Robotic Process and Intelligent Automation: History and Software Comparison Guide

A vendor-agnostic analysis for C-Suite Executives, Innovation Leads, and Internal Improvement Teams

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There are lots of intelligent automation platforms out there.

You only need one—the best one for your needs.

A software vendor-agnostic analysis for C-Suite Executives and Technology Leads

This guide will help you choose.

Regardless of your industry, automation is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a strategic imperative. The competitive landscape—and your future-state roadmap—demand it.

Choosing, however, among today’s popular competing platforms, unfortunately, isn’t easy. Naturally, each one will tell you that they’re the best for your needs… regardless of your needs.

The Lab can help. Not only are we robotic process automation platform-agnostic, we’re also North America’s RPA expert, helping executives realize real-world outcomes, such as generating scale for acquisitions or mergers, redesigning organizations to control cost, and automating what was previously “un-automate-able.”

The RPA vendors we describe inside this document might not agree with everything we say. But you will.

Which of today’s popular platforms is best for your organization’s strategic vision?

Cost?
Capabilities?
Ease of implementation?
Training?
Future roadmap?

RPA: The early days

The first mover in what’s known as “unattended robotic process automation” (it runs on its own on a server) was Blue Prism, based out of the UK. Although it was powerful, it was IT-centric—not very friendly for automating business-line tasks. It was primarily for database conversions and core-migrations.

Next on the scene was Automation Anywhere. Seeing the weaknesses of Blue Prism, they focused more on “attended automation” (a human had to click a button to commence an automation on a desktop) for business users to employ. Automation anywhere simply brought server-side user interface automation to the desktop – it was a brilliant move.

Unfortunately, neither of these platforms had very good training. They were both hard to learn and use. And the talent pool to develop was tiny.

Along came UiPath. They saw—and capitalized on—the strengths and weaknesses of both Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. As designed, UiPath combined the powerful “unattended” automation of Blue Prism with the business-friendly qualities of Automation Anywhere. And, importantly, UiPath added world-class training—which they then gave away for free.

The ground shifts

It wasn’t just the training that UiPath gave away for free. It was also the application itself… with a catch. For consumers, it was free. For businesses, it was—and is—quite expensive (details in a minute).

The free-consumer version of UiPath quickly democratized automation, leading to everything from automated contest-entries, to building “cut the line bots” to win rare shoes on Nike.com, to bots posting dubious propaganda online and social media sites during elections… and lots of business-side advocates who clamored for it in their organizations.

UiPath was riding high. However, corporate licensing costs were extremely high, at least $100k per year to get started – which limited the accessibility to the software for many mid-sized businesses.

But where was Microsoft all this time?

Playing catch-up… to win

Microsoft saw the value in automation—and specifically in UiPath—early. They tried to acquire the company, but a deal couldn’t be reached.

And so Microsoft decided to go it alone.

You’ve seen this movie before. Remember Tableau? It was a business-intelligence (BI) platform that had been a major player before Microsoft launched Power BI. It took Microsoft awhile, but they went from clunky and under-powered to class-leader slowly, surely, and inevitably. Tableau could only survive Microsoft’s Power BI analytics onslaught by being acquired by Salesforce.

Today, that’s where RPA is headed, too, in the big-players battle between Microsoft and UiPath – and all others.

The Lab’s recommendations

When Microsoft launched its own RPA, called Power Automate, in 2020, we couldn’t recommend it to our clients yet. It was minimal viable product. But things played out as expected.

Today, Power Automate can do 100% percent of the things that UiPath can, for a fraction of the cost. It’s lowered the barrier to entry for automation, in a huge way – by as much as 90%.

Which RPA platform will align strongest to AI in the long-term? Given Microsoft’s multibillion dollar ($13bil!!) investment in OpenAI, we would venture to say the writing is on the wall with this one.

Between these two big players, we’ll typically tell clients: If you already have UiPath, and can afford it (and can handle the upsell pressure from its sales reps), you can keep using it – but certainly should strongly consider migrating those bots to Microsoft Power Automate. If you don’t have any RPA software, you really already do: You can simply activate Power Automate, as part of your existing Microsoft 365 licensing, with the flip of a switch.

How The Lab helps organizations like yours

How The Lab helps organizations like yours

For more than three decades, The Lab’s standardization-centric process-improvement approach has helped C-Suite executives, technology leads, and internal improvement teams achieve their most pressing business objectives—from organization-wide transformation to launching automation or AI.

Process Mapping and Improvement

Document your business in unprecedented detail. Work activities, job positions, customer touchpoints, data and technology—The Lab’s templates accelerate current-state mapping and compare you to industry best practices, including proven standardization and automation improvements.

Intelligent Automation Implementation

Rapidly adopt the latest automation technologies to maximize scale. The Lab’s process-first approach and proprietary library of 500+ proven banking automations deliver superior operating—and scalability—benefits.

Super KPI Analytics and Data Science for C-Suite Executives

Manage your strategic objectives in real time. Combine your existing data with The Lab’s prefabricated data tables, dashboards, automations, AI models, and industry “Super KPIs” and turn your technology investments into business value.

We implement transformation—our core competency.

We’ll handle the process improvement. The business standardization. The intelligent automation development. And the data strategy and analytics. So our core competency becomes your competitive advantage.

Whether you’re looking to transform your organization, solve an urgent business problem, convert your old bots to Power Automate or simply begin with one of our popular automation or analytics “three-packs,” you can rapidly realize results—and benefits—while minimizing risk.