Industry Watch · Published May 6, 2026
RPA and Workflow Automation: Overrated and Underrated
RPA demos well, but few enterprises get it running. Technology is overrated; process analysis is underrated.
RPA has been hot for two years with many pilots. In the projects we observed, demos went smoothly and production brought maintenance and process-change challenges. A few judgements.
Overrated
Replacing humans. Real business has too many exception branches; robots cover the standard path and people still step in.
Development speed. Simple recorded scripts are quick, but reliable flows need waiting, retries and handling page changes, which is real work.
Underrated
Process analysis. Many firms find useless steps and realise the process just needs simplifying, not a robot.
Operations cost. One page change breaks the robot, requiring dedicated monitoring and updates, a long-term cost.
Comparison with system changes: sometimes an interface change is more stable than rebuilding a robot, so compare options.
Start automation from the process, not the tool. Clean it, simplify it, then consider robots. Wrong order wastes the effort.
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