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Consider these 12 RPA software vendors for deployment
RPA technology can help companies successfully automate their tasks and processes if they can sift through the options to determine the right system for their enterprise.
The robotic process automation market offers a diverse group of products, features and capabilities designed to help organizations automate a number of their technology and business processes.
This roundup of robotic process automation (RPA) vendors provides a quick view of the types of products companies can deploy when looking to hand off routine tasks to software robots.
Automation Anywhere
The Automation Anywhere Enterprise platform is an RPA software with cognitive and analytical technology to enable end-to-end automation of business processes for global organizations. According to a company spokesperson, more than 2,800 customer entities and 1,600 enterprise brands now use this platform.
Automation Anywhere provides the Bot Store, one of the first and largest online marketplaces for off-the-shelf, plug-and-play RPA bots. The store enables AI and machine learning developers to utilize cognitive technology to build pre-trained bots that can provide structure to the unstructured data necessary for business, like financial statements, purchase orders and invoices.
The Automation Anywhere platform supports the four major cloud providers -- Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure -- and can deploy on premises, in a hybrid cloud, or on leading cloud platforms to provide scale and flexibility. The company says it offers customers a migration path to accelerate a move to the cloud.
Automation Anywhere has an annual subscription based on the number of bots and includes maintenance and support free of charge to all customers.
AutomationEdge
Intelligent Automation from AutomationEdge is available with technologies for the automation of front office, middle office, back office and IT operations, including transaction processing, data collation, response triggering and data systems integration.
AutomationEdge provides chatbots, intelligent automation bots, AI and machine learning capabilities, and either ready-to-use bots or an environment where developers can build their own bots. Companies can use the platform to automate Excel spreadsheet procedures and activities, chatbots that interact with customers, the SAP enterprise resource planning platform, web-based applications and other technology components.
Contact AutomationEdge directly for pricing and licensing information.
Blue Prism
Blue Prism Robotic Process Automation provides access to artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and enables users to build process automations while meeting security and compliance standards.
Among Blue Prism RPA's latest features are outbound data gateways, which are able to push data from the platform to a company's external systems, like monitoring tools, reporting engines, data stores or flat files. The gateways also provide more control for managing data in the platform. Another feature is IP version 6 (IPv6) support. Environments that use either that or IPv4 network protocols for all their connections are the ones best suited to deploy Blue Prism, as are those that use a hybrid approach.
Through drag-and-drop functionality, users can build an automated process including a choice of AI, optical character recognition, machine learning and process mining. No coding or development is necessary to build custom, intelligent automations.
Contact Blue Prism directly for pricing and licensing information.
Contextor SAS
Contextor's RPA software features Contextor Interactive Assistant. The attended RPA module of the platform deploys on desktop PCs to analyze actions, orchestrate applications, automate tasks, streamline processes and collect key performance indicators (KPIs). SAP acquired Contextor SAS in November 2018.
Contextor Standalone Bot is the unattended RPA module of the Contextor product, which deploys on servers to automate applications, streamline processes and collect KPIs.
Other components are Contextor Studio, an integrated development environment that includes tools to configure and maintain automation projects for attended and unattended RPA; and Contextor Control Room, the server component for unattended RPA or server-based RPA that provides a monitoring dashboard and the management tool that handles the delivery of bot scripts on each server or virtual machine.
Pricing is per bot run, with the user charged each time a bot performs an automation script, according to SAP.
Inflectra
Inflectra's Rapise product provides automated testing for web applications, mobile apps on both Apple iOS and Android, desktop programs and APIs.
Key features of the software include scriptless automation, which enables users to quickly create and record tests and play them back in any browser; test and validate complex business applications, such as Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce; and use an object-based approach that lets users create and refine tests using a drag-and-drop function, keyword testing and data-driven testing.
Inflectra claims that Rapise can support as many different platforms as possible and that it is flexible enough for application testing on either real or simulated devices.
Pricing begins at $3,999.99 for three machines and $20,000 for 20 machines, according to the Inflectra website.
Kofax
RPA software from Kofax is designed to automate manual tasks, such as collecting, reviewing and inputting information between systems, websites and portals. The software automatically acquires and integrates data from websites, portals and enterprise applications to conduct these tasks.
The platform supports application environments, including web, Windows, Java and mainframe. Users can take advantage of a single robot design studio that enables robot builders to visually recognize applications, screen areas and objects in real time as they build the robot automation workflow.
Users can apply AI-based cognitive intelligence to learn, process and classify unstructured document data with the Cognitive Document Automation feature. The software uses machine learning analysis to handle complex document processing. It also provides dashboards on robot operations and system performance, which users can customize to analyze employee productivity and other key process elements.
