Despite digitalization, employees in many companies transfer data from one program to the next every day. This is often because older line-of-business applications or business partners' portals do not offer an API. This is exactly where RPA comes in: a software robot, or bot for short, takes over the same clicks and entries over and over. This has nothing to do with physical robots.
How does RPA work?
- Capture the process: The work steps are recorded with a recorder or modeled in a designer: open the application, read a field, transfer a value, click a button.
- Recognize the interface: The bot identifies controls via technical characteristics of the interface, or alternatively via image recognition or screen positions.
- Execute: Attended bots run at the workstation and are started as needed. Unattended bots work independently on their own systems, usually on a schedule.
- Control: Central management schedules runs, manages credentials, and logs results.
The bot works with its own credentials and can do everything in the interface that a human with these rights could do. This must be taken into account when assigning permissions.
In combination with AI, for example for document recognition or classification, bots can also process unstructured input such as emails or scanned receipts.
Typical examples
- Order data from a supplier portal is transferred to the inventory management system.
- Monthly reports are downloaded from several systems and consolidated.
- Master data in two applications is regularly reconciled.
- A bot signs in to a government portal every day and downloads new documents.
- Bulk changes in a legacy application without an import function are carried out automatically.
What companies should keep in mind
- Prefer APIs: if an API is available, integration through it is generally more robust. RPA works well as a bridge.
- Plan for maintenance: changes to the interface, updates, or a different screen resolution can stop bots.
- Use dedicated bot accounts with minimal rights, no shared personal sign-ins, and store credentials securely.
- Clean up processes before automating them. A cumbersome process only becomes faster with a bot, not better.
- Define responsibilities for errors and exceptions, and monitor bots.
How it differs
RPA is a process automation tool, alongside APIs and low-code. A classic bot differs from an AI agent in that it follows fixed rules, whereas an agent plans its steps itself depending on the situation. This makes RPA more predictable but less flexible.
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