This is nicely corroborated by Deloitte’s report suggestively titled The Robots Are Coming, according to which one out of three respondents among shared services and Global Service Leaders view RPA as a higher technology priority than analytical software or cloud computing.

Some facts that back such findings are RPA benefits such as immediate cost savings of 25-50%, 35-50% higher staff productivity, or 30-50% faster average processing times. If RPA seems to become the new must in the world of business, it may be time for you to also start looking for a best-fit RPA service provider.

In case you are mulling over implementation but you are still in doubt as to whether you’re ready to deal with it proficiently, you may find some answers among these seven ways for discovering if your company is ready for automation.

Assuming that you have business objectives like the optimisation of the accounting department, the reduction of operating expenses, the improvement of your company’s services, or a better name among potential clients, identifying an appropriate RPA service provider is a necessary precondition.

There are definitely different criteria to be kept in mind depending on the industry sector that your company is part of, but there are also some generally applicable principles that should guide your choice of a provider. These generic principles are what we’ll be talking about in what follows.

How to choose and RPA service provider

When you’re searching for an RPA service provider that is well suited for your company, you should be paying attention to two sets of criteria, vendor-related and software-related.

Vendor-related criteria for RPA service providers

1. Vendor experience

The most suitable provider for you is one that has worked with other companies, similar in relevant respects (e.g., size, industry sector) to yours. This is because such a vendor would understand both the needs (and, consequently, the objectives), and the kinds of processes that your company is based on.

As a consequence, such a provider could speed up the implementation process by using pre-built ‘plug and play’ robots, and thus decrease the time until the benefits start to manifest themselves.

2. Commitment to staying up-to-date with technological advances

The digital world is constantly developing, and this is the main reason why vendor’s investment in technological innovation is relevant to you. We suggest that you look for RPA vendor companies that offer major product releases yearly, and even more frequent minor releases.

You can check if this is the case by asking the potential vendor to share with you their plans for product development. What you want to see there are concrete ways of including technological progress in the development of new software.

3. Proactive customer support

24/7 technical support during implementation is crucial for successfully leveraging software robots. The RPA service provider that is right for you should be able to offer personalised support via email, phone, or demos during the whole of your automation journey. Should your demands change as you move forward, a vendor to-be-considered must be able to adapt and meet your new requirements.

4. Far-reaching customer training

If your RPA journey is to be successful, training tools are necessary for both business users and developers. In order to support a successful enterprise, the vendor should be able to ensure not only onsite and external training, but also to facilitate access to online libraries.

Efficiently learning RPA can happen in a number of ways - e.g., webinars, videos, online documentation of tutorials, release notes, information about best practices. The prospective service provider should grant you access to these various means.