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Businesses across the globe are evolving at a rapid pace. Automation technology is a significant aspect of a successful business and it is changing the way organizations work. A McKinsey & Co. survey reported that 66% of business leaders planned to automate at least one business process in their organization in 2020. Emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Internet of Things (IoT) are accelerating the growth of businesses and leading towards a much sophisticated technological infrastructure for the world.

As automation technology gains momentum, you can find one crucial aspect of it – the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) industry growing at a terrific rate. Did you know that the RPA Market, while only $250 million in 2016, is expected to grow to $12 billion by 2023?

Why is it creating a buzz around the world? How is RPA becoming the rising star of the world of automation technology? And how can it benefit your business?

Let’s find out.

What is Robotic Process Automation?

In today’s tech-savvy world, where robots are playing a pivotal role in the routine life of mankind, the mere idea of a robot handling all your operations just seems very absurd. But well, here’s a major difference. Robotic Process Automation isn’t the concept of a robot sitting on a chair and carrying out operations like humans. In the case of RPA, there is no physical presence of a robot, but it is a software bot that more accurately and efficiently manages your things. They’re capable of having personal interactions like humans and efficiency of an automated application.

As per Deloitte Global RPA Survey, Robotic Process Automation will achieve a “near-universal option” in the next 5 years. The dynamic architecture and exceptional flexibility have made it tough for organizations to turn a deaf ear to RPA. With the implementation of RPA, businesses are able to leverage comprehensive insights from the customer’s needs and quickly adapt to the changing market dynamics.

Benefits and Applications of Robotic Process Automation

Benefits

Amongst all the diverse advantages of RPA, the major benefits are as follows:

1. Business Analytics and Insights

With RPA, it is easy to store, organize, track and analyze all the data related to your business operations. It delivers significant insights from the data, that assist you in decision-making processes and ensure better execution.

2. Cost Savings

RPA collectively handles all the robotic and human workload across the respective platform. Work is not just automated but is completed in a much shorter time duration, which further saves up the expenditure. With its integration with AI, it is able to deliver a personalized customer experience and develop innovative solutions as well.

3. Improved Security

The bot performs all the tasks with utmost functionality and efficiency. The information and data related are well processed, documented in the database, and aren’t leaked in any form.

4. Employee Management

To utilize RPA and bring the best out of it, one doesn’t require any exceptional technical skills. RPA is easy-to-use for the end-users and employees can thereby use RPA for their tedious and repetitive task that saves up a ton of time.

5. Better Flexibility, Visibility, and Control

It’s just a myth that RPA is going to replace humans. But in reality, with its excellent productivity, efficiency, and accuracy, RPA is bound to provide a much-needed helping hand for businesses. With a non-disruptive approach, RPA keeps the existing technological infrastructure of the business intact even after its implementation.

Applications

Here are a few applications of RPA that would reshape your current business ecosystem in a much constructive manner:

1. Finance: Assists in Financial Planning and Analysis, maintains bank statements, and tracks daily P&L.

2. Human Resource: Automates hiring and employment procedures, processes payrolls on time, assists in expense management, and acts as a virtual assistant to the employees in the HR department.

3. Customer Relationship Management: Reduces churn and generates customer leads, updates data and queries related to customer experience, and provides personalized solutions.

4. Supply Chain Management: Effectively tracks the inventory and looks after the trade promotion and analytics of retail.

5. Manufacturing: Automates management of raw materials, mechanical components, and logistics systems throughout the product life cycle.

Top RPA Companies in the US

The big picture of the RPA landscape in the US covers some prominent names. 

1. UiPath

UiPath designs and builds RPA software solutions for industries across finance & banking, healthcare, telecom, insurance, retail, public sectors, etc. These include automation cloud and analytics, enhanced automation with ML & AI, chatbots and action centers for robots, etc. 

2. Nintex

Nintex provides automation tools across sales operations, human resources, customer services, legal support, marketing, etc. It helps firms to develop a complete business process mapping, enhance control process, and assists in customer onboarding. 

3. WorkFusion

WorkFusion creates RPA solutions for sectors like insurance, healthcare, and finance & banking. The startup helps in deploying hyper-automation solutions, document intelligence, manages end-to-end automation workflow, and scales automation across multiple dimensions of businesses. 

4. Kryon

Kryon provides a full-cycle automation suite for business operations. WIth RPA-integrated solutions and Hybrid Automation, the Kryon robots help in cost savings, increase productivity and efficiency, improve customer experience and ensure utmost security.

5. Infinitus

Infinitus develops voice RPA tools for the healthcare and insurance sectors. They aim at automating business communications and improving human interactions. Their platform primarily looks after the customer experience and employee management across pharmacies and insurances.

