Welcome to the Protocol Power Index, a ranking of the most powerful companies by tech industry subsector, as well as the companies best positioned to challenge them. This time: Robotic Process Automation .

Robotic Process Automation has been helping streamline offices for decades. At its core, it allows enterprises to automate mundane tasks that employees would otherwise perform manually. You can think of RPA platforms as more sophisticated Excel macros that operate on the level of an employee's desktop, rather than within one particular program. It's an old industry by tech standards, dating back to the early 2000s, but popping IPOs suggest it's very much in favor right now.

Even so, big names in the sector, such as UiPath and Automation Anywhere, are eager to prove that RPA is more than just a "transient technology" that's filling a gap until more capable and generalist AIs come along. So they're integrating nascent AI and ML programming into RPA platforms, making the software more versatile and efficient. The implementation of those product features will determine not only which RPA player gains market share, but also how long the RPA sector remains relevant within the broader enterprise software ecosystem.

But which companies have the lead right now? And which ones are challenging that dominance? We've ranked the market for you.

Ranking	Company	Score
1	UiPath	53.47
2	Automation Anywhere	51.99
3	Pegasystems	49.73
4	NICE	48.85
5	Appian	41.40
6	Hyland Software	38.86
7	WorkFusion	34.72
8	Blue Prism	26.87
9	Kryon Systems	24.68
10	Datamatics	24.01

Explore the Data

The Protocol Power Index is designed to view power through a holistic lens that reflects how modern tech companies amass and exercise their strength. To do so, the Power Index takes into account 30 metrics across five categories — Economics, Leadership, Innovation, People and Politics & Policy — and synthesizes them into a single Power Score. Read our full methodology statement here .

What happens next?

Forces that stand to shape the RPA space in the coming years include: ever-improving AI software, efforts to merge that AI with existing RPA products and, of course, the threat of dominant public cloud vendors.

Momentum Ranking	Company	Score
1	Automation Anywhere ↑	67.06
2	UiPath	45.88
3	Appian ↑	44.0
4	Kryon Systems ↑	37.97
5	Blue Prism ↑	32.00
6	Pegasystems	30.00
7	NICE	25.00
T-8	Hyland Software	15.00
T-8	WorkFusion	15.00
10	Datamatics	0.00

Better AI is a huge threat to RPA. While the products of RPA companies address automation needs for this particular moment in time, APIs and general purpose AI could be better-suited for the future — and as a result, critics have labeled RPA a "transient technology."

• RPA in its current form automates mundane tasks that employees would otherwise perform manually. RPA software therefore operates at the level of an employee's desktop, and the no-code / low-code environment allows employees to automate tasks within third-party software. RPA software can also proactively monitor manual employee actions and recommend patterns for automation.
• In the long term, automation will likely be designed from the ground up, without consideration for existing employee processes. This untethering will allow for more efficient automation — for instance, data streams could be directly processed through APIs, rather than manipulated by an RPA platform through third-party software.
• As UiPath CEO Daniel Dines told Protocol's Joe Williams in June 2021: "Right now, our platform is used mostly to automate existing manual processes. We believe that in the next decade there will be no type of manual processes remaining … We want to prepare our platform to allow our customers to basically build the new processes, build everything in an automated fashion."
• This focus on automating existing manual processes isn't an inherent problem, it just means that RPA incumbents will need to build a new set of tools to address future automation needs. The main takeaway here is that, when it comes to meeting future automation needs, RPA incumbents don't necessarily have a head start against the competition. (An apt analogy can be made in the automotive industry: Traditional car manufacturers didn't have an inherent advantage in developing self-driving technology.)

AI integrations could allow some RPA companies to bridge the gap. Some RPA companies are hoping to get ahead of the threat by building AI capabilities themselves. And many are already integrating more advanced AI tools into their existing desktop-level products.

• UiPath, for instance, has a "document understanding" feature that uses natural language processing to interpret and sort documents. Automation Anywhere has a similar product with IQ Bot , which uses machine learning to structure data within traditional documents.
• So RPA companies are already responding to the trajectory of automation and building their product portfolios accordingly.
• These AI integrations will likely extend the shelf life of RPA technology, but it's difficult to say for how long. One key determinant is when and how Big Tech firms enter the workplace automation space.

And public cloud vendors loom large over RPA. We've already seen Big Three cloud vendors show interest in developing their own RPA solutions, and those companies have resources and market power — not to mention partnerships with existing RPA vendors — that could allow them to take control of the market as it becomes more focused on AI.

• Every single RPA vendor on this list partners with a Big Three cloud vendor in some capacity. However, Amazon, Microsoft and Google have shown time and again that they will partner with third-party vendors only as long as it's convenient.
• In 2020, Microsoft announced the acquisition of RPA firm Softomotive, which it intended to integrate into its existing Microsoft Flow product. Likewise, Amazon already offers its AWS machine-learning tools to supplement RPA workflows. And in March 2021, Google announced a partnership with Automation Anywhere through which it plans to "mutually develop AI- and RPA-powered solutions.
• Amazon, Google and Microsoft are on the bleeding edge of AI development. Even if they aren't directly offering RPA platforms, you can be sure they are investing in general purpose workplace automation technology. Hypothetically, this could help them to leapfrog RPA firms and directly serve the ground-up automation needs of enterprises.
• Finally, public cloud vendors have a bundling advantage in the enterprise space. Just as Slack has struggled to stave off the competitive threat posed by Microsoft Teams, standalone RPA firms might eventually struggle to fend off Big Tech automation integrations within their already market-dominant products.

Methodology

To rank the competitors, we've developed a formula that encapsulates 30 criteria. Those criteria span five groupings that factor into power: Economics, Leadership, People, Innovation & Politics and Policy. We then developed two systems for weighting the criteria — one for measuring power and the other for measuring momentum — such that companies can be scored on a 0–100 scale. Read our full methodology here .