British businesses are missing out on the benefits of automation by not combining the right technologies, research from ABBYY has found.

While 19 in 20 businesses have deployed some form of automation, only one in 20 use the full stack, meaning most businesses are missing out on what the firm calls the ‘secret weapons’ that could deliver the most return on investment (ROI).

It commissioned 3Gem to survey 500 UK IT decision-makers, finding that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the least adopted, with only 24 per cent of UK businesses investing in the technology. However, RPA is particularly strong on time to ROI, with 82 per cent of businesses seeing a return on their RPA investment within a year, while 30 per cent saw a return of at least twice what they invested.

The financial services sector led the way, with 38 per cent of businesses investing in RPA, while manufacturing came in second place with 23 per cent. Some sectors have barely dipped their toe, with the legal profession for example only seeing six per cent adoption.

This is despite a majority of RPA adopters stating improved efficiency (55 per cent), increased market share (52 per cent) and revenue growth (52 per cent), with productivity gains (44 per cent) and business transformation (40 per cent) also realised.

The research also found that combining RPA with content-centric process automation drives even greater results, with 71 per cent of businesses who have deployed both technologies growing their revenue – compared to just 37 per cent for businesses which invested only in RPA.

The survey showed that only half of businesses with more than 5,000 employees are using the tech, dropping to 36 per cent for businesses with 500 to 4,999 employees.

“Using just one or two types of automation without integrating the tech that will help achieve your goals is at best short-sighted, and at worst a waste of time and money,” said Neil Murphy, global vice president at ABBYY. “Some businesses simply don’t have the understanding on why their automation investments aren’t generating the ROI they hoped for.

"These businesses need to automate with RPA, but they also need to leverage the technology that can automate content-centric processes to make robots smarter with the introduction of new skills," he added.

Share Story: