Russian RPA System Market 2024

In March 2024, a separate classifier for process robotization systems was introduced into the classifier of the register of Russian software. In Ministry of Digital Development, these changes were explained by the request of the industry. According to market participants, this will simplify work with the public sector, small and medium-sized businesses.

Automation of processes with RPA continues to gain popularity among companies from various fields:, finance,, insurance, health care industry retail trade and others. Due to the fact that the technology is becoming more affordable, it will be more and more in demand, including in small companies.

At the same time, according to Kommersant, now in Russia less than 1,000 companies use RPA, and more than half of the developers' income is provided by the sale of licenses to companies with a turnover of 50 billion rubles. per year. When implementing RPA, there remains a problem with the discontent of employees who are afraid of losing their jobs. Therefore, vendors, integrators and customers themselves face a great task of training specialists on the ground.

The pace of implementation of RPA in Russia varies by industry. The financial sector and telecommunications are leading the way, actively applying the technology. Industry and trade show an average level of implementation. The public sector is showing growing interest, but so far it is lagging behind the private one. Health care and education are just beginning to master the RPA. Small and medium-sized businesses are gradually increasing usage thanks to affordable cloud solutions. In general, the pace of implementation is moderate, but with a tendency to accelerate, especially where there is already experience with this technology, "says Konstantin Artemyev, General Director of Sherpa Robotics.

There is an increase in competition between vendors. Russian developers are actively developing their products, expanding their capabilities, constantly working on additional functionality in accordance with the needs of the market and customers. In addition, they pay great attention to system stability and fault tolerance, which is especially important when automating processes with critical SLAs for operations. The main trend remains the independence of functionality from operating systems.

The development of platforms is influenced by complex and voluminous automation tasks. For companies that have previously robotized routine processes, it is now important to automate end-to-end business processes. Therefore, the developers began to focus on the development of process engines and AI models.

Our customers are showing great interest in linking robots with artificial intelligence. AI synergy with RPA allows you to develop more flexible and efficient solutions to automate business processes, which ultimately increases the efficiency of the entire company. In addition to this, our government is actively promoting AI implementation initiatives. This confirms the statement of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin that the introduction of AI in Russia by 2030 will add 6% or more than 10 trillion rubles to the country's economy, - comments Sergei Bialostotsky, CEO of PIX Robotics.

In RPA solutions, learning abilities will be improved in the future through the introduction of AI. Robots with such capabilities will be able not only to perform routine work, but also to adapt to changes in the environment, which will speed up their development and debugging, "explains Ilya Fomichev, head of AI/RPA at IT company SimbirSoft.

The leap in the development of generative neural networks has opened up a large scope for the LLM + RPA bundle to create various intelligent classifiers and information aggregators in solving a wide range of problems. Among the main scenarios for using AI in domestic RPA solutions, one can note the classification of documents, advanced OCR, and the creation of chat bots.

Some companies have implemented AI support at the integration level through APIs, while others have incorporated their own AI algorithm designs into their solutions in the form of modules.

The use of AI technologies in conjunction with the robotization of business processes made it possible to significantly expand the scope of RPA. Software robots integrated with large language models, for example, can read documents, extract the necessary information from them, and determine scenarios for their processing based on content. And they do it all in closed corporate circuits of customers, without access to external systems. According to our assessment, the use of AI technologies is already leading to a change in the market growth rate. And if earlier we saw an increase of about 20-30%, then in 2024 and 2025 we expect an increase of up to 40% or more, "says Aleksei Nikolaev, director of strategic development at Primo RPA.

The RPA market in 2024 has undergone a number of interesting changes from 2023. If earlier the main trend was the continuation of migration from foreign platforms and import substitution, now the main priority is an integrated approach to the digitalization of routine operations. For large Enterprise-level customers, RPA is beginning to evolve into an ecosystem to create a new level of digital employees based on various technology stacks: RPA + IDP, RPA + ML, RPA + LLM, "said Nikolay Kameko, RPA GlowByte Development Manager.

