Australian financial services lead APAC in robotic automation
Australian financial services businesses are leading the Asia Pacific in robotic process automation (RPA) adoption, with 78% of Australian organisations currently using these type of solutions.
Commissioned by automation technology provider Blue Prism, the ‘RPA In The APAC Financial Services Sector’ surveyed 802 financial services employers from Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore who had at least 10 years’ experience in the industry.
RPA was a form of business process automation that allowed a person to define a set of instructions for a robot or 'bot' to perform.
Following Australia was India with 49%, Hong Kong with 47%, and Malaysia and Singapore with 44% and 28% respectively.
Of the 22% of Australian financial services organisations that had not already deployed RPA solutions, 8% were planning to implement such technologies within the next six months, and a further 4% were planning to do so within the next year.
An overwhelming majority, 89%, said the future growth of RPA was “extremely promising” or “promising”. The main driver was increasing efficiencies and speed within the organisation (85%), followed by reducing errors (78%) and costs (67%).
When it came to the benefits associated with RPA adoption, most organisations ranked cost and time savings (88%) as the most significant benefit, followed by increased accuracy and quality of output (76%).
Most Australian financial services organisations currently leveraged RPA in the finance (88%) and IT (69%) departments, compared to just 29% for sales and marketing.
In the next two to three years, respondents said they expected to continue to invest in finance and IT departments, but the number of respondents that said sales and marketing would be a focus more than doubled to 67%.
Robert Dewar, vice president, financial services, APAC, Blue Prism, said: “The Australian financial services industry has led its APAC rivals in terms of RPA and Intelligent Automation adoption rates with a particular focus on increasing the speed and efficiency of their organisations.
“Naturally, we’re seeing the industry expand the range of applications from cutting costs to increasing sales and ultimately as a catalyst for driving digital transformation.
“As markets look to scale up enterprise RPA deployments, our aim is to help companies accelerate their digital transformation and achieve their vision for strategic business automation.”
AUTHOR
Liam Cormican
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