RPA or AI agents for your back office?

Robotic process automation (RPA) has been around for years, and many finance and operations teams already use it. AI agents are newer. They are often pitched as a replacement, but the honest answer is that they are good at different things.

What RPA is good at

RPA records a sequence of clicks and keystrokes and repeats them. It is excellent when:

• the input is always in the same format
• the steps never change
• the screens it clicks through don’t change either

Copying fixed fields from one system into another every night is a perfect RPA job.

Where RPA struggles

RPA breaks when anything moves. A new column in a report, a redesigned screen or an invoice from a new supplier with a different layout can stop a bot. It also can’t read meaning: it can copy an email, but it can’t tell you what the email is asking for.

What AI agents add

AI agents read unstructured input, like emails, PDFs, scans and chat messages, and decide what to do next within rules you set. They are good when:

• inputs vary in format and wording
• the right next step depends on what the input says
• some cases need judgement and should go to a person

Reading a supplier’s email, finding the invoice attached, checking it against the purchase order and asking a person about the mismatch is an agent job.

Where agents need care

Agents can be wrong in ways that look confident. That is why we test them on real past cases, show the source behind every decision, and keep a person in the loop for anything involving money.

Using both

In practice, many back offices end up with both. The agent handles the reading and deciding. Stable, fixed steps, such as posting to a legacy system with no API, can still be done by an existing RPA bot. If you already have RPA that works, keep it.

A quick way to decide

Ask one question about the process: does the input always look the same? If yes, RPA or a simple integration may be enough. If no, you probably need something that can read.