Undoubtedly, such interest among software developers in AI technologies has had a positive impact on the development of solutions, but the use of artificial intelligence on the customer side often causes certain difficulties due to the imperfection of AI models. In addition, complex AI-related tasks may require significant computing hardware, including the use of GPUs, which is also costly. Companies are increasingly seeing RPA as part of a broader digital transformation strategy. There is an increasing demand for end-to-end solutions that combine RPA with other automation technologies. The main emphasis is on rapid automation (hyperautomatization). Increased focus on safety and compliance.

Now the robotization project is not only the use of RPA technologies. We are already talking about complex tasks that require solutions on the RPA platform, OCR engine, chat bots, processes, machine learning and large language models. This year, this trend has become especially noticeable, and we are pleased that these needs of companies are being closed by ROBIN products. The key areas where such projects are being implemented are the transport industry and state authorities, "says Pavel Borchenko, Managing Director of Robin of SL Soft (Softline Group of Companies).

Among the main drivers of the market, experts note the digital transformation of the business, as well as the desire of companies to speed up business processes and reduce costs. The growing need for personnel also contributes to growth. With not enough people on the market, companies are trying to retain existing employees and offer candidates better conditions. Routine, typical tasks do not relate in any way to what attracts people to work, and RPA allows you to exclude this routine.

Also, growth drivers are the need to optimize costs, the development of domestic solutions and a growing understanding of the advantages of RPA among managers.

The market has already adapted to robotization. If earlier it was new, and everyone discussed exclusively the term "automation," now "robotization" does not raise questions for business. In a relatively difficult situation on the labor market, companies are striving to optimize costs and free up more human resources to solve other problems, which increases interest in RPA systems, - said Sergey Azarov, head of the business solutions and consulting department of Softline Group of Companies.

Today, the key development factor for RPA is the possibility of implementing integration solutions, since platform implementation has already been formed over the past 2 years. Integration is a rather difficult task. Each customer has their own needs and tasks in this direction, which, on the one hand, can create barriers for software developers, and on the other, stimulates new challenges and improve their RPA platforms, - comments Nikolay Rykov, product manager for software solutions Konica Minolta Business Solutions Russia.

Barriers to accelerated development are economic uncertainty, lack of specialists, complexity of integration and concerns about data security and job cuts. Also, one of the major barriers to growth continues to be the low level of remuneration of specialists who perform routine processes in companies, especially in the regions.

Among the main obstacles to growth are the difficulties of migration from foreign platforms and the significant costs of introducing and integrating with other modern technologies. The introduction of RPA is especially active in banking, industrial and state sferakh.​. However, RPA for the most part remains inaccessible to small businesses due to the cost of solutions, adds Svetlana Rumyantseva, project manager at RAMAX Group.

According to experts from Greenatom, companies still do not understand where to use RPA, often stop at robotizing surface typical processes. Management is not immersed in business processes that are not obvious to the application of RPA. There is also a discrepancy between corporate processes "on paper" (within the framework of regulations) and in real life. And the expectation that it is necessary to robotize the entire process, but it is absolutely normal to robotize the part of the process that is most algorithmic, leaving rarely repeated events on employees.

According to the forecasts of Konstantin Artemyev, General Director of Sherpa Robotics, by the end of 2024 we should expect an increase in the market volume by 15-20% compared to 2023. This means that by the end of the year the market can reach about 21-24 billion rubles.

 Primo RPA expects a market growth of up to 40% or more in 2024-2025. AI integration will remain the key driver of the change in growth rates.

Foreign analysts predict that the software robotization market will grow by at least 30-40% by 2027, which will lead to an increase in revenues year over year. Although the Russian market is still lagging behind global trends in this area, the readiness of domestic companies to introduce technology is increasing. The total number of interested companies that understand the value of RPA technology and are ready to consider it as a tool for automating business processes is at least 60% and continues to grow rapidly. This will definitely contribute to the further growth of the Russian market next year. In general, the prospects for the development of the RPA sphere in Russia look promising. This is also facilitated by the initiatives of our government in terms of import substitution and the use of AI, - said Sergey Bialostotsky, CEO of PIX Robotics.

