In the year ahead, automation centres will have to adjust to support emerging federation initiatives and address growing skills gaps. Process improvement will emphasize data-driven use cases and treat physical automation projects as mainstream, sending ripples through process automation markets. Efforts will pay off for those with the mettle to adjust to 2023 realities while doubling down on automation to reap overwhelming competitive advantage. Here is a sample of what our European analysts are predicting for automation in 2023:

  • One-third of European enterprises will prioritise data-driven automation. IoT events, state changes in ML applications, and process data are gaining relevance in the automation realm. Data management vendors now see a strong future in end-to-end process improvement, well beyond traditional data integration. Integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) vendors started to integrate robotic process automation (RPA) and low-code capabilities. Half of RPA vendors support task automation with either UI or API integration. Business process mastery will turn into a key skill for organisations that intend to benefit from data-driven automation ahead of their competitors.
  • Twenty-five percent of automation CoEs will reorganise to support federated development. Centers of excellence (CoEs) have gained prominence with the surge in intelligent automation. This requires a central and holistic view to scale automations, share and develop skills, and govern deployments. In 2023, a number of these CoEs will migrate functions and staff to the primary business lines they supported (e.g., finance and accounting or operations). Strategic CoE functions such as security review, automation architecture, and guardrail governance will remain centralised in dedicated centres.
  • Of relevant organisations, 35% will integrate physical robotics with mainstream tech. Labor shortages in Europe are forcing organisations to pursue robot workers to help keep business functioning. It should come as no surprise that physical robotics is on the rise to augment human agility. Food service, janitorial services, commercial and home delivery, healthcare, and manufacturing will all benefit from autonomous mobile robots, collaborative robots, robot security guards, and drones for inspection. Most of these robots won’t take a humanoid form but rather a form optimised for the task, such as rolling delivery bots.

All in all, 2023 looks to be an exciting year for automation. Read the full report to get more of our predictions for Europe. If you aren’t yet a client, you can download our complimentary Predictions guide for European leaders or explore the Predictions hub for additional resources, including webinars.