It has been very common to see how industrial process operators have been replaced by robots. In the administrative area this has not been so common until recently.

Currently there are solutions that can replace everyday tasks, such as capturing purchase invoices based on the emails sent by suppliers. The robot operates with the programs (mail, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, CRM, …) in the same way that a person would, by clicking the menu options, reading emails and entering the data to the different applications.

Software robots interpret the user interface of third-party applications and are configured to execute steps identically to a human user. They are configured (or trained) using demonstration steps, rather than being programmed with code-based instructions. This is an important concept in the ARP market so the intention is not to provide another encryption platform for IT users.

The goal is to provide agile and configurable capacity to technical and non-technical users to operational departments. In short, a software robot must be a virtual worker that can be quickly “trained” for a business user in an intuitive way, similar to how an operational user would train a human partner.

The benefit of this approach is twofold. First, it allows operations departments to be autonomous. Second, it frees the skills of IT professionals to focus on more strategic IT implementations, such as ERP and BPMS implementations. ARP typically focuses on immediate operational effectiveness, quality, and cost effectiveness. Thus, ARP is considered classic as complementary to existing automation initiatives.