RPA

Why this article exists Most writing about RPA is about where it fits. Knowing where it does not is more

The cost nobody budgets for Automation projects are usually costed as a build. They are a build plus maintenance, indefinitely.

Why pipelines have handoffs Few useful automations are one tool. A common shape: one tool retrieves something from a place

The failure that costs most Not the automation that crashes. The automation that fails and reports success. An error is

Three different things They get discussed together and they solve different problems. RPA operates applications through their interface — and,

The test before anything else Four questions. A task needs a yes to all four. Is it high volume? The

The four reasons In rough order of how often they cause a failure. The interface changed. A button moved, a

The difference Attended runs on a person’s machine, usually started by them. They are there while it works. Unattended runs

The work is not the building People expect the difficulty to be in the software. It is not. The difficulty

The situation A published government dataset needed to reach a business system. The data lives on a public website, released