Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for beginners: 8 key concepts

This year, the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) market is predicted to hit $2.5 billion, having grown at a compound annual growth rate of between 70 and 80 percent over two years, according to a report produced by the Everest Group. There could be some 2.5 million robotic desktop automation (RDA) bots running on desktops and between 700,000 and 800,000 RPA robots on cloud and on-premise servers, Everest's data says. Although RPA usage is expanding across industries, geographies, and organizational sizes, many RPA buyers are still in the earliest stages of research or adoption. For those just starting with RPA, there are a number of key concepts that are helpful to understand. As we explained in our RPA in plain English primer, "RPA automates everyday processes that once required human action – often a great deal of it performed in rote, time-consuming fashion."