in 5 funding rounds.
• Workfusion $180 million funding in 6 rounds.

(Source: 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:

External Links

• 1. Market Share Analysis: Robotic Process Automation, Worldwide, 2023.
• 2. The Leading Agentic Process Automation System | Automation Anywhere. Automation Anywhere
• 3. Robotic Process Automation Market Size, Share | Forecast, 2032.
• 4. The Leading Agentic Process Automation System | Automation Anywhere. Automation Anywhere
• 5. “How business can emerge stronger”, PwC, Accessed 19 September 2024.
• 6. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 7. Finance RPA | 3 Tactics to Show Impact | Gartner.
• 8. The Leading Agentic Process Automation System | Automation Anywhere. Automation Anywhere
• 9. Market Share Analysis: Robotic Process Automation, Worldwide, 2023.
• 10. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 11. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 12. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 13. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 14. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 15. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 16. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 17. “Deloitte State of the State report”, Deloitte, Accessed 19 September 2024.
• 18. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Robotic Process Automation.
• 19. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Robotic Process Automation.
• 20. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 21. The Leading Agentic Process Automation System | Automation Anywhere. Automation Anywhere
• 22. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 23. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Robotic Process Automation.
• 24. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 25. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 26. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.
• 27. Deloitte | Audit, Consultanță, Financiar, Managementul Riscului, Servicii fiscale si juridice.