Blue Prism
By SS&C Blue Prism
Blue Prism is an enterprise robotic process automation (RPA) platform that lets organizations build software robots, or "digital workers," to automate rule-based, repetitive business processes.
Definition
Blue Prism is an enterprise robotic process automation (RPA) platform that lets organizations build software robots, or "digital workers," to automate rule-based, repetitive business processes.
Overview
Blue Prism processes are built visually through a process designer rather than by writing traditional code, with digital workers interacting with existing enterprise applications the same way a human would — through the user interface or underlying APIs. A centralized Control Room provides orchestration, scheduling, and monitoring of many robots running across an organization, which is core to Blue Prism's positioning as an enterprise-grade, governance-focused RPA platform. Founded in the UK in 2001, Blue Prism is often credited with coining the term "robotic process automation." It was acquired by SS&C Technologies in 2022 and now operates as SS&C Blue Prism. In practice it competes closely with other enterprise RPA platforms such as Automation Anywhere, while lighter-weight workflow automation tools like Zapier address a more consumer- and SMB-oriented segment of the same broad automation space. Unlike infrastructure-focused automation tools such as Ansible, Blue Prism automates business processes at the application-UI layer rather than provisioning and configuring servers.
Key Features
- Visual, largely code-free process designer
- Centralized Control Room for orchestrating and monitoring robots
- Object-oriented approach to reusable automation components
- Enterprise-grade security, governance, and audit controls
- Integration with AI and OCR add-ons for handling unstructured data
- Scalable management of a large "digital workforce" across departments