Robotic Process Automation vs Digital Process Automation: A Quick Comparison

We live in a fast-paced world where businesses looking to thrive must keep up with the many, many demands of the market and they must do so quickly. Such pressing demands to remain efficient and competitive have put the focus on automation. This is great, but there exist different forms of automation and how does one go about choosing between them? Understandable question; in this article, we will focus on the two most prevalent forms of automation: Robotic Process Automation and Digital Process Automation.
While these are two distinct technologies, Robotic Process Automation and Digital Process Automation do share common goals. When deployed together, they serve as the foundations for a powerful platform that enables organization-wide digital transformation and enables them to offer superior customer experiences.

Let us start with a quick discussion about what each of these two forms of automation is all about. Robotic Process Automation refers to technologies and solutions that enable automation of repetitive and tedious tasks across a business. RPA typically involves bots that execute such routine tasks, thus allowing employees to save their precious time and focus on more important tasks that necessitate human intervention, be it for human reasoning, emotional intelligence, or any other such factor that is possible only by human intervention.

Digital process automation, on the other hand, refers to the combination of data, bots, systems, and people to automate specific manual tasks in a given workflow. Using DPA solutions fortified with modern technologies such as artificial intelligence, bots, etc. is conducive to considerable savings of costs as well as time. A top-quality DPA solution would generally comprise a unified platform rounded off by visual tools to help employees better map out complex processes.

While an increasing number of companies are considering embracing automation to achieve improved levels of efficiency, save costs, and leverage other potential benefits, they often find themselves by the choice between RPA and DPA.

Anyway, now that we understand what each of these two types of automation is all about, let us also take a quick look at some of the key factors that differentiate the two.
1. What RPA does is stamp out the obligation to involve human resources to perform routine and repetitive tasks. DPA, on the other hand, is mainly concerned with the automation of processes to deliver superior customer experiences.
2. Yet another compelling point of difference between DPA and RPA is that the former is not meant to eliminate repetitive tasks performed by humans. This is unlike RPA since RPA can make up for any gaps in processes and thus, empower organizations to achieve substantially better levels of efficiency.
3. The primary aim of DPA is to ensure a highly engaging customer journey. RPA, on the other hand, is mainly concerned with bots executing time-consuming, monotonous work that does not necessarily need human intervention. Such tasks can be easily identified by a DPA solution.
To cut a long story short, both Robotic Process Automation and Digital Process Automation can be put to work individually. However, the independent advantages become more evident when they are implemented in conjunction because RPA and DPA truly complement each other, enabling companies to successfully fulfill their process automation objectives. Nonetheless, if you are solely looking to automate only specific tasks under the purview of an overall process that necessitates human involvement for higher-level cognitive decisions, digital process automation remains your best bet. Hence, in that case, you would be better off looking for a reliable vendor for digital process automation services to assist with your automation project.