In this blog, I write about test Automation, but that’s not the only thing that we can automate of course. In the last years, Robotic Process Automation talks have been on the table of multiple companies, but what is RPA, and why you should care about it?

Not every company in the world is using the latest technologies, most of them are companies that have been here for a while, and that has been getting into technology step by step, so it’s common to see companies using the latest technologies on some process and then using legacy systems for others.

Example: Robotic process automation in healthcare

For example, I’ve seen medical facilities having the latest technology in terms of health records, having all patient information digitalized, with lab results, diagnostics, and records stored and accessible for both patients and doctors, but having to send the bills based on excel spreadsheets, and to keep track of payments in another spreadsheet, and having the need of sending mail to providers based on conditions that they need to gather from inventory, pricing data, and other stuff coming from different sources.

This medical facility is spending a lot of time doing all this stuff, in fact, not only time, they are using human resources to work on repetitive, boring tasks.

Yes, I know that they can just upgrade their systems, create software that can do all this stuff as other companies do, or just buy a premade solution that solves the problem, but it’s not always possible because of many reasons, such as pricing, or the cost of moving all the information to new software, etc.

This is where RPA comes into the game, RPA is not the software itself, it’s a process, that allows us to use robot automation to do the repetitive stuff that humans don’t like to do.

Robotic process automation example

For example, we can use RPA to automatically get data from the excel spreadsheet where we have the providers, and from the other spreadsheet where we have the stock, to automatically generate the letters and labels to send via mail to them, without human interaction.

We can use RPA where we want, without the need for an API that allows two systems to talk between them, and we can have as many use scenarios as we want. We can use RPA to send emails based on conditions, generate bills, control stock, basically, for anything.

RPA Robotic process automation tools

I don’t like to recommend or talk about tools that I have not used, so I will only list tools I personally have tried and recommend:

UIPath: A recommended option for non-developers, created by Citrix.

Automation Anywhere: Good for medium to big business, with on-premise and cloud support.

Apple Shortcuts: Yes! You can use Apple Shortcuts to create RPA flows, I use it to tie tools like things with calendar and email, based on conditions.

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