Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on Robotic Process Automation (RPA). As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we decided to share our insights with you.
Heat Map: 5 Top Robotic Process Automation Solutions
For our 5 top picks, we used a data-driven startup scouting approach to identify the most relevant solutions globally. The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 interesting examples out of 218 relevant solutions. Depending on your specific needs, your top picks might look entirely different.
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Catalytic – Unattended Automation
Unattended automation or business process automation is the key element of RPA as it fully automates repetitive business processing tasks. RPA can automate simple processes such as gathering files, extracting data and generating reports while handling more complex tasks that require working without human intervention. American startup Catalytic focuses on structuring various types of business data. They offer RPA services in four broad processes. First, they use ‘triggers’, from emails or any other designated trigger, to begin automation of data collection. Second, they integrate the processes of people, bots, and systems to better manage and monitor ‘workflows’. Third, they assign ‘actions’ for automating next-steps, such as formatting documents, sending emails or payment orders. Finally, all the information is collated in a live data table – enabling employees, suppliers, customers, and owners to audit and report business processes.
Leapwork – Attended Automation
While most RPA systems are code-based and require IT-technicians, there is a high demand for creating simpler systems for non-technicians. Such programs reduce human time spent on repetitive tasks while freeing up time for designing and running automation tests with quick turnarounds. Attended automation enables humans and bots to work together. Denmark-based Leapwork allows users to create automation flows, solve problems in business processes, generate reports and maintain live databases. While encountering possible blocks during automation, such as visual or natural language processing, the users intervene so as to efficiently complete tasks.
Automation Hero – Hybrid Automation
Hybrid automation is a combination of attended and unattended automation. The main application areas include data normalization, records management, on-boarding processes, and data mining. USA-based Automation Hero integrates data processing, click-bots and deep learning with the human workforce to create a coding-free web and desk process automation engine which performs tasks such as getting data from web pages, submitting reports and forms while continuously updating the information.
Cinnamon – Process Discovery & Documentation
Traditional business processes are usually hand-written or printed in PDF formats. Working with such unstructured data is chaotic and time-consuming. RPA techniques to read and structure business documents allow organizations to identify their actual business processes and to eventually automate them. Modern RPA-driven systems work not only with optical character recognition but also use convolutional neural networks to provide results with minimal error and maximum accuracy. Japanese startup Cinnamon, which started as a photo-sharing application, transformed into an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered cognitive document reader. From handwritten or printed invoices to insurance claims and financial statements, their AI enables deciphering texts and files, digitizing and storing them in the databases.
TurAI – Industry-Specific Processes Automation
Despite obvious spheres of application for RPA such as data operations, there are industry sectors that require a highly specialized set of RPA solutions. This may include lead nurturing, CRM updates, customer relationship management, and payroll automation. Dutch startup TurAI has various integrations with systems like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Sheets, Skype, Amazon, and others to offer the most convenient bot interface for the designated area of RPA application.
What About The Other 213 Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence for your Proof of Concept (PoC), partnership, or investment targets. The 5 startups showcased above are promising examples out of 218 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria and collaboration strategy, get in touch.
