Blue Prism

Blue Prism Group
Public
Traded as
ISIN GB00BYQ0HV16
Industry
Founded July 26, 2001 (2001-07-26)
Founders David Moss and Alastair Bathgate
Headquarters Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, UK
Website www.blueprism.com

Blue Prism is the trading name of the Blue Prism Group, a UK multinational software corporation that pioneered and makes enterprise robotic process automation software to eliminate low-return, high-risk, manual data entry and processing work. Blue Prism is headquartered in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, UK[1] with regional offices in the US and Australia.[2][3] The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange AIM market.[1]

History

Formation

Blue Prism was founded in 2001 by a group of process automation experts to develop technology that could be used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of organisations.[1] Initially their focus was on the white collar back office where they recognised an enormous unfulfilled need for automation. The company was co-founded by Alastair Bathgate and David Moss[1] to provide a new business-led, more granular and economic approach that today is known as Robotic Process Automation, or RPA. In doing so Blue Prism created a digital workforce. In 2003 Blue Prism’s first commercial product was launched. Co-operative Financial Services began using Blue Prism software in 2005, to automate manual processes in customer services.[4]

Robotic Process Automation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the application of technology that provides organizations with a digital workforce that follows rule-based business processes and interacts with the organisations systems in the same way that existing users currently do.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Blue Prism coined the term "robotic automation" in 2012.[12]

Floatation

On March 18, 2016, the company floated on the London Stock Exchange AIM market, becoming a public company. With a market capitalization of £48.5 million, Blue Prism underwent an IPO in March 2016.[13] The company's shares rose 44 percent on the first day of trading on AIM, under CEO Alastair Bathgate.[14] Customers include O2, Co-operative Bank and Fidelity Investment Management. By November 2016, it had offices in Chicago and Miami, as well as the United Kingdom.[15]

On January 6, 2017, Blue Prism announced it would open new offices in Austin, Texas, while remaining based in London. At the time, it employed 86 people worldwide.[16] In March 2017, a group of shareholders sold stakes in Blue Prism. At the time, Blue Prism remained based in Merseyside.[13] In June 2017, Blue Prism announced that a new version of its software would run on public clouds such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Previously, the software had run on customers' own servers.[17]

Blue Prism technology

Blue Prism is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework. It automates any application and supports any platform (mainframe, Windows, WPF, Java, web, etc.) presented in a variety of ways (terminal emulator, thick client, thin client, web browser, Citrix and web services). It has been designed for a multi-environment deployment model (development, test, staging, and production) with both physical and logical access controls. Blue Prism RPA software includes a centralized release management interface and process change distribution model providing high levels of visibility and control. Additional control is provided to the business via a centralised model for process development and re-use. The software supports regulatory contexts such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA and SOX, with a large number of controls in place to provide the necessary security and governance.

In 2016, Blue Prism received one of the top honors at the AIconics Awards, named as The Best Enterprise Application of AI.[18][19]

Blue Prism supports only "back-office" unattended robots and does not offer attended "front-office" robots.[20]

Competition

The main competitors in the Robotic Process Automation market include UIPath and Automation Anywhere. [21] The independent market research company Forrester Research identified these three companies as leaders both in terms of their market presence as well as the quality of their offering in a 2017 study. [22]

In April 2018, industry analyst firm Wikibon attempted to test Robotic Process Automation platforms noting: "we contacted three RPA vendors — Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and UiPath — to test and validate each of these propositions. Only one vendor, UIPath, responded."[23]

The digital workforce

Blue Prism’s digital workforce is built, managed and owned by the user or customer, spanning operations and technology, adhering to an enterprise-wide robotic operating model. It is code-free[24] and can automate any software in a non-invasive way. The digital workforce can be applied to automate processes in any department where clerical or administrative work is performed across an organization.[25]

Business and markets

Blue Prism has been deployed in a number of industries including banking, finance and insurance, consumer package goods, legal services, public sector, healthcare and utilities. [26]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Software Robots Pioneer Blue Prism Debuts on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM Market, Business Wire
  2. ↑ Blue Prism Opens Global Technical Innovation Center, Business Wire
  3. ↑ Blue Prism Opens Global Technical Innovation Center, Business Wire
  4. ↑ Ashford, Warwick (August 29, 2007). "Co-operative bank extends automation with Blue Prism". Computer Weekly. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  5. ↑ Professors Leslie Willcocks and Mary Lacity. Service Automation: Robots and The Future of Work. London School of Economics. ISBN 0956414567.
  6. ↑ Times BPO Supplement, Raconteur
  7. ↑ How is technology changing BPO?, Computer Weekly
  8. ↑ Robotic Automation Emerges as a Threat to Traditional Low Cost Outsourcing, HfS Research
  9. ↑ Understanding Enterprise RPA: The Blue Prism Example (PDF), David Chappel & Associates
  10. ↑ A new approach to automating services (PDF), London School of Economics
  11. ↑ Welcoming our robotic security underlings, HFS Research
  12. ↑ Francis, Sam (March 15, 2016). "Virtual robots maker Blue Prism debuts on London stock market". Robotics and Automation News. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  13. 1 2 Frost, Richard (March 24, 2017). "Growth fund sells Blue Prism stake". Insider Media. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  14. ↑ Burgess, Kate (March 20, 2016). "Blue Prism rides the robot wave". Financial Times. United Kingdom. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  15. ↑ Bounds, Andy; Tighe, Chris (November 23, 2016). "What businesses want from the Autumn Statement". Financial Times. United Kingdom. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  16. ↑ Theis, Michael (January 9, 2017). "Two more British tech sector firms open Austin offices". Austin Business Journal. Austin, Texas, United States. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  17. ↑ Darrow, Barb (June 6, 2017). "This Software Helps Bots Do Their Work". Fortune. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  18. ↑ Blue Prism: Best Enterprise Application of AI, aibusiness.org
  19. ↑ London 2016 AIConics Winners, theaiconics.com
  20. ↑ Comparison of two RPA leaders BluePrism and UiPath, blog
  21. ↑ Blue Prism Competitors and Alternatives in Robotic Process Automation, gartner.com
  22. ↑ The Forrester Wave™: Robotic Process Automation, Q1 2017 (PDF), forrester.com
  23. ↑ Assessing RPA Time-to-Value with UiPath, blog
  24. ↑ What knowledge workers stand to gain from automation, Harvard Business Review
  25. ↑ White Collar Robots: The Virtual Workforce, TEDx Talks
  26. ↑ Blue Prism Group plc – Year end results for the twelve months ended 31st October 2016, London Stock Exchange RNS
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