What's the difference between RPA and AI?

But before we get into that, what exactly are RPA and AI?

‍What does RPA do?

RPA is a technology that is able to mimic human actions on a PC or server, using strict instructions. This includes the literal keys you press on your keyboard to log in and every click in an application, an RPA bot can do this too. In addition, an RPA bot can work across multiple platforms and applications at the same time without the need for an API or connection. Basically, an RPA bot is a virtual employee who can be used to take over repetitive and predictable tasks that add little or no value to a company but cost a lot of valuable time.

‍Practical example

Your task is to enter data from an email into a roster program. Next, you need to download this schedule and forward it to all your colleagues. The bot that lets you work for it works like this: It logs into your inbox and downloads the data you need. He then logs into the program where the schedules are created and fills in all data in the appropriate fields and downloads the final schedule. Finally, he forwards an email with the corresponding schedule to all your colleagues, all without you having to do anything.

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‍And what does AI do?

In fact, AI is an umbrella term for all types of technology that are capable of mimicking human thinking to some extent. This includes language models, making predictions or giving advice. AI is also able to analyse unstructured data and extract the important information. Despite the fact that AI is super powerful in what it can do, it remains difficult to apply it to business. AI is usually seen as an aid to creative thinking processes or as a processor of huge amounts of data. The value of using AI is therefore immense, but it is not able to be applied in such a way that it can automate entire processes in a company. It also often has no access to your most critical systems.

Practical example

You are responsible for keeping track of the success of the latest marketing campaign. You need data for this, and a lot of it. By making smart use of AI, you end up with a mountain of data. By then using another AI model that looks for certain factors such as; age, gender, purchase history and search behavior, you can get an idea of the success of the campaign. This itself could take days or weeks, but your AI works short and has an overview of the data you were looking for within a moment, so you can quickly interpret this data and draw a conclusion from it.

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The difference

The main difference is that RPA is unable to think for itself. It follows a fixed list of instructions and cannot independently deviate from them to solve new problems. That is why RPA solutions are often built specifically for one process or problem, and cannot be much new outside this specification. This also means that an RPA bot is very predictable, so it will never deviate from its script or do anything else itself. As an example, we at VionA have built several bots that process contracts. The last thing you'd want is for an AI to decide it doesn't have to listen to the data and fill out the contracts itself as it sees fit. This is something that is not possible with an RPA bot.

AI, on the other hand, can 'think' and act independently if it has decided it can be better. Indeed, AI is also able to understand and analyze unstructured data, and can therefore also 'discover' new ways of performing tasks. However, it is therefore very unpredictable, so that an overview is often still needed or the AI is not completely wrong with what it does.

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‍So when do I use AI or RPA?

The choice between AI and RPA depends entirely on what it is you want to solve with them. After all, do you need something that can analyze and format masses of data? Then you clearly need something from an AI solution. But are you more looking for something that can process all the repetitive and useless work within your organization on a smaller scale? Then RPA is a good match. To give you a more clear picture of this, below are some examples of tasks or processes that you can use AI or RPA for.

‍Use AI

• Interpreting unstructured data
• Analyzing data
• Making predictions about future situations
• Providing advice on specific topics

‍Use RPA

• Automating administrative tasks
• Interactions with programs via the GUI
• Connection between programs without an API

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‍Combining the Power of RPA and AI

It gets really interesting when you combine the power of RPA and AI. After all, you can easily integrate AI tools into your business processes with RPA so that, for example, you can automatically prepare vacancy texts based on characteristics from your database and have them ready in a vacancy system. Or that you let AI categorize emails and then put them into the right systems with RPA.

The possibilities of RPA were already very extensive; with the addition of AI, they are truly endless. At VionA, we ensure that your business processes run automatically, with or without AI, so you have more time to focus on the tasks that people are better at, such as communicating with relationships, complex exceptions, improving processes, etc.

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