IBS predicts a slight increase in license sales volumes compared to last year's dynamics, as well as a decrease in service volumes, which will increase again in 2025.

According to market participants, there are four main areas that the developers of RPA systems focus on today.

Reducing the cost of robotization and increasing the efficiency of its use in companies. This applies, for example, to simplifying interfaces, the principles of developing software robots, so that as many users as possible get the opportunity to robotize their work. Including those who have no experience in development.

{{quote 'RPA platform developers continue to follow the general concept of "RPA - for non-professional programmers." This means that platforms have more opportunities to create complex solutions with simpler tools, "comments Valentin Drazdov, PIX RPA Product Manager. }}

Technologies aimed at helping companies scale RPA technology. These are tools for business analytics and automatic assessment of the effectiveness of software robots, management of ideas and tasks of robotization, search for new processes for robotization.

Already mentioned artificial intelligence. One of its applications in RPA is to expand the list of robotic tasks by adding tasks that require human intelligence. At the same time, control over the decisions made by the robot is maintained for a person. The second area of ​ ​ application of AI is simplification of work with the RPA platform, ensuring the ability to develop software robots in the dialogue between the developer and the RPA platform. Developers both integrate with external services and create their own products with AI "under the hood."

Large language models (LLMs) are built into RPA systems, which are additionally trained. Moreover, it is possible to deploy LLM offline, which correlates with security requirements. In addition, AI-based chat bots are built into RPA systems to quickly obtain information, "says Evgeny Barsukov, head of SDET at IT company SimbirSoft.

Developers of RPA platforms focus on creating convenient and easy-to-use tools, use artificial intelligence to help develop robots. Among the relatively new solutions are intelligent document processing (IDP), tools for creating and using ML models, "adds Dmitry Smykalov, Head of RPA, GMCS.

Extension of RPA to those tasks that were not previously related to the field of technology application. For example, using software robots to test software and monitor information systems and services. As noted by Aleksei Nikolaev, Director of Strategic Development at Primo RPA, all leading RPA developers are working on these areas, but with slightly different priorities and implementation methods.

There is also an interest in direct or integrable development of analytical modules, since not only mass processing of information, but also a quantitative estimate of resource costs associated with automation are important. Some RPA developers even have separate BI level solutions, due to the fact that the demand for RPA and BI among customers is associated with a comprehensive approach to automation and analysis of consolidated information.

It is worth noting the active work in the implementation of Linux support, and we are talking not only about the deployment of the server part, but also about providing the possibility of creating robots that will work in this environment.

Due to the fact that the RPA market in Russia has become more mature and clear leaders have appeared, companies can safely compare platforms and make more informed choices. Compared to 2023, their requests have changed. If earlier most of it was for point robotization, migration to Russian platforms, the ability to support domestic infrastructure and software, now customers are more often looking at mass history and are ready to create local centers of expertise.

The possibilities of developing solutions through their own development and the use of AI tools come to the fore. There is also interest in introducing digital assistants that use generative neural networks.

We see a shift in the request from customers from "heard about the technology, it is interesting to try" to "we know that it works, we understand what tasks we want to apply and what effects we expect." This is due to the level of penetration of RPA technology, accumulation in industries and business functions, such as accounting, finance, HR, procurement, RPA use practices, - explains Aleksei Nikolaev, Director of Strategic Development of Primo RPA.

Companies are looking for end-to-end solutions that combine RPA with AI and data analytics. There is a growing interest in automating complex, end-to-end processes. Customers want easily adaptable systems that handle unstructured data. "Customers want solutions that not only automate routine tasks, but also contribute to optimization business processes in general, including deeper analytics on them. Therefore, customer requests have shifted towards integrating RPA with more complex control and automation systems, such as ERP and. CRM Also in demand is the creation of a whole set of products and services around RPA, such as Process Mining (PM) and Task Mining (TM), monitoring and audit services based on BI , etc. Security requirements for the protection and management of software code of robots have also increased, "says Svetlana Rumyantseva, project manager at RAMAX Group.

