UK Business Leaders Embrace Intelligent Automation to Accelerate Productivity and Drive Business Transformation

C-Suite Seeks Enterprise Automation Platform to Enable Self-Service Business Users to Achieve Immediate Benefits

LONDON, June 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Delivering new insights into the future of work, today Blue Prism, (AIM: PRSM) announced the findings of its annual global survey in a report titled, "The Impact of a Digital Workforce on Business Agility & Survival". The report, based on research conducted with more than 6,700 knowledge workers and senior IT decision makers globally, reveals that in the UK 86% see robotic process automation (RPA) as solving the global productivity problem, 92% for driving digital transformation, and 83% as essential for business to remain competitive.

C-suite executives globally are also embracing automation with 92% looking to deploy and extend these capabilities throughout their organizations, while 81% indicated RPA and/or automation is critical in scaling technologies such as AI across their business. From creating and enhancing jobs, saving time and costs, accelerating and improving work quality, and making organisations more innovative, those surveyed universally agree that RPA is providing a hugely positive impact on work, business agility and resilience.

"These survey results help validate the sea change we see happening from automation," says Jason Kingdon, Executive Chairman and CEO of Blue Prism. "COVID-19 has put a spotlight on just what a Digital Workforce can do for business continuity, but it is just the beginning. This is about using intelligent automation to empower the non-technical knowledge worker to do more, faster and more efficiently, without having to rely on IT. This goes beyond using desktop macros or screen scraping productivity tools for a quick ROI, intelligent automation is at the center of enabling digital transformations for large scale enterprises."

The New Normal — Post COVID-19
Gauging the impact COVID-19 is having on businesses, Blue Prism also surveyed its own global customer base and found that 94% see a renewed urgency to use RPA as a lifeline for maintaining business continuity and ensuring a higher level of overall responsiveness. 94% of these customers also see Blue Prism's Digital Workforce enabling greater competitiveness while supporting remote collaboration in this "new normal". 100% of respondents are now looking to expand or extend RPA use within their organization, a sign of continued customer momentum and permanence.

Tackling Global Productivity
Across every industry, most knowledge-based work isn't delivering anywhere near its potential, evidenced by diminishing global productivity that's stagnated at one-tenth of what it was 40 years ago for some economies. With the pandemic, organisations face additional challenges from reduced workforces, customer demands and macroeconomic pressures. The survey results reveal a positive link between automation, global productivity, business agility and resilience. In the UK where 510 knowledge workers and 202 senior IT decision makers were surveyed as part of the study, 84% believe too much time is wasted on administration tasks, while it is telling that 88% of those decision makers see Automation as a solution to the global productivity problem, and 95% feel it can help them meet customer demands too.

Future-Proofing Businesses 
In the UK, 83% of business decision makers believe that RPA and/or Automation is essential for their businesses to remain competitive. These positive sentiments are a reflection of the major time savings, improved accuracy and cost savings reported by UK business leaders, 94% of which already have plans in place to extend the use of automation across their businesses. 

In today's competitive economic environment, UK decision makers also recognise that strategic technology investments like RPA can keep their digital transformation efforts on track. In fact, 92% surveyed identified RPA as an important factor in driving digital transformation - with nearly half indicating that RPA allows them to scale the deployment of other emerging technologies too. Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, 76% of UK decision makers reported a struggle to meet customer demand, and 95% felt that automation would help address this challenge.

A Skills Shift Coming
The global survey reveals there's a need for re-skilling and training, with over three quarters surveyed indicating that there are skills which they are constantly sourcing for, such as data analysis and data science. To address this, 69% of UK knowledge workers surveyed indicated their organizations are providing learning opportunities for new skills/qualifications when they introduce technologies that will transform their job.

Automation Anxiety
Fear of automation is diminishing as there's a growing level of trust with more organisations adopting digital colleagues. UK knowledge workers are becoming increasingly comfortable with RPA, just 26% worry about related job losses in the next three years. More than half of knowledge workers are excited at the opportunities that RPA will create, while decision makers feel that adopting new tech will attract talent. Encouragingly, 83% of UK business decision maker believe that their employees would trust working alongside a Digital Workforce and 82% would even trust them to manage employees.

UK Businesses See Growing Preparedness for Automation in the Workforce	2019	2020
Business decision makers who agree their new hires are more prepared to work alongside a Digital Workforce	79%	85%
Business decision makers who agree that adopting these technologies is an important factor in attracting and retaining the best talent	68%	83%
Business decision makers who believe that their organization has been positively impacted by automation	70%	84%
Knowledge workers with fears about job loss related to RPA	32%	26%

All these results highlight RPA being used as a platform and not merely a productivity tool, giving customers access to end-to-end Intelligent Automation solutions that cover all IT environments — on-premises, cloud, hybrid and SaaS. Blue Prism continues to push flexibility and choice for customers through innovations like Blue Prism Digital Exchange 2.0, Decipher IDP, v6.8 and Blue Prism Cloud making a Digital Workforce for Every Enterprise a reality.

Read the full results of the survey here

About the Report
The research was conducted by independent research firm Sapio on behalf of Blue Prism. 1,725 global business decision makers (those with a final say over budget spend of technology implementations) were surveyed in the UK (202), US (402), Japan (106), India (101) Australia (106), Germany (101), Singapore (100), France (100), Sweden (103), United Arab Emirates (103), Russia (100), China (100) and South Africa (101).  A further 5,063 knowledge workers (workers whose main capital is knowledge, whose job is to "think for a living" and who have access to technology as part of their day-to-day jobs) were surveyed in the UK (510), US (1023), Japan (250), India (503) Australia (250), Germany (253), Singapore (255), France (251), Sweden (250), United Arab Emirates (250), Russia (507), China (599) and South Africa (250). All respondents worked in organizations with 250+ employees. In addition, the respondents worked in companies in which automation had already been adopted. All interviews were conducted online by Sapio Research during March 2020.

About Blue Prism
Blue Prism's vision is to provide a Digital Workforce for Every Enterprise. The company's purpose is to unleash the collaborative potential of humans, operating in harmony with a Digital Workforce, so every enterprise can exceed their business goals and drive meaningful growth, with unmatched speed and agility.

Fortune 500 and public-sector organizations, among customers across 70 commercial sectors, trust Blue Prism's enterprise-grade connected-RPA platform, which has users in more than 170 countries. By strategically applying intelligent automation, these organizations are creating new opportunities and services, while unlocking massive efficiencies that return millions of hours of work back into their business.

Available on-premises, in the cloud, hybrid, or as an integrated SaaS solution, Blue Prism's Digital Workforce automates ever more complex, end-to-end processes that drive a true digital transformation, collaboratively, at scale and across the entire enterprise.

Visit www.blueprism.com to learn more or follow Blue Prism on Twitter @blue_prism and on LinkedIn.

© 2020 Blue Prism Limited. "Blue Prism", "Thoughtonomy", the "Blue Prism" logo and Prism device are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Blue Prism Limited and its affiliates. All Rights Reserved. 

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