Robotic Process Automation vs Machine Learning: The Differences Explained

As newer and more advanced technologies hit the market, differentiating between them becomes harder. This is especially true if you’re new to the market. While many of these technologies might seem similar in certain ways, there are key differences. The main difference here is that robotic Process Automation lacks any built-in intelligence, meanwhile, machine learning’s intelligence is found between robotic process automation and Artificial intelligence. These differences then enable them to carry out their specific tasks. One such scenario where ordinary consumers often end up confused is in the case of robotic process automation vs machine learning. Let’s take a detailed look at what these two revolutionary technologies are and how they differ from each other.

Robotic Process Automation

RPA combines some of the leading aspects of software development: robots and automation. RPA basically is a tool that can record users carrying out repetitive and mundane tasks and can then generate a script so that a bot can automatically perform some of those tasks. RPA commonly referred to as the virtual workforce, can replicate desktop actions and perform simple tasks such as maintaining a vendor database, resolving price discrepancies, establishing a date for payment, and many more. Computer Economics reported that 20% of all organizations have adopted RPA in 2021, rising from the 13% adoption rate in 2020, further solidifying the importance that RPA has now and will have in the future.

Machine Learning

Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence which focuses on the use of data and algorithms to imitate the way that humans learn, gradually improving its accuracy. It is vital to remember that it is very complex, and how it works depends on the goal and the algorithm employed to complete it. Additionally, machine learning algorithms are known to use data from the past to predict new output values. Also, machine learning is a core part of nearly every industry out there: healthcare, finance, entertainment, retail, and manufacturing. Some of the most common uses of machine learning include fraud detection, spam filtering, malware threat detection, business process automation (BPA) and predictive maintenance. Market and Markets forecasts the global machine learning market to reach USD 9 Billion by 2022, and further expects this trend to continue well into the future.

Robotic Process Automation vs Machine Learning

Before dwelling deep into the question of robotic process automation vs machine learning, the first thing to keep in mind is that RPA and ML were designed for different purposes.  RPA was designed to automate predefined business processes or workflows. ML was created to make quantitatively sound decisions in real-time. RPA is all about the process while machine learning requires hordes of quality data to carry out its purpose.

Another point to keep in mind while discussing robotic process automation vs machine learning is the level of scope that both were designed for. RPA was designed to carry out simple and discrete tasks, such as receiving emails and storing files. Carrying out complicated tasks, like reading a sales order is out of its scope as a sales order can contain unstructured or semi-structured data, meaning the data doesn’t always appear in the same place. This is where ML comes into play. ML was designed for the very purpose of processing unstructured data. Thus in such a situation, machine learning algorithms can read the sales order, extract the information, place it in an invoice template and forward the invoice to the customer or an employee for data validation.

Robotic process automation finds itself best deployed in the case of a static business model and process. However, if the procedure requires on-the-spot decisions for what would be considered out-of-scope steps for an RPA solution, then machine learning would be the way to go.

Why Choose Intone for Your RPA Needs?

The key to understanding robotic process automation vs machine learning and the deployment of either of the two is knowing what the solutions were designed to do and how they do it. For organizations wanting to adopt digital automation, RPA is a great entry point. It can be deployed quickly and at a lower cost than AI-based solutions.

Intone is a pioneer when it comes to providing RPA solutions. Our solutions have proven to have 2 times more features in respect to use-case and mapping and 3 times more features with respect to intelligent routing than that which is provided by Google Dialogflow. We are proud of our capabilities to provide innovative solutions and expertise that are needed for you to embrace the future today. This is what we offer;

• State-of-the-art front-end RPA, where we ensure that your customers have a superior experience and that they start to see your brand in a whole new light. 
• Our back-end RPA can easily automate the most mundane, repetitive, and labor-intensive tasks to free up your employees to help them focus on higher-order tasks. 
• Intone offers multilingual solutions as compared to the market standard of English only. 
• Our advanced NLP understands customer requests and responds in a conversational manner with a minimum accuracy of 85%.
• Intone offers efficient omnichannel support through easy integration with commonly used customer support channels like Gmail, Outlook 365, etc.
• Intone offers a top of the line enterprise-grade security with a minimum of 256-bit encryption at both transmission and rest.
• Intone’s RPA will anonymize your data to ensure greater protection of sensitive data and information.
• Intone offers end-to-end hyper-automation with our low-code engine.

Check out how Intone can help you streamline your manual business process with Robotic Process Automation solutions.

Sources:

• https://www.basware.com/en-en/blog/september-2021/robotic-process-automation-(rpa)-vs-machine-learni/
• https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/machine-learning-ML
• https://capacity.com/rpa-and-workflows/faqs/what-is-the-difference-between-machine-learning-ml-and-robotic-process-automation-rpa-technology/
• https://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=2992
• https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/machine-learning-market-263397704.htmlImage by Reto Scheiwiller from Pixabay