It is important for large customers that the delivered solution is safe and scalable, and has the ability to launch a large number of simultaneously operating robots.

There was a demand for efficiency assessment and optimization of already implemented solutions. The general trend is the transition from simple automation of tasks to the creation of intelligent systems to increase the efficiency of the entire business, - comments Konstantin Artemyev, General Director of Sherpa Robotics.

There are both typical tasks, for example, recognition and classification of documents, imitation of the ″ of calling ″ forms on the site for issuing many documents, and more complex cases, for example, automatic comparison of articles of commodity products according to the fuzzy wording of the nomenclature in the form of requests from counterparties (solution using AI). The request to create chatbots is reduced, since their effectiveness is determined by the completeness and quality of the information base for potential responses. Customers are not always ready for the fact that its development requires active work on their part, "says Nikolay Rykov, product manager for software solutions at Konica Minolta Business Solutions Russia.

You are prompted to implement OCR and IDP in the process of automating document processing. Customers are interested not only in extracting fields, but also in analyzing unstructured documents, understanding the meaning of text, and the ability to choose a processing scenario based on the information extracted.

Analyzing the changes in customer requests, you can see the trend towards a shift in focus in 2024 towards high-tech robotization. This includes the use of OCR technologies and other sophisticated technology solutions. If in 2023 requests often concerned the search for processes for robotization, today customers are more interested in the presence of competencies and the possibility of performing such tasks, - summarizes Dmitry Smykalov, head of the RPA department, GMCS.

The share of foreign RPA vendors before leaving Russia was, according to various estimates, up to 90%. Over the past couple of years, it has decreased to 15% and this trend continues. Russian enterprises from foreign RPAs still have solutions from those vendors who previously sold long-term subscriptions to Russian customers, but their term will end in the foreseeable future.  At the moment, there are many companies using foreign solutions, and it is not so easy to estimate their number. However, the growing demand for Russian products demonstrates that the migration process has not yet stopped, although it has slowed down compared to previous years.

Those companies that have not yet migrated, or have little robotization coverage, or at one time bought multi-year or even indefinite licenses of Western vendors, so they can afford a smooth and delayed transition. In addition, the habits and experience of working with foreign software play a role - the infrastructure of Russian enterprises has developed for years on the basis of foreign products. Domestic solutions have to compete with many years of popularization, training, support for foreign RPA products.

The company "Greenatom" notes that single companies still use foreign licenses. Gradual substitution is also observed in "laggards." Some companies use licenses of their foreign divisions.

{{quote 'According to our assessment, the intensity of import substitution decreases. This is due to the fact that almost everyone who wanted to switch has already switched to Russian solutions. New projects are launched at customers who had long-term, 3 and 5-year contracts with foreign vendors. Planning import substitution projects for the expiration period of previous licenses is normal practice. At the same time, unlike 2022, there are no significant difficulties in migration now. Russian platforms have caught up, and in some ways have overtaken foreign solutions, both in terms of functionality and in terms of stability and performance. Therefore, the refusal to migrate is explained mainly by the implementation of the principle "work - do not touch" than by other reasons, - comments Aleksei Nikolaev, Director of Strategic Development of Primo RPA. }}

The main stage of import substitution is completed. Most vendors have focused on new customers who have not yet worked with these technologies. We know only a couple of cases of using foreign platforms, so this is more likely an exception than a rule, "said Pavel Borchenko, Managing Director of Robin of SL Soft (Softline Group of Companies).