Scope for Robotic Process Automation in the US

Valued at $1.4 billion in 2019, the RPA market is expected to grow at a phenomenal CAGR of 40.6% from 2020 to 2027. In fact, in 2019, North America dominated the market by a whopping 37% share of global revenue. SMEs are reaping the benefits of bolstered productivity, improved resource utilization, and data-driven decision-making. The operations of the supply chain, healthcare, finance, human resources, etc. have become accessible to both consumers and businesses, thus leading to increased profitability and hence, market growth. In fact, 78% of the businesses that have adopted RPA, plan to increase their investments in the upcoming years.

The upward curve of RPA adoption is paving the way for more and more businesses to dive into the evergreen market and strive for getting ahead of the curve. Raising the bar for RPA, even the US Government encourages other agencies to adopt RPA tools across different use cases.

Final Thoughts

Technology never ceases to amaze us. Ever since the emergence of RPA, it has been changing the way global businesses work, making business processes more productive and eliminating inefficiencies. The intensifying focus on RPA and increasing investment in the sector are helping companies achieve significant targets. Forrester estimates that more than 4 million robots shall be operating in the corporate cubicles by 2021. There will never be a better day to unleash this diamond in the rough.

Are you ready to create a breakthrough in the world of RPA?

A great pitch can open doorways to resources that can help you grow and scale by leaps and bounds. A bad pitch, on the other hand, is a missed opportunity. Pre-empting what could go wrong with your pitch will stop you from derailing your pitch through some very avoidable mistakes. Here are 10 of the biggest and most common mistakes entrepreneurs need to avoid when making pitches plus tips on how to fix them.  

1. Not Being Part of a Peer Network

When it comes to pitching, your strength is in the numbers. Build relationships with other entrepreneurs, thought-leaders, and mentors. Leverage these to keep abreast of opportunities and potential challenges in the marketplace. Being part of a peer network will help you gain valuable insider intel for new business ideas and also gain advice and support for your actual pitch. You will get a feel for what works and doesn’t work in your specific niche.

2. Not Doing Your Homework

Coming up with a great business idea and a successful pitch both require extensive groundwork in the form of research. Ask yourself these important questions. If you don’t have answers to any one of them it’s time to go back to the drawing board:

• Have you successfully validated your business idea?
• Do you have market research and competitor analysis that you can provide to support your claims?
• Have you created a solid business plan? This should include a revenue model and a marketing strategy. In other words, how do you plan to make money and how much are you realistically projected to make?
• Have you identified key milestones that you can plug in your pitch? These can be the successes that you’ve had along the way in terms of sales, other buy-ins, and new contracts, for instance.
• Have you researched your potential investor, their approach, and interests so you can adapt your pitch accordingly?

This kind of in-depth research gives you the raw data to form the backbone of a very convincing pitch. Once you have the material, it’s time to put it together.

3. Not Structuring the Pitch

It’s necessary to structure your pitch so that your thoughts are laid out in a lucid, step-by-step, and methodical manner. Without a structure, your presentation can seem haphazard and unplanned, both of which are red-flags for your pitch audience. Ideally, a pitch should consist of the following:

• An introduction about who you are and what your company is about. If you have a powerful or inspiring story that led to the creation of your startup, this would be a good time to talk about it. Also, discuss your team members and how their strengths contribute to your business.
• Talk about the problem that your product solves and how it attempts to do so. Provide specific research and examples to support your case. If you can bring a sample for your audience to look at or conduct a short demo, it can make your pitch a lot stronger.
• Provide a synopsis of your business plan, market research/validation, and competitor analysis.  
• Talk about the challenges you foresee and how you plan to work through them.
• Discuss the financials and projections. Always have the right numbers on hand and be able to substantiate them if required.
• Q & A session to address investor questions and concerns.

4. Making Excessively Short or Long Pitches

Your pitch should be short, succinct, and super-focused on the essentials. But it can’t be 5 minutes or less either. Unless you’ve been allocated a specific timeframe, aim for a good 20 minutes for your pitch. Experts agree that this is an ideal timeframe to cover everything you need to but at the same time keep things concise. On another note, having this timeframe in mind when preparing your pitch will also help you narrow down on the absolute essentials to keep in your presentation. Cut anything that doesn’t add value or provide new information.

5. Not Being Able to Pitch on the Fly

You never know when you might be called to pitch. Aside from the usual places where you could bump into them like business meetings and conferences, you could meet potential investors at a coffee shop, or at the airport as you shuttle in and out of destinations. It helps to have a pitch in hand for all of these occasions. 

6. Not Effectively Presenting the Pitch

Two of the biggest deal-breakers with pitching, are a sloppy appearance and ineffective presentation skills. Happily, these are easily resolved. 

