For anyone familiar with Office (Excel, Word, Access…) macros, you can consider RPA as “macros on steroids”. While they also record keystrokes and can carry them out repeatedly without a break or PTO day they are much more than that. Bots can scrape data from GUI windows and web pages alike. They can pull specific text from documents based on rules and context (this requires some AI as well). If it’s repeatable it can probably be accomplished in RPA.

By Chiradeep BasuMallick  – Robotic process automation is a software technology that reduces or removes the human effort involved in business processes by using virtual robot software or “bots,” which are often powered by artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), optical character recognition (OCR), and other cognitive technologies.

While RPA refers to robots in its name, the technology doesn’t use robotics, unlike industrial automation. Instead, it relies on pieces of software – which could be standalone automation scripts or end-to-end automation apps – to replace human effort. For example, the software may fetch data from a system at a given time and transfer it to another after running a series of checks without human intervention. The software used in RPA is known as bots, which could be either pre-packaged or custom-built. 

While automation has been around since the 1900s, RPA rose to prominence only after the evolution and growing accessibility of AI and machine learning. These cognitive technologies allow bots to respond to various event triggers and perform complex tasks. 

For example, the OCR AI technique allows RPA bots to extract or “read” information from an image, much like a human can. Further, thanks to machine learning algorithms, the bots get increasingly more powerful and effective every time they are used. For instance, if a human user matches an image with a text the first time, the bot can use ML to learn from this correction and do it automatically the next time. 

RPA is rapidly evolving as these cognitive technologies become increasingly more advanced. For example, in 2020, Gartner coined the term hyperautomation to refer to next-gen RPA that uses exceptionally intelligent AI/ML to make decisions and execute actions perfectly aligned with business objectives.  Read On: