The last few years have seen a lot of investment activity in robotic process automation (RPA) and M&A by companies such as SAP, IBM, and ServiceNow. UIPath, which had a major IPO last April, has a market capital of more than $30 billion. I was curious when Salesforce would be involved. Today, Salesforce announced its intention to purchase German RPA company Servicetrace.Salesforce plans to make Servicetrace part Mulesoft, which it purchased in 2018 for $6.5billion. Both companies have not disclosed the purchase price of Servicetrace, which suggests that it is a smaller deal. Mulesofts API integration should allow Servicetrace to integrate with Mulesofts toolkit.MuleSoft's addition of Servicetrace will enable MuleSoft to offer a world-class unified integration platform for API management and RPA. This will enrich Salesforce Customer 360, allowing organizations to provide connected experiences from anywhere. Mulesoft CEO Brent Hayward announced the deal in a blog post. The new RPA capabilities will improve Salesforce's Einstein Automate solution. This will enable end-to-end workflow automation across all systems for sales, service, and industries.Salesforce's artificial intelligence layer Einstein allows companies with more advanced tooling to automate some tasks. RPA, however, is better suited for legacy operations. This acquisition could help Salesforce bridge the gap between more traditional on-prem tools, and cloud-based software.Brent Leary, principal analyst at CRM Essentials, says it adds another dimension to Salesforce's digital transformation tools. Salesforce was quick to make their next acquisition, after having closed their largest Slack purchase. However, automation of workflows and processes fueled by real-time information from a growing number of sources is a key component of digital transformation. This is a crucial piece of the puzzle for Salesforce/MuleSoft he stated.Although Salesforce seems to be late entering the market, we found that Laela Sturdy (general partner at CapitalG) said in a May investor survey that she is only scratching the surface when it comes RPAs potential.We are still a long way away from the need to consider the space maturing. RPA adoption is still very young when you consider the immense potential. Many companies are just now beginning to explore the many use cases across industries. Sturdy said that the survey revealed that the more enterprises explore RPA, the greater the number of possible use cases.Servicetrace was established in 2004 long before RPA existed. Crunchbase and PitchBook do not show any money raised. However, the website indicates a mature company with a large product portfolio. Customers include Fujitsu, Siemens, Merck and Deutsche Telekom.
