Creating a solid business case for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a crucial first step in securing funding for your automation initiatives—just like any other major technology investment.
Despite RPA’s growing adoption at the enterprise level, it is often overlooked or underfunded in many organizations.
In this article, we’ll dive into a key aspect of your RPA strategy: establishing an effective RPA budget.
Key Components of an RPA Budget
An RPA budget goes beyond just calculating software costs. In her insightful article, Olivia Pan Chong outlines three primary cost categories associated with RPA bots:
- Software Licensing – Costs vary depending on whether you choose cloud-based or on-premise solutions, each with its own pricing structure;
- Development & Maintenance – Covers bot creation, monitoring, and ongoing support for business areas;
- Infrastructure Requirements – Critical for on-premise deployments, including server and hardware costs;
- Training & Change Management – Often overlooked but essential for a smooth integration of RPA into existing workflows.
How to Accurately Estimate RPA Costs
Accurately forecasting RPA expenses and returns is critical for presenting a compelling business case to leadership and securing the necessary budget.
Whether you handle automation in-house or outsource it, different operational models exist for RPA development and maintenance. It’s crucial to assess departmental activities and identify potential automation opportunities.
Collaborating with business units not only helps set a realistic RPA budget but also highlights key benefits such as cost savings, quality improvements, reduced processing time and errors, improved SLA compliance, and enhanced customer satisfaction.
💡Learn more: Why and How to Build an RPA Center of Excellence (CoE)
Measuring ROI and Quantifying Cost Savings
Several methods and metrics can be used to evaluate RPA’s cost savings and operational impact. Here are my top recommendations:
1. Comparing Bot vs. Human Performance and Costs
A key aspect of RPA ROI evaluation is comparing bot performance against human workers. This comparison should consider cost savings from automation while also weighing strategic benefits, such as redeploying human employees to higher-value tasks.
For example, contrasting the annual cost of an employee with the cost of a bot often reveals significant financial savings. However, the goal isn’t to replace human workers but to enhance overall productivity by equipping teams with digital tools.
Your team can assess this impact by measuring the expected reduction in Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) hours post-automation (i.e., total work hours of an employee divided by the hours in a full-time workweek).
Also, factor in often underestimated costs, such as design and implementation efforts, initial bot monitoring, and ongoing maintenance. These vary based on process complexity and bot quality.
Beyond cost reductions, consider improvements in accuracy, compliance, and customer satisfaction while planning training and continuous optimization to maximize RPA effectiveness.
2. Building Advanced Dashboards and Reports
Creating sophisticated orchestration reports provides valuable insights into large-scale RPA operations, helping CoE teams quickly identify and resolve bottlenecks. Ensure all automations—whether built with drag-and-drop interfaces or complex coding—align with your company’s policies and best practices.
Modern RPA platforms, like BotCity, offer customizable dashboards to track CoE performance, automation volumes, time savings, total cost reductions, and more—turning raw data into actionable insights.
Leveraging historical data helps forecast trends and align future RPA initiatives with business goals.
3. Selecting Vendors and Forecasting Licensing Needs
Choosing the right RPA platform is crucial for accurate cost projections and efficient implementation. Even when working with the same vendor, pricing can vary significantly based on deployment models and process architectures (e.g., unattended, attended, or hybrid automation).
Understanding bot allocation models and vendor pricing structures—whether pay-per-bot or unlimited bot licenses—is essential.
Many organizations struggle with underutilized low-code licenses, leading to unnecessary costs. Integrating these platforms with code-based RPA allows companies to maximize their ROI while improving governance and development team productivity.
This approach ensures every license—whether for low-code or traditional development—is fully utilized.
While drag-and-drop interfaces can be useful, having a solid grasp of RPA principles and coding best practices enhances team autonomy and accelerates deployment.
Additionally, low-code platforms typically involve per-bot or per-machine enterprise licenses. However, Python-based RPA solutions do not require commercial licenses for development.
For example, BotCity offers a SaaS-based orchestration model with pay-as-you-scale pricing, delivering up to 80% cost savings.
4. Combining Generative AI and RPA
Generative AI applications powered by RPA frameworks are set to revolutionize automation efficiency and cost-effectiveness. However, organizations must maintain precise control over automation and AI elements to fine-tune generative AI models and ensure their alignment with specific operational needs.
Using open-source RPA frameworks provides the flexibility to build custom AI-driven automation, modify existing solutions, and integrate sophisticated machine learning and AI libraries such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and GPT models.
Additionally, Python-based RPA offers flexible deployment options—whether cloud-based or on-premise—making it a highly adaptable solution for advanced AI applications while ensuring optimal performance.
Need to Optimize Your RPA Budget for 2025?
Strategic RPA budgeting goes beyond number-crunching—it requires a deep understanding of current business needs and future technology demands.
Partner with automation providers that not only understand your industry but also offer comprehensive support.
This is where BotCity stands out.
Our code-based RPA orchestration platform goes beyond just scheduling and logging automation. It empowers stakeholders, delivers critical insights, and orchestrates large-scale operations efficiently.
Recognized by G2 as the global leader in RPA support, we provide:
✅ Extensive documentation
✅ A global developer forum
✅ Dedicated Slack channels for direct customer interaction
📅 Schedule a call with us to explore how BotCity can transform your RPA journey.
