Macros, Powershell, Scripts and RPA

Recently, in one of the conversations I was told that they are leveraging RPA for years in form of scripts, powershell and/or macros. In my personal opinion all of these are surely an automation but performing one or series of tasks on to a specific system.

“While a macro or script is linear and fixed, RPA robots are dynamic”.

Robots can perform sequence of tasks and activities across multiple systems and platforms. They can “learn” or be pre-trained and respond to impetuses, accumulating knowledge of procedures over time – thereby getting “smarter”.

“Another major difference is that RPA is autonomous of the application”. Where you might need multiple scripting tools to create scripts to perform in your various applications, RPA can interact with multiple applications at once at the object layer. It can be applied to virtually any application, and multiple applications at a time

it can also be said that RPA is automation for the end-user tasks while scripting, macros are more of IT centric automation. Although both are designed to improve efficiency, boost productivity and reduce costs, but the way they are ultimately used is slightly different.

Additionally, both scripting, macros and robotic process automation can be integrated with existing legacy systems to further enhance basic operations as well as at advanced sophisticated level.