After going through a journey of discovering Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and learning a little of the benefits available with technology, business leaders often formulate the question “What are the advantages and disadvantages of RPA?”.

The aim of this blog post is to be product agnostic. It is the Pros and Cons of RPA technology which effectively apply across all RPA products.

For context in thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of implementing RPA, the base line position is “Do Nothing”. Of course, an implementation of RPA could be considered in comparison to an investment in the implementation of other technology or another business initiative.

Advantages of RPA

The deployment of RPA delivers the Replacement of manual activity with software robots performing tasks.

The benefits that can be achieved from the technology are:

• A gain in productivity with more work being completed with less staff effort
• A reduction in processing and data errors as software robots do not make human errors that typical arise from a lack of concentration
• A reduction in the processing costs for completing tasks provided that the majority of the RPA capacity is utilised
• Sensitive data not being viewed by a person and there cannot be “Leaked” by human interaction (aka “Gossip” or after a person has left an organisation)
• Once automation becomes available it can be operated 24 x7 if required and can be scaled according to the required workload
• Effective segregation of duties can be achieved through the deployment of multiple software robots which may not have been practical with people undertaking the activities
• The attractiveness of jobs being improved as the time spent performing repetitive tasks is removed from the scope of the work
• Automation of the routine repetitive tasks allowing staff to focus on the exceptions, the complex and the unusual scenarios
• Designs for automation being implemented where RPA acts as an assistant with tasks being explicitly pass by staff as well as designs that implement RPA using a scheduled approach

Some of the strengths of RPA that enable the benefits to be gained are:

• Non-intrusive, as RPA works with existing software either through the GUI or via existing API functions
• Quick to implement an initial deployment, typically a few weeks
• Complies with security standards and can utilise really long passwords plus two-factor authentication
• The ability to consistently create detailed log records of the activities performed in the RPA automation which enables details to be available for both audit and compliance purposes
• Orchestration enables many RPA software robots to be deployed with a variety of work allocation strategies being used to ensure the appropriate business priorities are assign to the queued tasks
• Designed to work with other technology which enables AI, GenAI and other products to be integrated into automations

Once an initial RPA implementation has been achieved, the same technology can also be used to construction new applications. This could be completing tasks with automation which although technically possible for a business to undertake with manual effort, the process has never existed as a manual operation.

As RPA frees up time from existing staff, a significant factor in the business success of an RPA implementation is how the available staff time is used?

Disadvantages of RPA

There is no implied order of importance for the aspects listed.

Job Scope

Often the implementation of RPA has the removal of repetitive tasks from the scope of jobs as a disadvantage. Of course, by making the comparison to doing nothing, it is a fair comment, but the continued use of people to execute manually tasks that are repetitive seems like the defence of a bad situation.

Very little training is gained by repetitive activity, so even for junior staff it is not beneficial to have them deployed on the repetitive tasks for a long period.

Technical Debt

RPA creating a Technical Debt is a disadvantage cited by some IT Architects. In some situations, and in some respects that is valid argument, but the impact is often small in comparison to business benefit that it delivers.

The deployment of RPA is inevitably adding more technology into an architecture and yes, it makes the impact of changes to the application systems used bigger.

Where RPA is used to replace manual effort involved with operating Cloud applications (e.g. SaaS), there is often no technical alternative so the comparison with the “Do Nothing” base line does have an increase in Technical Debt.

Initial Costs

Most of the pricing models for RPA implementations require a number of Software Robots which deliver a lot of processing capacity. This can be a disadvantage when the quantities of processing capacity are not fully utilised by an initial automation.

A barrier to entry is generated, so that a good business case will only exist when there is sufficient volume of activity in the process being automated.

As the RPA market has matured there are vendors who provide a range of pricing models, which means that even for small businesses with low processing requirements the disadvantage of entry price for the RPA technology is being reduced.

Process Selection

Restricting automation of processes that are rule based is typically listed as a disadvantage for RPA. It is correct that RPA technology itself is designed to follow rules / logic that is found in many business processes. It is decisions based on data. That makes they repeatable, traceable and explainable.

For the busing processes that require judgement or some complex reasoning, RPA on its own may not be the best solution. However, RPA can interact with AI and GenAI to combine more complex reasoning in processes together with actions.

Skill Requirement

The skills need to implement RPA solutions in terms of building the automations and operating the RPA environment from a monitoring plus support perspective are an additional challenge for IT teams that can already be stretched.

The disadvantage of the additional skill requirement can be reduced by using external consultants and service providers, although that does create other challenges.

Working alongside Robots

The implementation of RPA software robots can create resistance from staff who can have concerns about the impact on their roles. In many cases once staff see the benefit from the use of RPA, a desire is created for the business to invest in lots of automation to remove staff from undertaking any work that they do not like.

Contingency Plan

Once RPA has been implemented, the processing capacity delivered by the automation can impact business contingency plans. In a scenario where RPA is not available there may not be sufficient staff available to manually process the workload that is normally completed by the automation.

The decision on whether RPA is worth it?

Each business can consider if their business processes are suitable for Automation with and RPA solution but in general the usage of RPA is growing.

RPA is clearly worth it for some business processes as the benefits and speed of ROI make it really attractive.

RPA can be viewed by some in IT as a short term fix and they raise questions about whether RPA is sustainable. The short implementation timescale for RPA deployments enables benefits to be gained quickly.

It is true that the gains from RPA do increase the impact costs when implementing changes which does mean RPA is most effective for stable business processes.