RPA vendor Automation Anywhere 'fast forwards' offering with French purchase

The robotics specialist has acquired privately held Klevops

Automation Anywhere has acquired Paris-based robotic process automation (RPA) specialist Klevops for an undisclosed fee.

The acquisition will allow the vendor to "fast forward" its Attended Automation 2.0 offering. Attended Automation 2.0 allows managers to orchestrate workstreams across a team of employees and bots, increasing human productivity and customer experience.

"We are taking a bold step forwards in delivering Attended Automation 2.0, a next-generation RPA solution that changes the way people work," said Prince Kohli, CTO of Automation Anywhere.

"The acquired technology from Klevops will alter the dynamics between attended and unattended automation, making it a foundational solution for companies scaling their automation initiatives across all industries.

"This is especially relevant to contact centre-intensive industries like banking, financial services and telecommunications."

Automation Anywhere secured $550m (£452m) in Series A funding last year. This marks its first acquisition since the cash injection.

The RPA vendor claimed that most enterprises use "unattended" bots to execute rules-based processes (completing tasks without human intervention).

As the use of RPA grows, many organisations are opting to use "attended" automation, which sees one employee sending and receiving information to and from a bot.

The RPA vendor said that the Klevops acquisition will widen this to allow several employees to manage attended automation across multiple groups of employees and multiple bots.

Nicolas Piau, CTO and co-founder of Klevops, stated: "Klevops shares a similar mission to create business value through human-to-bot collaboration, improving how we solve customer service challenges.

"We are delighted to join Automation Anywhere and believe this acquisition will allow us to address the inevitable demand for attended automation and the ability to automate a broader range of tasks."

Peter Meechan, chief corporate development officer at Automation Anywhere, added: "As the demand for RPA continues to increase across multiple industries, acquisitions like this one will be part of Automation Anywhere's growth strategy as we continue to help solve customer pain points and automate a greater number of business processes.

"Attended automation is typically triggered by a single person. The combined solution of Klevops and Automation Anywhere's attended automation creates the industry's first capability to enable bots driving actions with multiple human teams to co-ordinate their activities."