How to Migrate Small RPA Estates Quickly and Cost-Effectively

RPA migrations – the migration of an RPA estate from one automation platform to another – only show signs of becoming more common instead of slowing down as we move further into 2024.

The significant rise in licensing fees and costs by legacy RPA vendors, increased complexity, and better options in the market that are more cost-effective and simplify automation design and delivery are only driving more competitive account transitions.

The assumption is that most RPA migrations are dominated by large enterprises with RPA estates that number well into the hundreds or even thousands of automations because they benefit the most. While big companies are certainly switching RPA providers, they aren’t the only ones.

Businesses are aggressively switching RPA tools as well. In terms of percentages, they stand to reduce their RPA operating costs by just as much while enabling scale simultaneously. The one element holding them back is that they believe they have to switch RPA tools manually. Even with a small RPA estate, this can be incredibly expensive and time-consuming. However, that is not the case.

This article presents how businesses can migrate their smaller RPA estates quickly and efficiently, while keeping costs low.

The Complexities and Challenges of Manual RPA Migrations

Manual migrations are so expensive and time-consuming for several reasons. Primarily, RPA platforms specify process automations differently. Therefore, an automation in one tool won’t necessarily work in another because the code is different and not interoperable.

To manually migrate automations from one RPA platform to another so they’re compatible with the destination tool, an automated process:

1. Needs to be investigated by an RPA developer to understand what it does and what it’s automating.
2. The automation must then be converted for the destination tool. That is, the actions and services for that automation must be mapped to the destination RPA platform.
3. The automation must then be rewritten to become compatible with the destination RPA tool.
4. The automation must be tested and deployed in the new RPA environment.

Even for an RPA estate with only 20 automations, this process can be incredibly arduous, risk-filled, expensive, and lengthy. Luckily, there are much better options in the marketplace that facilitate and accelerate RPA migrations.

Automated RPA Migration for Small RPA Estates

One of the main reasons that so many RPA migrations are occurring now is the emergence of automated RPA migration solutions.

Automated RPA migrations do most of the work for you, so the effort and time involved with these projects are dramatically reduced. The way automated RPA migrations work is that they convert the automated processes for you. There is no need to investigate what the automations are doing and re-write them from scratch for the new destination RPA platform.

Even though the operational expense (OpEx) for small RPA estates is minimal, RPA migrations can still deliver significant savings. Because the migration is so swift, a much smaller window is needed to maintain two RPA tools (which incur double the operating costs) during the migration process.

Automated RPA migration also saves considerable effort, time, and money because unforeseen bottlenecks and delays that hamper manual migrations are wholly avoided.

For example, one Blueprint client migrated their sizeable RPA estate of 70 bots (totaling 200,000 actions) to Microsoft Power Automate in three months instead of the 24 they had estimated manually. As a result, they realized 60% cost savings for their RPA migration and a nearly 90% reduction in their project timeline. Once up and running in Power Automate, the client experienced a 40% reduction in their automation total cost of ownership because of how much more cost-effective Microsoft is.

Read the full case study here.

Organizations with smaller RPA estates stand to experience the same benefits and cost reductions much quicker because of the size of their bot portfolios.

Conclusion

RPA migrations are not only for big enterprises with large automation estates. Though they stand to save the most money in terms of total dollars, organizations with small RPA estates can considerably reduce their automation total cost of ownership with automated RPA migration.

Due to the size of their estates, RPA migration to more cost-effective platforms like Microsoft Power Automate is even more efficient and effective because parallel runs and risks are dramatically limited.

If you’re a company with a smaller RPA estate in the 20-50 bot range, contact us for a free consultation with a Blueprint RPA migration expert, and they’ll walk you through how easy, quick, and beneficial an RPA migration can be for you.