Far-Reaching Impact of Microsoft’s Entry into RPA

Without question, robotic process automation (RPA) is the fastest-growing enterprise software market, so it's only natural for a giant and powerful technology provider like Microsoft to get in on the action with the free inclusion of Power Automate in Windows 10.

In truth, though, Microsoft may have been spurred as much by the frustration many RPA users currently are experiencing with their automation vendors as by market demand. While there was great hope that artificial intelligence in concert with RPA would yield higher-quality, higher-value automation, this has largely failed to materialize because far too many of the tools in that area simply aren't ready for prime-time.

The source of most users' disappointment can be attributed to four primary causes:

• Insufficient Returns – Many organizations have been unable to scale RPA and capture the value they were promised due to brittle bots and crippling automation maintenance and support. The realization that RPA isn't as easy as they were led to believe has left many companies wondering if they picked the wrong tool and might be better off switching to another automation tool.

• Unfulfilled Promises – Many automation vendors overpromised and under-delivered on how easy it was to implement and execute RPA. Organizations everywhere were sold on the idea that citizen developers could drive automation. This simply wasn't the case due to the technical knowledge and skills automation demands. Now companies want to try their luck with another RPA provider which can actually demonstrate that it empowers the citizen designer.

• Islands of Automation – Without meaning to, some companies have set up disconnected, independent automation initiatives within different lines of business. This has led to the adoption of disparate automation design practices and inflated costs from procuring multiple RPA tools.

Microsoft's entry into the RPA wars potentially can take advantage of this general frustration by offering users an alternative: a free automation tool already bundled with Microsoft's existing suite of products and services that can make it relatively straightforward to automate business processes that interact with existing Microsoft products.

Building on the fact that most companies already have Microsoft software in use, as well as the company's reputation as a proven brand with the resources and talent to build a competitive RPA platform, Microsoft acquired Softmotive – which had already pioneered software for RPA authoring – in May 2020.

The move sent shock waves across the already crowded RPA market, while simultaneously giving Microsoft an opportunity to engage with customers and learn for itself what RPA capabilities are actually needed. By equipping citizen designers with the tools needed to build their own bots, also represented a giant step toward realizing RPA's promised (but never realized) ease-of-use.

"If you truly want to democratize RPA, you don't talk about millions of users. You have to talk about a billion users. There's no better way to do that than to tap into the Windows community," explains Microsoft Corporate Vice President Charles Lamanna in a recent RPA Today interview.

Even though it is one of the more technical of Microsoft's offerings, Power Automate provides a highly intuitive user interface that leverages drag-and-drop functionality to enable a simplified approach for building automation scripts in a step-by-step, textual-based canvas. It also offers a range of supported connectors that accelerate the user's ability to build simple automation with an RPA and artificial intelligence workflow solution, enabling organizations to reduce manual costs by taking full advantage of Office 365's ecosystem and tooling.

Beyond this broadened functionality, Power Automate eases the way in which RPA fits into an organization's enterprise architecture and interacts with legacy systems by reducing costs and enabling more fluid automation opportunities.

From a pure pricing standpoint, Power Automate is far less expensive than other RPA platforms. This allows companies to reduce operating costs by replacing third-party business process management tools and other expensive automation technologies.

With so many Microsoft products and services already intertwined with every business, Power Automate also represents an ideal solution for countless organizations already using Azure services, Office 365, and SharePoint. It not only slides in seamlessly with existing architecture but also provides significant extensibility. Companies, for example, can extend SharePoint's online capabilities using Azure Cognitive, machine learning, and Microsoft's AI services.

Clearly, the introduction of Power Automate has had a significant impact on the RPA market and can boast several distinct advantages over its competitors. Still, numerous challenges remain that potentially could derail even a free, easy-to-use automation solution. Foremost among these is the fact that bots must still be stitched together to get them converted from one RPA platform to another, despite Microsoft's attempts to match functionality.

This issue can be traced to a number of problems. The significant number of commands and actions that are unsupported between RPA tools, for example, make it extremely difficult to shift bots from one platform to another. Similarly, system credentials associated with each bot are not passed on if a company changes automation vendors.

Platform migration can also be impacted by the fact that historical versions of bots can be lost when migrating, affecting both compliance and impact analysis activities in the target RPA tool. And because audit logs aren't stored the same way on different RPA tools, they may be lost altogether when migrations are attempted.

Further, there is also no effective way to run output compares of bots migrating between different RPA tools, making it hard to test the completeness and quality of bots after migration in order to ensure they still do what they're supposed to do.

Despite such issues, RPA migration is no longer the non-starter it used to be. The introduction of Power Automate with third-party migration solutions forever has changed the equation, enabling users to migrate entire digital workforces without having to rebuild their existing bot portfolio from scratch and at a fraction of the cost it normally demands.

And while the automation market still seems likely to be dominated by a relatively small group of specialized RPA vendors, Power Automate's entry signals the emergence of the citizen designer and the inclusion of RPA as a standard feature supporting business automation initiatives.

As President and Chief Executive Officer at Blueprint Software Systems, Dan Shimmerman is responsible for establishing Blueprint's Enterprise Automation Suite as the world's most powerful digital process design and management solution. With a passion for helping organizations to more efficiently design and build digital solutions that drive their digital transformation and the achievement of business goals, Dan has a proven track record of success in delivering the strategic vision, execution, and value for all stakeholders. Prior to joining Blueprint, he was the President and CEO of Varicent Software, a global provider of sales performance management solutions that was acquired by IBM in 2012. For more information, visit https://www.blueprintsys.com/

By Dan Shimmerman

President and CEO, Blueprint Software Systems