Import substitution in the field of RPA in Russia has practically ended. The vast majority of companies - more than 70% according to our estimates - have already switched to domestic platforms. Some companies are still buying licenses for Western products on 'parallel import', but this has become especially difficult in the past six months. There are no technical difficulties in migration to domestic platforms - all top-end platforms have already implemented almost 100% of the functionality that robots needed in practice, most have automated migrators, "says Konstantin Artemyev, General Director of Sherpa Robotics.

The remaining foreign RPA solutions will be replaced by domestic ones for a number of obvious reasons: a significant increase in the absolute cost of licenses, a restriction on support and services for the implementation of platforms, technical difficulties (updating, technical consultations and localization). The need to switch to Russian platforms is also due to emerging data security requirements and standards.

With the departure of foreign vendors, Russian solutions have significantly advanced and continue to grow in terms of functionality and integration, offering customers convenient and adaptive tools for automation, as well as creating an effective product ecosystem around RPA. Already, clear leaders with their competitive advantages have appeared among the many solutions.

Developers have improved the stability and performance of platforms. Integration with AI and machine learning has improved, and more powerful analytics tools have appeared.

The advantages that we managed to develop: better adaptation to the Russian specifics of business processes, popular and import-replaced software, faster implementation speed, improved technical support in Russian, compliance with security requirements that are presented by domestic customers. Linux support is significantly ahead of that of the largest Western vendors.

In addition to closing security problems, the developers of RPA platforms continued to develop development tools for domestic operating systems. If at the beginning of the year it was difficult to make even simple projects on these versions, today there are quite complex RPA solutions that are developed exclusively on Russian systems.

The RPA solutions we work with - PIX RPA, Primo RPA and ROBIN - are systematically expanding their functionality from year to year. These are mature products that have virtually no "childhood diseases" in terms of functionality. In general, the Russian RPA market boasts its achievements. Vendors regularly add new modules to their solutions, work to improve usability, stability of work, testing and other important aspects, - said Dmitry Smykalov, Head of the RPA Department, GMCS.

The clear advantages of Russian RPA platforms are the relatively low cost of the licenses and implementation services themselves. It is impossible not to note the functional features that are not available in foreign solutions: for example, connectors for the 1C platform. The implementation of such functions may indicate a high degree of software localization, which is typical for domestic RPAs, says Nikolay Rykov, product manager for software solutions at Konica Minolta Business Solutions Russia.

As Pavel Borchenko, Managing Director of Robin of SL Soft (Softline Group of Companies) notes, many developers have begun to expand the product line and now also offer systems from other areas. Most RPA solutions correspond to Western counterparts and are actively moving towards working with Russian infrastructure and software.

If we talk about the shortcomings of Russian products, then experts note insufficient scalability and flexibility of Russian solutions. If in foreign systems many integration modules are already available out of the box, then in domestic systems a relatively small number of all kinds of input and output collectors are offered. In this case, you have to resort to writing individual software modules to fully solve the integration problem, for example, the customer's system with an RPA platform.

The disadvantage, however, is very relative, we can still consider a not very large number of developers who own domestic RPA platforms - less than 5 thousand professionals in total across all platforms. This creates a certain personnel deficit, but we believe that our own Vendor Academies, joint educational programs with universities and a relatively low threshold for entering and retraining RPA tools will eliminate this deficit in a short time, - notes Konstantin Artemyev, General Director of Sherpa Robotics.

• Integration of RPA with intelligent automation systems, artificial intelligence and neural networks, for example, GPT.

The advent of GPT greatly changed the expectation of users from digital assistants. Now everyone wants applications to understand natural language, so that you can ask questions about internal documents, ask the assistant to do some work in corporate systems. We make just such a decision and see the market's interest in it, - comments Pavel Borchenko, Managing Director of Robin of SL Soft (Softline Group of Companies).

• Using large language models (LLMs).

Today, the main efforts of Russian development are aimed at creating or finding a successful version of large language models, and then adapting and integrating them into the product.

