One question that we keep getting from our clients is whether they should opt for attended or unattended RPA. The question stems from their misconceptions regarding these two types of RPA bots. Before answering whether organisations should opt for attended or unattended RPA, let’s first understand them.

Attended RPA

If you deploy an attended RPA solution to automate a specific task, you must manually trigger the bot. For example, a customer service agent is talking to a customer. To obtain their information, the agent deploys the bot, which obtains information from multiple sources and compiles them in a PDF document. Unless the employee does not provide the instructions, the bot will not obtain any information.

Attended RPA Benefits

Although many would find manually triggering the bot a drawback, attended RPA does offer numerous benefits. The most notable advantage of employing such a bot is it improves employee productivity. Employees can work on value-added and more complex tasks. The bot can perform repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Secondly, when performing the same task repeatedly, employees may make mistakes. RPA bots reduce the human error rate and can even validate the information.

Furthermore, attended RPA bots can improve the compliance process. The employee can run the bot as and when required, ensuring compliance with the stated requirements. Lastly, attended RPA solutions improve human-bot collaboration. The employees understand that the bots are there to help them rather than replace them. They don’t see them as a competition. Thus, employees will likely identify more areas to implement bots to further streamline operations.

Unattended RPA

In contrast, unattended RPA does not require human intervention to trigger it. Instead, the bot is deployed automatically once specific conditions or rules are met. For example, an organisation is using RPA for email management. The bot filters emails from higher management and sends them to relevant teams or departments. The bot will run in the background, and as soon as an email from higher management arrives, it will trigger the desired response.

Benefits of Unattended RPA

Of course, attended and unattended RPA share many of the same benefits. However, unattended RPA has several unique advantages. First, unattended RPA bots can run 24/7 regardless of whether a human worker is present. It ensures that the bots keep performing the work without any break. It is highly beneficial in areas such as customer service or compliance management. It also reduces labour costs as the organisation does not need workers to manage the bots.

Another notable benefit is that unattended RPA guarantees business continuity. These bots can continue to operate regardless of a holiday, weekend, or an expected event. An unattended RPA solution can be accessed from any device, whereas attended RPA bots can only be accessed through the device on which it is triggered. Lastly, unattended RPA is broader in scope, meaning it collects large amounts of data. This data can aid decision-making and provide new insights.

Attended vs. Unattended RPA – Which One is Better?

The simplest way to explain the difference is that attended RPA requires human intervention, while unattended RPA is free from this requirement. On paper, unattended RPA looks better simply because of the unique benefits that it promises. Even then, there is no straightforward answer to the above question. We believe that organisations don’t need to choose between the two. Instead, they should go for a hybrid approach.

What Next?

Agile Managex Technologies provides comprehensive RPA solutions in the UAE and globally. We recommend checking out our existing RPA bots library to get an idea about our expertise. Our experts can design attended and unattended RPA solutions using top platforms such as Microsoft Power Automate, ElectroNeek, and UiPath. Contact us for more information.

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