Why the robotics software market will continue to grow

Robotics software provides a number of opportunities. Using robotic automation, companies can automate repetitive and mundane tasks and improve the customer experience while allowing employees to focus on high-value activities. Malcolm Allen, Head of Robotic Process Automation at Partners in Performance, explains why the robotics software market will continue to grow in the coming years.

1. Declining returns from the mature ERP market

Some of us remember when the integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) market emerged in the 1990s from the earlier markets of large transactional systems. Entire teams have been created to manage the implementation of this innovative technology. Running the software required bulky hardware, which represented a significant investment. The value of combining many different systems into one integrated system made the investment worthwhile. The “old way” of buying specialized systems for each business process led to costly integration, massive data problems, and missed enterprise-wide opportunities. All these problems have been removed with the introduction of ERP software.

Over the years, ERP software has become an integral part of business strategy. It has evolved so much that today’s ERP software bears little resemblance to earlier generations. However, ERP software revenues have been declining over the decades. Implementation has become notorious for overruns, overspends and under-expected returns.

Now, with the need to get real-time data available anytime, anywhere, companies are facing a “cloud transition.” This means additional investments in ERP systems that do not fully meet the needs of users. While ERP solutions offer benefits, they often come too slowly. Constantly evolving technology also means modernization of implementation and additional costs.

Recently, we have seen many companies increasingly interested in adopting more agile approaches; those that ERP systems do not allow. Modern business requires faster adaptation to market changes and continuous improvement through endless iterations. It is the era of the “fail fast” philosophy. Organizations are naturally backing away from big transformations in favor of more nimble solutions, an approach that offers the flexibility to navigate today’s market.

2. Rapid innovation in middleware

ERP systems have helped companies integrate IT into their business strategies. However, as mentioned, this approach increasingly did not deliver all that was expected. Companies have begun to notice that their automation middleware is producing more positive results and faster. They have started developing applications to quickly execute business tasks, pushing the demand for middleware applications and infrastructure.

As a newer market, middleware is innovating at an accelerated pace. It enables a wide range of solutions across a range of organisations. This flexibility is a clear advantage. As technology becomes more dynamic, companies can constantly add new components to improve processes, which is not always possible with older systems. Middleware plays a vital role in integrating old legacy systems with new components. Using the traditional waterfall ERP development approach, this integration would be costly and slow. Fast integration offers a key differentiator.

Middleware offers numerous technology capabilities such as robotic process automation (RPA), process mining, optical character recognition (OCR), and machine learning (ML), opening up use cases that can be delivered much faster. Companies can quickly eliminate pain points and gradually improve processes. Because it is much easier to develop and build on these platforms, development times and total project costs are often significantly lower than ERP alternatives.

We are witnessing the development of a new market. The innovation of market components further means market growth. In particular, improvements in robotic process automation represent one of the biggest trends in the market; it is currently considered the fastest-growing segment of enterprise software, with global spending expected to reach $25 billion by 2025, a sevenfold market growth from $3.6 billion today.

It is important to note that the growth of the middleware market shows the adaptability of the market. Successful corporate strategies will not be limited to one particular technology. Companies that can balance ERP automation and middleware are likely to create the best combination for building business resilience.

3. Increasing employee empowerment

It is true that technological progress drives productivity. But many forget that there is also a human element. Increasing educational standards at all levels of the workforce, along with increasing familiarity with business improvement techniques such as Agile, Lean, Six Sigma, etc., and increasing expectations of front-line workers to “empty” the middle layers of the business average. there is a growing need to empower employees to drive their own increased productivity.

Middleware provides an opportunity for frontline workers to be less dependent on ERP-based IT solutions to meet their productivity needs.

In addition, frontline workers are constantly in contact with customers, so they have a good understanding of operational issues. This knowledge, combined with a culture of empowerment, makes them natural owners to identify, prioritize and develop process and automation improvements. This strengthens workforce engagement and increases performance.

Middleware tools are key to furthering this empowerment, allowing employees to offload transactional middleware tasks and focus on high-value tasks such as customer service, problem solving, and judgment. In addition, middleware tools can monitor many more variables than human cognition can cope with and highlight where employees should focus their efforts.

For example, at Partners in Performance, we have clients that use middleware AI for large-scale tick-of-works service dispatch that takes into account hundreds of variables including real-time weather, traffic, learning levels, etc., that human dispatchers were focusing on half a dozen variables.