A robotic process automation (RPA) solutions company, AutomationEdge is excited about its business in Brazil. The company reached, this year, the mark of 100 clients in the country – an increase of 'almost 50%' in relation to the previous year. With the advancement of RPA solutions around the world, the company sees new opportunities in the national market it wants to attack.

AutomationEdge bills itself as a 'hyper-automation' company. Its offer brings together, in a single package, RPA tools, components for rapid integration via the cloud, and an intelligence layer – including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and conversational capabilities. The company adopts a SaaS billing model.
When it landed in Brazil, three years ago, the company turned its attention to the “intermediate” market – medium and large companies that sought to explore automation projects, but still lacked expertise in the subject or extensive knowledge of the available tools.

“When we arrived, we noticed that there was a market of intermediary companies – large, but not at the enterprise level – that was looking for automation solutions, but did not want to pay the asking price for large vendors. Our solution was a good alternative: cloud-based and simple to implement”, said Fernando Baldin, CEO of AutomationEdge Brazil in a conversation with IT Forum.

Today, the executive sees the Brazilian market as more mature. According to him, many companies are already moving from the “first wave” of basic automation to a “second wave” – of scaling up RPA projects and more complex use cases by customers. “In the second wave, we see projects that would be impossible without automation. Services that couldn't happen even if we had 100 people working on them”, he evaluated.
One of the successful examples of this model, highlighted by the CEO of the company in Brazil, is the use case of Unimed Grande Florianópolis. The company implemented the AutomationEdge platform in partnership with the integrator Selbetti Tecnologia in early 2020. With the automation project, focused on automating service hours and promoting creations based on technology, the company already saves more than 2,000 hours per month.

A second project involved customer service via WhatsApp, using a chatbot. The company wanted all its customers who went through assistance to receive communication via WhatsApp within five days to check the evolution of the customer health status. “Manually, that was impossible,” he said.
To support this evolution, the company is also betting on consolidating its indirect sales model, and expanding and training its base of 40 partners and integrators in Latin America. To date, AutomationEdge has trained over 300 developers in Brazil. The expectation is to surpass 500 trained developers by the end of this year.
“When the partner works closely with the customer, they create a culture of automation, build knowledge and trust, then expand the number of automated workflows. This is due to our ecosystem”, explained the CEO of the company in Brazil.

Talent shortage creates Opportunity

According to Gartner, global investments in RPA software should reach US$ 2.9 billion this year, an increase of 19.5% compared to 2021. For next year, the consultancy predicts that these solutions will reach US$ 3 .3 billion in investments, which means growth of around 17.5%.

In AutomationEdge's evaluation, there are two main motivators that have stimulated the adoption of RPA solutions around the world: the first is the use of automation to update legacy technologies; the second is efficiency gains and cost reductions, with more and more companies seeking to automate simple tasks that require the attention of human employees.

For Siva Juturi, CCO of AutomationEdge Global, this second use case is especially relevant. Given the global context of a lack of IT manpower, the executive sees more companies betting on the automation of simple and bureaucratic tasks to make better use of the time of human employees.
“We see that the mid-market, in particular, will be quick to adopt automation. For these companies to grow their business, reduce costs, and create competitive advantages, they need automation”, evaluated the executive in an interview with the IT Forum.

In addition to the reality of talent shortages, there is a specific sector of the economy that has been encouraging the company – globally and also in Brazil –: ​​health. According to Juturi, the segment has turned its attention to automation solutions as the reality of home care has gained space in the post-pandemic world.
“As part of the digital transformation that enables home healthcare, automation has to be connected as part of the journey. Home care companies don't need data centers or big infrastructure, they need back office, doctors, nurses, and clients – the rest can be connected via hyper-automation”, he explained.