What RPA is
Robotic process automation is a program that repeats a person’s actions in an interface: it opens an application, clicks, copies a field and pastes it into another system. It needs no database or API access, because it works on the same screen as the employee.
That is its main strength and its main weakness. A bot works where a system has no programming interface. It stops working when someone moves a button or renames a field.
Three different tools
These three approaches are often treated as one. They solve different problems.
- RPA: the system has no API and the task is always the same clicks.
- API integration: both systems have a programming interface. Faster, and unaffected by layout changes.
- AI: the input is unstructured, such as an email, a scanned invoice or a free-text request, and has to be understood first.
When RPA makes sense
RPA works well as a bridge: an old system nobody will change this year, and a process that needs relief now. Write down who repairs the bot after a system update and how the team will notice that it stopped.
When a system has an API, an integration almost always wins: fewer moving parts, and errors that can be handled in code.
Where to start
Before choosing a technique, list the task: how often it repeats, which systems it touches, who does it and what happens on a mistake. That list tells you whether you need a bot, an integration or AI.