The main impact on the market in the coming years will be provided by emerging AI technologies, in particular, generative AI, which is already showing impressive results in processing large arrays of texts, understanding meanings and extracting facts, as well as interaction with humans in a natural language, "says Rostislav Bratukhin, Head of Robotization and Recognition Department IBS.

• Integrated intelligent process creation assistants - CoPilot modules.

They include advanced AI models, help create a full-fledged scenario on a free, structured request. If it is imperfect, it will be enough to correct the blocks and variables of the process, and AI will create the main automation structure itself.

• Development of cloud and mobile solutions.
• The presence of a mobile client for platforms has become one of the important points in choosing IT solutions.

Creating ecosystems.

International IT development sets a trend in the desire to create ecosystems around platform solutions, which, ideally, allow you to create modular enhancements to functionality, providing opportunities for third-party developers through the publication of API and SDK software platforms, - said Nikolay Rykov, product manager for software solutions Konica Minolta Business Solutions Russia.

The trends are such that robotization products no longer surprise anyone, and the market for such systems is quite extensive. And now companies that allow you to create product ecosystems that combine all the functions that are in demand among customers, such as archive, OCR, EDMS and others, are winning, - comments Sergey Azarov, Head of the Business Solutions and Consulting Department of Softline Group of Companies.

• Work with unstructured data.
• Ensure compatibility with BPM, CRM and ERP systems.

This allows you to create more comprehensive and efficient automated processes, which is often achieved through RPA.

• Shifting the focus of RPA attention from accountants and logicians to lawyers, HR, that is, to professions that were previously considered weakly automated.
• Strengthening the role of civil development by enriching the No-Code approach with Autogen tools.
• Shifting the core point of business value creation back from Unattended to Attended Automation, again thanks to AI progress and record low unemployment.

These trends drive the development of smarter, more flexible and more efficient solutions to automate business processes.

In Russia, over the past 4-5 years, about 14 domestic RPA platforms and about four foreign ones have appeared on the market, but in the ratings you can often see only six Russian products that have successfully proven themselves in large automation projects. Now leaders are determined on the market, and in 1-2 years they will set functional standards for domestic solutions in their class.

Greenatom experts note that corporations have invested in all active participants in the RPA platform market. The share of companies that are ready to independently maintain their own robotic teams is decreasing. The percentage of large integrators who sell the introduction of robots is decreasing. The number of small teams that implement robots from different customers is increasing.

An important area of ​ ​ technological development of RPA will be further improvement of development tools. RPA technology should become more common and affordable, and the cost of licenses should decrease. Already now there is a consolidation of players. This is an important condition for survival and maintaining the competitiveness of the product.

Most RPA vendors now have to choose the direction for the development of their products, because very soon new technologies will change the approach to internal automation and there may be no place for classic RPA. As for the emergence of new industry participants - everything is possible, but it seems that the leading players have already teamed up with strategists in the market, and small ones have found their niches in which they feel comfortable. So big changes in this direction should not be expected, - said Pavel Borchenko, Managing Director of Robin of SL Soft (Softline Group of Companies).

Consolidation of the market is possible in related directions. For example, it is unlikely that two RPA vendors will merge, or one will buy the other. On the other hand, an alliance between an RPA vendor and, for example, an ERP or BPM vendor may look like a logical move. At the same time, new participants may appear, especially in niche segments or with innovative approaches, - comments Konstantin Artemyev, General Director of Sherpa Robotics.

According to the expert, the market boundaries will shift and erase. The term RPA will completely disappear from the professional lexicon in a few years. Its technologies, approaches and tools will become part of a much wider and more understandable mass audience of the market for intelligent autonomous agents, assistants, co-pilot.

Large projects are expected to grow, especially in the public sector and large corporations, aimed at a large-scale digital transformation. The market will move towards more mature, integrated solutions that integrate a variety of automation and analytics technologies to create truly smart enterprises.

The TAdviser database contains information about more than 170 projects for implementing RPA systems. Most often, such projects use the platforms of four vendors - Sherpa Robotics, PIX Robotics, Robin and Lexema.