Capabilities of Kofax's platform are individually licensed, according to a company spokesperson, with pricing beginning at $10,000 per year for a three-year term.
Kryon
Kryon's Process Discovery RPA software features an AI-powered analytics engine that identifies which processes the company can automate to increase ROI, generates automation workflows and provides insights to help organizations continuously optimize processes and bot productivity.
The product's Discovery Robots work by collecting data that details how users execute regular processes; then, the analytics engine converts this data for IT so the team can identify what type of automation will save them the most time and money. The Process Discovery feature can develop, edit and ultimately generate automation workflows using the Kryon Studio, the software's authoring tool.
As part of its offering, Kryon provides Unattended Robots to continuously execute repetitive, time-consuming tasks; attended Robots to have tasks automated on demand; or a hybrid automation option that enables collaboration between virtual and human workforces.
Contact Kyron directly for pricing and licensing information.
NICE
The NICE Virtual workforce provides software bots for organizations to install on their back-end servers. These bots can take over repetitive tasks that the human workforce typically has to handle. They also can independently execute a variety of tasks without human intervention.
The NICE software works by combining both attended and unattended automations to enable more efficient processes. For instance, attended bots are able to alert a worker to intervene when encountering an error in real time, rather than just stopping completely.
The open platform can integrate with many leading AI-driven technologies -- like optical character recognition, chatbots and machine learning -- to support more complex automation. NICE also offers an Automation Finder that utilizes desktop analytics and machine learning to recognize business processes that would make sense for the technology to automate.
Contact NICE directly for pricing and licensing information.
Pegasystems
The Pega Robotic Process Automation platform from Pegasystems is designed to help organizations automate tedious tasks as well as eliminate the need for workers to input repetitive manual data for processes like onboarding customers and employees, adjusting financial amounts and updating customer information.
The platform supports a variety of enterprise applications, including custom and legacy systems, and allows organizations to distribute work across desktops and servers, so companies can scale to meet their business needs.
The software has continuous transaction processing capabilities to help increase productivity and eliminate processing backlogs. It features a Robotic Automation Management Console that lets users orchestrate, manage and prioritize the queuing of work and processing activity for Pega software bots. Dashboards and reports can monitor bot health, work status, service-level agreement compliance and auditing.
Contact Pegasystems directly for pricing and licensing information.
Softomotive
ProcessRobot from Softomotive is an enterprise RPA technology that's designed to help companies more easily create automations for all work stages, spanning from design to production. It includes a Visual Process Designer that enables organizations to develop automated processes and code-free components that run and manage automations. Softomotive says ProcessRobot can automate any process, regardless of both application type and the underlying technology.
The platform supports HTML5, Java, Microsoft, .NET, Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation, Citrix as well as all major web browsers. ProcessRobot users are also able to integrate the technology with the major cognitive services from Microsoft, Google and IBM Watson.
ProcessRobot also includes Intelligent Desktop and Web Recorders that can convert any user interaction to processes for prototyping. The software features a collection of ready-made, built-in actions that developers can use for more than 300 application interactions. Its user libraries even store user-generated custom actions that customers can refer to for assistance in other processes.
Softomotive offers its enterprise RPA platform through a recurring subscription fee that includes the price of the components, dedicated support and access to all future releases.
UiPath
UiPath's Enterprise Robotic Process Automation platform aims to automate manual, rules-based and repetitive processes that can take up considerable admin time. The company claims that businesses and governmental organizations worldwide use its product for task automation.
The open platform includes hundreds of built-in activities that users can both customize and share, as well as the ability to integrate with existing enterprise applications. UiPath Robots are in the process of developing new AI skills to increase automation capabilities, according to the company.
Key features include Studio, for designing automation for robots; Orchestrator, for deploying and managing robots; and the robots themselves, which run the automation.
Companies can use the system to deploy and manage a number of processes, which vary in location and complexity, according to UiPath. The company provides implementation support that is available worldwide, as well as certified training and a network of partner integrators.
Prices are $3,000 for Studio (including a development robot); $1,200 for attended production robots and $8,000 for unattended production robots; and $20,000 for Orchestrator. The company offers a 60-day free trial.
VisualCron
VisualCron is a tool designed specifically for Windows that provides automation, integration and task scheduling capabilities. The company claims the platform does not require programming skills to create more than 100 custom, automated tasks.
The company claims to base its development of the product on feature requests from customers. The software provides audit, task and job logs as well as output for each task, which it claims provides enough information for debugging. A range of tasks use common protocols for file transfer and script execution across different platforms.
Contact VisualCron directly for pricing and licensing information.
