ThinkTWENTY20

Having worked closely with UiPath StudioX for the last four months, I thought it would be good to revisit some of my points from my earlier series on Robotic Process Automation (RPA), particularly on where “RPA approaches” and “pure programmatic approaches” overlap and contrast.

Trying not to be too redundant, RPA is a suite of tools to: 

• Speed up repetitive manual processes.
• Reduce errors caused by manual activities.
• Work alongside your current systems, so that no special accommodations are necessary.
• In our industry, improve accounting, audit and tax quality and compliance.
• Free financial professionals from monotonous, repetitive, labor-intensive tasks to focus on more profitable, high-value work.

As RPA is just performing, step by step, what a very fast, very accurate person would do, consistently and repetitively, clicking here and copying there, it acts as a layer on top of the technology you have today rather than requiring any re-engineering.

In my last entry, I noted that I would be talking about the following in upcoming blog entries:

• How RPA can be used to automate repetitive, monotonous and detail-heavy activities.
• How programming and StudioX compare, contrast and interrelate.
• How add-ins to StudioX make it a very powerful personal hub for doing many different tasks.
• How AI and RPA overlap and complement each other.

And, for no good reason, I’d like to start with the second point; if you have programming skills, is StudioX necessary, helpful, or more?

Most RPA solutions require basic programming (basic meaning rudimentary, as opposed to BASIC programming, the Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) skills. Once the solution – often called a ‘Bot,’ to some controversy – is in place, the steps can run unattended or hand in hand with a person as necessary.

What makes StudioX unique is that it was designed to hide the coding (although it is possible to take off the cover and use Visual Basic (VB) programming). Is your repetitive task to go to a web site or open a PDF? With StudioX, you don’t need to write lines of code; you can drag and drop an “activity,” or process step, which then tells the computer to go to that web site or open that PDF when you run the ‘Bot’ in the future. Once you have opened the resource you use, do you type in a search term, highlight a table and then switch to Excel to paste it in? Once again, instead of code, you drag and drop specific activities for each step you would take, each click, each copy, each paste into Excel. You can even turn on a “recorder,” perform the steps you normally do and StudioX will create the sequence for you.

While most RPA suites follow a somewhat similar model, StudioX is much more visual, guiding you through how to complete the information needed by the computer. You might say they have considered which 20% of the functionality accomplishes 90% of the common tasks, and highlighted that on the fill-in cards for each process. You can then clean things up, or fill in any missing information so the computer can do the exact steps you want in the future, without your interaction.

So, when the profession recommends that financial professionals consider learning programming – especially Python, but also R or VB – does StudioX mean you don’t need to learn any programming, or at least the foundations of programming?

So, What Can RPA Solutions Do that Python Can’t? 

Let’s look at some of the things StudioX does that Python doesn’t:

• Provide a limited/no-code environment in which to operate, particularly focused on screen scraping.
• Integrate with larger suites for collecting business requirements, moving to the field and managing the implementation.
• Minimize programming errors with components tuned for purpose.
• Python is a general-purpose tool, so you aren’t starting off with a user-friendly user interface to get the work done.
• As a visual tool, RPA is not just easier for non-programmers to create, but also for non-programmers to review and manage.

StudioX, as part of the broader Studio Suite, has a wide variety of extensions that simplify tasks like cryptography, working with a wide variety of accounting software products, such as Dynamics 365 and OCR. Although Python libraries also add this functionality, the visual approach simplifies working with software products for the person creating the process.

What Can Python Do that RPA Can’t?

Conversely, Python is incredibly flexible:

• There are few limitations to Python; there’s even an RPA library for Python (imaginatively named RPA for Python or RPA-Python), which simplifies website automation, OCR and interaction with people on the keyboard and mouse.
• Python is open-source, and there is no vendor lock-in. Creation of helpful tools that expand Python is fast and frequent. There have been some open-source visual RPA tools, such as the Sikuli Project, but support is very limited. 
• Python can be used on any platform. StudioX is limited to Windows (which makes sense given its focus on Excel and Office products).
• Python runs far more quickly and efficiently.

So, for simple repetitive tasks, having an expert with Python may result in more efficient code that is perfectly catered to the job; reviewing the code and making later changes without that expert may, however, be a problem. RPA is simpler for non-programmers to create, manage and update.