Robotic Process Automation

Excerpt

A foundational question for many BISE (Business and Information Systems Engineering) authors and readers is “What should be automated and what should be done by humans?” This question is not new. However, developments in data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence force us to revisit this question continuously. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is one of these developments. RPA is an umbrella term for tools that operate on the user interface of other computer systems in the way a human would do. RPA aims to replace people by automation done in an “outside-in’’ manner. This differs from the classical “inside-out” approach to improve information systems. Unlike traditional workflow technology, the information system remains unchanged. Gartner defines Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as follows: “RPA tools perform [if, then, else] statements on structured data, typically using a combination of user interface interactions, or by connecting to APIs to drive client servers, mainframes or HTML code. An RPA tool operates by mapping a process in the RPA tool language for the software robot to follow, with runtime allocated to execute the script by a control dashboard.” (Tornbohm 2017). Hence, RPA tools aim to reduce the burden of repetitive, simple tasks on employees (Aguirre and Rodriguez 2017). …