#31 Top 9 Powerful RPA Tools

RPA Tools: Pandemic has facilitated the digital transformation as a lot of organization preferring a hybrid work model rather than office/premise like setup. Adoption of new and advanced technologies like AI, ML, IOT, RPA has increased and the companies are now serious towards executing in order to stay afloat in the competitive market.

It is also the need of the hour where we have to change our operational tactics and RPA plays an important role in that. If you have such scenario then this article is for You, we will look what is RPA and what are the different option available in open-source and commercial RPA.

What is RPA ?

Robotic process automation (RPA) refers to software that can be programmed to do basic, repetitive tasks across applications. RPA develops and commission/deploy a software bots with the ability to launch and operate other software in the desired ecosystem.

Or in other words it’s the process by which you can build a digital workforce that can save human time and efforts in doing boring tasks which could be error prone by humans.

RPA helps in improving the efficiency of process flow, accuracy and productivity.

What Is an RPA Tool?

Tools which help in achieving RPA by pre-configured software programmed and procedure, which ultimately enable automation like,

1. Application testing
2. Sales Order Generation
3. Data Validation
4. Data Entry Works
5. Workflow automation, etc.

What are the business benefits of RPA?

Robotic process automation streamlines workflows, which makes organizations more profitable, flexible, and responsive. It also increases employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity by removing mundane tasks from their workdays.

RPA is noninvasive and can be rapidly implemented to accelerate digital transformation. And it’s ideal for automating workflows that involve legacy systems that lack APIs, virtual desktop infrastructures (VDIs), or database access. 

What Are the Types of RPA Tools?

RPA tools can be divided into 2 categories,

1. Open-source 
2. Closed-Source/Licensed

Gartner Magic Quadrant 2019

Lets Checkout Commercial Tools first

UiPath

UiPath HQ at Newyork, USA ranks top in the Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, 2019. It continues to stay as a leader in RPA this year too says Guy Kirkwood, Chief Evangelist at UiPath.

The team operates through partners and closed December with $360 million as recurring revenue.

It’s a simple Visual designer with drag and drops functionality that makes the Windows desktop automation simpler.

They are pacing up the enterprise automation with AI and ML. Even their FTS release, 2020 concentrates high on the Hyper automation

Best Suitable for:

• Citrix Automation
• Front & back-office automation
• Enterprises with complex business processes
• Highly scalable processes
• Attended, Unattended automation

License Cost: Do visit website for latest pricing.

• UiPath pricing starts at $3990.00 per year.

Free trial: Available. Try from the link UIPath Trial

Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere is a global company that develops robotic process automation software. Founded in 2003, the company is headquartered in San Jose, California.

Product portfolio includes

• Discovery Bot
• IQ Bot
• RPA Workforce
• Bot Insight
• Aari

This Intelligent Automation Platform HQ in San Jose is used in more than 90 countries with 40+ offices across the world.

It can effectively automate the end-to-end business processes with ease. BOT insights provides us the ability to monitor each robot efficiently and have a look at the time saved through automation.

It has 500+ ready to download bots and bots on demand. It is secure by design and reads the unstructured data efficiently

Key Features

Their Automation Anywhere Enterprise A2019 covers,

• Computer Vision
• Drag & Drop IQ bot with cognitive abilities
• End-to-End AI-powered automation
• Predictive Modeling 
• NLP, etc.

Pricing: Source Automation website. Check the pricing comparison.

*Free trial available for 30 days. Check the link for Free Trial

Community Edition: There is also community edition available.

Blueprism

Blue Prism is one of the widely used RPA tools across the world. They have 1800+ customers including the Fortune 500 companies and top brands like Lloyds, Siemens, Microsoft, Accenture, Google, KPMG, EY, etc.

They are headquartered in the UK which aims to build a digital workforce to accelerate the automation of enterprises. 