• Appearance is everything in business. But it doesn’t mean that you need to dress expensively. There are plenty of budget-friendly options for formal attire that you can wear instead. It’s a smart idea to rely on classic grooming tips i.e.keep a tidy, easily-maintained hairstyle. Facial hair should be trimmed neatly.  Wear fresh, well-pressed clothing free from wrinkles and stains. If in doubt, wear a light, conservative fragrance. 
• Practice your pitch in front of the mirror first and then in front of peers. Communication is both visual and verbal. Look at how you can make your presentation better in both aspects. Inc has a comprehensive guide on presentation skills that you can find here. 

7. Being too Salesy

The overbearing-salesperson-pitch was, and still is, an investor/partner turn-off. The average consumer is only interested in how your product or service will help them or make their lives faster, better, or easier. The average investor is looking for a great idea backed by a solid plan. When you pitch, always focus on the benefits because aside from a bullet-proof business plan and strong numbers, these are all that count. 

8. Being either Overconfident or underconfident 

Confidence is tricky to get right. Overconfidence comes across as cockiness, while a lack of confidence makes you look unsure and unable to take up responsibilities. Being confident is simply about having a realistic sense of trust in your abilities without feeling the need to be superior to others. If confidence doesn’t come naturally to you, it’s important to expose yourself to as many situations as possible which require you to speak. Sign up for speaking lessons, if you feel you need a helping hand. Investors need to see a healthy sense of confidence in the pitch, otherwise, you will find it hard to win their trust.

9. Not Being Prepared for Questions or Feedback

Always leave some time in the end for a Q&A session. It shows that you’re transparent and available to address grey areas. If you’ve done the level of preparation outlined earlier in this article, you should be able to confidently address most questions. If there is anything you genuinely cannot answer, it is best, to be honest. Trying to fluff your way out in the presence of seasoned investors will work against you.

10. Inability to Learn from Rejection 

Pitches take time to perfect. Even seasoned veterans take the time to prepare no matter how long they’ve been doing it. If your pitch was disastrous, it’s really not about the fact that you fell. It’s about whether you can pick yourself up again. Review what went wrong during the pitch and think about what you can do to make it better the next time around. Speak to your mentors or other veterans for their feedback and guidance. Use this intelligence to refine your next pitch. There isn’t any reason you can’t bounce back from defeat if you’re willing to do the work.

Also read our guide Pitching to Investors: Best Practices During the COVID-19 Crisis for more information that can help you. What is your biggest challenge when creating your pitch? Let us know in the comments below.

During the past decade, the world has witnessed growth of global startups facing serious threats from lack of longevity plans. Many startups that mushroomed during the mid-2000s disappeared overnight due to the lack of a “long-range vision.” Although these upstarts dared to disrupt and demolish the old order of business, they completely ignored the traditional values of preservation and sustainability.

Longevity should always be the primary concern of a burgeoning business, without which success will just be a passing fad. In the startup world, very few business ventures survive beyond incubation or early-stage development. How can the startup culture that rarely allows businesses to survive beyond the early stages of growth and development buck the trend?

Startups That Survive the Early-Stage Development

Startups that prevail beyond the early-stage growth generally recognize that profit is necessary for sustainability, but they:

• Design products and services based on daily challenges faced by ordinary consumers. For example, a healthcare app, a business tracking tool, a financial advisory service, a 24/7 task reminder app, and so on.
  
• Focus on long-term, value creation without losing sight of profit margins. The extended services that each startup usually offers are designed to retain customers for the long haul and generate new business through customer-feedback marketing.
  
• Experiment with and continuously reshape business models with a mission to serve the customers and not just sell. Countless startup businesses like grocery or food-delivery apps go beyond just selling products and services to fulfill the customer needs of online order services, online payment services, and home-delivery services. These are real value-added services that customers have come to expect in an advanced tech-enabled human society.

The Importance of a Strong Leadership

The founders of a startup drive the mission and vision of the company, which is why strong-willed and decisive mindsets will make good leadership candidates for startups. During the early stage of development, it is this core team of leaders that makes the financial and funding decisions, the technology choices, the products and services design decisions, and other strategic decisions for moving forward. Thus, it is imperative for these leaders to have:

• Innovative mindsets with a natural flair to read the market pulse
  
• The best contacts in their sector
  
• Insider links to academic talents for product research and development
  
• Access to the best capital funding channels 

Lessons to be Learnt From Survivors of the Startup Boom

Startups that succeeded utilized the following attributes:

They devised lasting strategies for adapting to change in technology, regulations, and market needs. An ongoing effort to adapt and implement new technologies, relevant laws, and market policies to fulfill the broader objectives of business through solid partnerships or collaborations with other businesses is a must.

