Robotic process automation provider Automation Anywhere Inc. today announced that it has appointed two industry veterans to top jobs in an apparent move toward an initial public offering of stock.

The company’s appointment of two senior executives with extensive experience running public companies comes just a few weeks after its top competitor in the RPA market, UiPath Inc., went public in a blockbuster $1.4 billion IPO.

James Budge is the company’s new chief financial officer and Mike Micucci is new chief operating officer. Budge is a longtime finance executive who prepared three companies for their initial public offerings. Micucci previously led Salesforce.com Inc.’s Commerce Cloud and Community Cloud businesses.

“With these seasoned industry veterans on board, we are more prepared than ever to bring the benefits of cloud RPA and intelligent automation to every organization that wants to liberate its employees from manual, repetitive tasks, and free them to be more productive,” said Automation Anywhere co-founder and Chief Executive Mihir Shukla (pictured).

RPA software enables companies to automate repetitive business tasks using artificial intelligence. Strong demand from enterprises and the market’s massive growth potential have lifted the valuation of major RPA providers in recent years. Automation Anywhere was valued at $6.8 billion after its last funding round, a $290 million investment it closed in 2019.

Budge is taking up the CFO post at Automation Anywhere after previously holding the same position at Pluralsight Inc., a major provider of information technology training. The executive led the company through its IPO and oversaw a 400% increase in revenues during his tenure. Budge was earlier the CFO of Anaplan Inc., a maker of business planning software that went public in 2018, and had also led the finance operations of multiple other tech companies.

At Automation Anywhere, Budge will lead not only the finance group but also the company’s investor relations, legal and information technology management activities. The RPA provider stated today that “a top priority will be to ensure the organization has the proper business processes and infrastructure as it aspires to become a public company.”

Micucci also has a long track record working at publicly traded enterprise technology firms. The executive was most recently chief executive officer and executive vice president of Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud business unit. The unit manages the cloud giant’s e-commerce platform of the same name, as well as Community Cloud, another Salesforce product that enterprises use to build customer support portals and knowledge bases.

He will be responsible for overseeing Automation Anywhere’s global operations, as well as “leading the development and execution of a business strategy that rapidly expands the adoption” of its automation products, the company stated.

Automation Anywhere claims that customers have deployed nearly 3 million automation bots using its RPA platform to speed up repetitive business tasks. The company also revealed today that it has set a goal of growing that number “exponentially” over the coming years. As COO, Micucci will be at the forefront of Automation Anywhere’s efforts to realize its growth vision. 

Photo: SiliconANGLE