Softomotive

Softomotive emerged in 2005 as a privately-funded enterprise, founded in Athens, Greece, by Marios Stavropoulos and Argyris Kaninis. With a foundation in the nascent field of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), the company focused on developing solutions to automate repetitive business processes, initially targeting the banking and insurance sectors. Stavropoulos, with over two decades of experience in the software industry and a passion for user-focused technological innovation, led the company as CEO. Kaninis's strategic vision was crucial to the company's growth and eventual global positioning. A significant milestone was the creation of WinAutomation in 2008, a desktop automation tool, followed by the enterprise-focused ProcessRobot in 2016. The company expanded its global presence, opening offices in London, New York, and India, and relocated its headquarters to London in 2015. A major financial inflection point occurred in 2018 when Softomotive secured $25 million in a Series A funding round from Grafton Capital. This success culminated in its acquisition by Microsoft on May 19, 2020, where it was integrated into the Microsoft Power Automate platform.

The core of Softomotive's business is providing RPA solutions for both attended and unattended automation, catering to clients ranging from individuals and small teams to large enterprises across sectors like healthcare, banking, and telecommunications. Its business model revolved around annual subscriptions for its software. The company's product suite addresses the need to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs by allowing software robots to handle manual, time-consuming tasks. This enables employees to concentrate on more strategic work.

Softomotive's flagship products were WinAutomation and ProcessRobot. WinAutomation is a Windows-based desktop automation tool (RDA) designed for building software robots to automate tasks on a local machine. It allowed users to trigger automation based on specific events, such as receiving an email or a new file being added to a folder. ProcessRobot was the enterprise-grade RPA platform, offering enhanced security, scalability, and controls for more complex, unattended automation deployments. A key selling point was the shared technology stack between the two products, allowing for a smooth migration from the desktop tool to the enterprise platform as a company's automation needs grew. Following the Microsoft acquisition, this technology was integrated to bolster Power Automate's capabilities, particularly in automating tasks within legacy systems and applications like SAP. Keywords: Robotic Process Automation, RPA, desktop automation, enterprise automation, business process automation, WinAutomation, ProcessRobot, Marios Stavropoulos, Argyris Kaninis, Microsoft Power Automate, workflow automation, attended automation, unattended automation, low-code automation, software robots, process optimization, operational efficiency, legacy system automation, task automation, digital transformation