They were less focused on quick wealth creation and more on sustainability. The focus of startups should not be just quick profits but delivering value-added products and services to human society.

Here are the typical traits of successful startup leaders:

• Innately humble and willing to listen to others
• Positive mindset and willingness to take ownership of decisions and actions
• Great salesmen with the right combination of confidence and pose
• Focused on their goals and are decisive
• Flexible enough to see challenges ahead and quickly adapt to changes

Good startup leaders have to be visionaries while keeping a focus on day-to-day operations. They never lose track of details – be it business objectives, long-term strategies, product design, service development, or customer engagement. Walt Disney led the masses with his “dream.” He had such an influential and charismatic personality that he transformed his entertainment world into a globally renowned brand and a highly profitable business. He was the pioneer in the edutainment business.

Society Development

In the startup world, it is not enough to just create good products and services for fulfilling particular consumer needs for profits. Startups generally go beyond wealth creation, which the old-world businesses have only recently understood through corporate social responsibility (CSR). Understanding value creation for human society was always a business priority for startups. 

Through their business mission & vision, they generally serve the poor and downtrodden sections of the society, focus on the underserved population, rely on eco-friendly business processes, and believe in humanistic methods of profit generation. They often innovate recycling strategies, cost-effective production methods, and technology-enabled practices to keep their businesses lean and efficient and make a social impact. 

By implementing the aforementioned goals, successful startups increased the odds of long-term sustainability without sacrificing short-term growth objectives.

Three Startups That Survived the COVID-19 Pandemic

Let’s see how these three startups located at three different corners of the world survived the recent pandemic:

Abacus Financial Business Management

Belva Anakwenze, owner of the LA based Abacus Financial Business Management, has taken one month at a time to help her niche financial advisory business survive COVID-19 by:

• Providing advanced-technology enabled, remote financial advisory services to entertainment world clients
• Patiently accepting the shrinking profit margins as most of her entertainment industry clients were hit hard during the crisis
• Conducting client meetings on her driveway after maintaining the social distancing norms
• Allowing her employees to work remotely through the wee hours of day and night as needed
• Paying rent on an office space that she has not used for months but still hoping her business will turn around soon
• Taking a small loan from the federal Paycheck Protection Program 

Big Basket

A pan-India grocery retailer was hit hard in March of 2020 when their supply-chain network suddenly faced a crisis and the majority of their delivery staff could not report to work because local trains and buses were not running. So, what did Big Basket do to turn around their lost business? Here’s something to learn from their redesigned business model:

1. They adjusted their web and mobile platforms to reduce the long waiting queues for online orders just to give all customers a fair chance. Specific times of the day narrowed down the order windows to adequately mitigate the problem of reduced delivery staff. 
2. Big Basket started partnering with cab-service aggregators and food-delivery services to deliver groceries in metros and other cities.
3. Big Basket did not stop delivering groceries, they just increased the grocery-delivery time to keep their business running and customers satisfied.
4. They introduced a host of other useful services, operational now, to win back their customers’ faith.

Bidroom

Here’s a story of real inspiration. In the pandemic-ridden year, when a series of events like global lockdown and closure of airports brought the international travel industry to its knees, here is one unusual travel startup that braved the recession and refused to back down. This startup not only survived but raised funds and generated revenues.

If you ever get a chance to talk to Amsterdam-based Bidroom’s CEO Michael Ros, you will know that some extraordinary business leaders like Ros reinvented their travel-tourism services business models to survive the year-long crisis.

Michael Ros took the following bold steps to save his travel startup from succumbing to the global recession in the travel industry:

1. Ross added 49,000 hotels to his membership-based travel-booking platform.
2. Bidroom also witnessed the addition of 40 business partners to better serve the hotels and travelers.
3. This startup enabled remote workforce arrangements with an expanded IT team.
4. They hosted eight online events with industry professionals from all over the globe.
5. Bidroom introduced many value-added services to offer their clients a truly holistic tourism experience.
6. When businesses the world over were busy downsizing, this company went ahead and expanded their product offerings and staff capacity. 
7. In 2021, Bidroom’s top business priority will be traveler safety, which they plan to implement through innovative product and service enhancements like travel insurance.

Finishing Lines

The large-scale failure or disappearance of the startup boom of the mid-2000s has signaled an era of drastic changes in business practices and long-range business planning. The startups of the present decade are much more conservative and cautious in their business plans. For starters, most modern businesses have clearly charted out Exit Plans. Startups have a lot to learn from traditional, resilient businesses like American Express or Microsoft that know how to adapt to change.