RPA as a Service, what is it?
RPA as a Service (RPAaaS) outsources Robotic Process Automation to a third-party RPA company utilising their automation software, experience and support with cloud or local infrastructure.
RPAaaS is provided as a fixed project plus support afterwards, or as a subscription model (project and support rolled into a monthly fee) which is highly attractive to companies who may not have the working capital to commit to a larger RPA development project. With RPAaaS on a subscription model, they can deliver their RPA project with far less overhead costs.
Companies who may already use existing RPA or automation software are likely to run into scaling issues at times due to licensing costs and will be unable to roll out further automation bots without a heavy spend. When outsourcing to an RPA company, RPAaaS eliminates licensing costs altogether and ensures maximum growth without bottlenecks. Together with the backing of an experienced team of bot developers to manage the project work with support and management afterwards.
Benefits of RPAaaS
There are a number of benefits of RPA as a Service. Here are just some of them:
Faster deployment and implementation time
Integration with other recommended solutions
Lower CAPEX and higher OPEX financial model
Less IT knowledge requirements in-house
Support and Maintenance managed by outsoursed RPA partner
Concerns with RPA as a Service
Some very common concerns that we hear from clients when dealing with RPA are around data and security issues. Companies are extremely worried about loss of data, data leakage and of course GDPR requirements. However, if you use a well-established Orchestrator such as Electroneek or Automation Anywhere (Cloud Enabled version), and we use both, you minimise those security concerns because company data never leaves the organisation's own network. Only the bot monitoring, scheduling, licensing and management data is transmitted externally to RPAaaS cloud infrastructure.
On top of this, data is encrypted in-transit using TLS 1.2 and encrypted at-rest using 256-bit native AWS encryption. Single Sign-On (SSO) option also lets you authenticate users in your own systems without having to enter login credentials using SAML 2.0 and OAuth protocols.
This is one essential reason why when choosing the right RPA company they explain the security and compliance side of their software and service to you in detail.
Working with RPA as a Service does not mean that your RPA provider or the RPA software infrastructure can view, edit, copy or store client, company and employee data. Contrary to other RPA software misconceptions (or even advice from RPA consultants), it is not necessary to have access to any of this data to implement automation bots successfully.
Final points
So to reiterate, all of the data, software and how it is transitted that you use to complete your manual tasks and processes are used in exactly the same way when handled by an RPA bot performing the process. There are no additional steps where your primary business process data is then sent to external parties or external hardware.
About Us
Autonomate are an RPAaaS provider and when you outsource your automation project to us, you mitigate security concerns and access a wealth of experience, knowledge and support in Robotic Process Automation.
Download our eBook here for more information on how we can help implement RPA in your company.