Fujitsu has become the latest IT services provider to launch a “pay-as-you-go” service for access to robotic process automation (RPA), allowing businesses to scale up or down automation cost effectively by paying per second.
“Using the ‘as-a-service’ model for RPA makes it far easier for businesses to quickly adopt the technology by greatly reducing the number of stakeholder’s involved in purchase decisions,” Jan Bache, Manager at Fujitsu EMEIA RPA Centre of Excellence, told Computer Business Review. “This approach means businesses can implement the technology much more rapidly – which in turn will allow them to see the gains of it quicker, and will lead to RPA becoming embedded in how the organisation operates.”
The company outlined many organisations hold concerns over RPA due to having to build a ‘business case’, which demonstrates short-term gains, but also ensuring they deliver long-term benefits regarding customer satisfaction, agility and efficiency.
Earlier this year, IT services company AutomationEdge became one of the first vendors to offer RPA as a Service (RPAaaS), emphasising that a “pay-as-you-use” subscription can help customers eliminate the need to buy, deploy, and maintain hardware and software, giving greater budget flexibility.
“Almost all organisations have an automation agenda, but many are failing to achieve the full potential of RPA; this has worsened as many businesses face contradictory goals,” Bjarne Rasmussen, Head of RPA Centre of Excellence at Fujitsu, said.
Fujitsu deploys consultants to work with businesses to create a tailored roadmap of the processes that can be automated; then using this information to develop a case scenario to build business plan. Once in place, organizations can deploy the RPA on-premise or in the Fujitsu data centre.
Bot Benefits
Deploying Fujitsu’s new service will enable customers to take advantage of process automation with a pay-as-you-go approach; allowing them to record how many hours the automation is delivering back to the business.
This method will bring cost benefits to businesses; closely mapping the benefits to the cost of the process. RPA generally brings cost benefits to organizations, by automating day-to-day processes; taking away the burden of repetitive tasks from employees, whilst enhancing customer satisfaction by reducing the number of errors.
“Having fewer stakeholders involved in decision making means there is no need for a massive upfront investment,” Bache said. “Moreover, pay-as-you-go ensures that costs are highly transparent and fixed to the benefits that the business actually gains from RPA. This prevents projects from spiralling out of control, sucking in more and more resources.”
Fujitsu’s RPA-as-a-Service is now available in EMEIA directly from Fujitsu; pricing varies on configuration and region.