Product portfolio is huge. Please check:

Blue Prism is developer-friendly and its Connected – RPA, an Intelligent Automation Ecosystem feature is impressive. It includes components like,

• Intelligent RPA Platform
• Digital Exchange
• ROM – Based Support & Services
• Communities

which brings together the users, partners an AI scientists to ally the businesses

Free Trial: Available for 30 days (both cloud and on-premise)

Pega

Pega is named as a “Visionary” in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant,2019.

Founded by Alan Treflor in 1983 is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. 

Pega has a presence of over 41 countries across the globe and 200+ partners. It holds multiple accolades including Best in Biz award 2018, CRM Service Leader by Destination CRM, etc.

Key Features:

• Center-out Approach
• X-Ray Vision
• Low-code app development platform

Free Trial – 30 days hosted on the Pega cloud

NICE

Featured as a “Challenger” in the Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, 2019 is headquartered in Israel.

Key Features

• Automation Finder 

This unique automation finder as the name indicates finds what are the tasks to be automated based on desktop analytics.

This effectively sits within every employees’ desktop and tracks their everyday activities. It collects data like process handling time, frequency, etc. to identify which processes grab more time of the employees.

Deep Learning & Machine Learning further improves its accuracy.

• Cognitive Intelligence

NICE’s Open platform leverages OCR, Chatbots, machine learning to automate a highly complex business process like opening a banking account, KYC, credit score determination, etc. 

In case of a discrepancy, it is escalated to humans for verification and approval.

• NEVA – NICE Employee Virtual Attendant

This is the world’s first Cognitive Intelligent Virtual Attendant for employees. It automates the employee’s front office and back-office tasks accurately with the help of desktop analytics.

Examples:

• Claim processing
• Customer Relationship Management
• Contact Center Automation
• Unattended back-office processes automation

Few Best Open Source RPA Tools 2021

Open source tools are commercially free to use. This allows anyone to customize, enhance the source code according to their needs.

Few best open-source RPA tools are,

Tag UI

Tag UI rapidly automates the repetitive time-critical tasks. It’s creator Ken Soh founder of Tebel Automation, says that TagUI is a Command Line Interface and it is suitable for 

• OCR (built-in)
• UI automation
• Desktop Applications
• Web Applications
• Direct ML model Integration (with API / R code / Python)

Key Features:

1. Its natural language like-syntax feature eliminates the need for coding knowledge. And allows us to write the scripts in more than 20+ languages including English, Chinese, Japanese.
2. Easy installation

Platforms : Windows, Linux, Mac OS

RoboCorp

Robocorp is an interesting open-source RPA tool that is based on cloud-native technology. It focuses on the developers’ ease of use. 

Since it is delivered through a cloud-based platform, the developers have the liberty to experiment more with minimal set-up. 

Key features

1. Robohub – a learning community for software robot developers. Its Robocode lab editor has almost all the tools necessary for the developers to start the automation.
2. RPA Framework – Readymade, reusable building blocks for common RPA uses cases
3. Robocloud Worker – This enables developers to run the bots by simply installing and signing in.

Platforms – Windows, Mac OS, Linux

However, cloud-based orchestration involves significant cost.

Taskt

This is an easy to use free RPA automation tool (both personal and commercial use). It has features like,

• Executing Custom code
• Image Recognition
• OCR
• Desktop application Automation
• Web Application Automation

Key Features

1. Screen recorder 
2. Element recorder

AutoHot Key

It is a simple and effective open-source RPA automation tool for Windows. It can be used for,

• Keyboard shortcut- key / hotkey generation
• Mouse clicks automation
• Form filling automation
• Shortcuts for frequently used phrases
• Opening the documents, websites, etc. with keystrokes

Key Features

1. Easy to learn built-in commands 
2. Beginner-friendly
3. Script-based automation

Conclusion

There are lot speculation in the industry analyst i.e. With the growth of RPA a lot of people would end up loosing jobs. We all know that any technology which are emerging had to be chosen and used wisely will help in improving efficiency of the business processes. As Teknonauts we believe the nature of jobs would change but RPA is not going soon any where and it will be in mainstream technology soon.

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