In this second blog in a short series, Alex Croucher our Director of Intelligent Automation, shares some more predictions for the year ahead. If you missed Alex's first article, you can find it here
SMEs
Automation products and services have typically been aimed at the largest corporates. Due to the scale of these businesses, returns on investments in automation are huge so top prices can be charged for the software licenses and implementation support from high end global consultancies.
SMEs are now starting to cotton on to the opportunity that Intelligent Automation provides and we’ll see significant growth in this sector during 2019. That will require a change in approach from the whole automation industry. Pricing needs to be re-thought and infrastructure requirements must be flexible to work in this very diverse sector. The structuring and methodologies of CoEs will also need to be re-thought. I saw a presentation recently where the scale of the CoEs being outlined under the centralised and federated models were bigger than many companies. Smaller implementation partners such as VKY are better placed to support this market by offering fully managed services that are tailored to the sector.
Migrations
Automation has been around for a few years now. Although many businesses are just starting to consider the opportunity, some early adopters have established capabilities. Due to changes in the technologies, commercial models and general progression of the customer’s business, they may start to think about what’s next. E.g. Blue Prism is well established in a business and was a good choice 5 years ago but is it right for the next 5 years? Other businesses – particularly large corporates – will have tried at least a couple of software packages in extended trials. I’ve heard of 2 organisations recently who have decided that the software vendor they had originally selected is not right for them because it is too complicated, so they are planning moves to something simpler and have selected new vendors. The upshot is that we’ll start to see more migration programmes over the next year.
Whether any of these predictions are right or wrong, 2019 will definitely be an exciting year for everyone in the world of Intelligent Automation and related technologies. What are your thoughts? Please let us know your predictions for 2019.
About VKY Automation
VKY Automation are at the forefront of Intelligent Automation technology in Scotland and are the first independent Scottish business to achieve partner status with both Automation Anywhere and UI Path – 2 of the top software vendors in the global automation market. We understand how to get the most out of the technology and how to avoid the pitfalls. Scottish tech news site digit.fyi recently described VKY as one of the leading Intelligent Automation consultancies in Scotland. To find out more about Intelligent Automation and what it can do for you, please get in touch for a confidential and no obligation chat by emailing info@vkyautomation.com
