RPA vs. Workflow Automation: How to Choose
Sara Bhatt
Head of Product Design
June 30, 20265 min read~8 min
If your process is 'a human clicks through five windows and pastes the result', that's a candidate for robotic process automation. If it's 'data needs to move between systems we own, with logic and approvals', that's workflow automation.
The real differences
- RPA fakes the UI — it clicks like a person, so it breaks when the UI changes. Workflow automation talks to APIs, so it survives redesigns.
- RPA is per-task. Workflow automation is per-process — it can wait for approvals, branch on data, and alert when things go wrong.
- RPA is right for legacy apps with no API. Workflow automation is right for everything after the API.
A practical test
Ask: is the bottleneck that a human has to drive the tool, or that the systems don't talk to each other? The first is an RPA problem. The second is a workflow problem. Most 'automation' projects are actually the second with the first bolted on.
💡 Our rule: if a system has an API, connect the API. Reserve bot-clicking for the two legacy screens you simply can't replace.
#Strategy#RPA#Process
Sara Bhatt
Head of Product Design at Nexaro Tech
Read more from the Nexaro Tech team in the blog archive.