Robotic process automation (RPA) is a software robot which uses predefined sequence of actions and business rules and mimics repetitive human tasks using different information systems.

Gartner defines robotic process automation (RPA) as the software to automate tasks within business and IT processes via software scripts that emulate human interaction with the application user interface.

Robot can be initiated by a person or scheduled.

Robot can work absolutely autonomously or with the involvement of people in actions like exception handling or decision making in some cases.

Some examples of RPA-cases:

• A robot collects information about a counter partner from different web sites and web-services
• A robot creates a new employee profile in several information systems
• A robot receives e-mail, recognizes an attached pdf-invoice and enters data in a ERP system