What is the difference between traditional automation and robotic process automation?
Traditional automation methods are completed by a developer and then the software. The developer will use a list of actions which are needed to automate a task and link them to the back-end using API’s or a script.
Robotic process automation (RPA) works slightly differently to the traditional approach. RPA systems create an action list by watching the user perform the task in a GUI and then perform the automation by repeating the task. RPA systems are similar to automated software testing tools but RPA tools differ from testing tools by being able to handle data and actions between multiple windows and applications.
Traditional automation will work well for report generation but it won’t be able to process and respond to an email containing an invoice, this is where RPA is useful.