Difference between RPA and Automation Testing

Knowing the difference between RPA and automation testing is important for RPA consultants & Test Automation Engineers. Nowadays we come across questions – Is RPA achievable using Automation Tool? Can we write automation script using RPA Tools?

Let’s understand the difference between these two.

What is RPA?

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the use of software robots, artificial intelligence (AI), and possibly machine learning to handle high-volume, repeatable rules-based enterprise tasks that previously required a human to perform.

Why is automation tool not a right choice for RPA?

If you have an automation testing team in place & wish to try RPA using Selenium and Java then you are going in the wrong direction. You can write scripts for data scraping, OCR, Excel handling, and PDF handling using Test Automation tool & Java. However, why is automation tool not right choice for RPA?

The reasons are – RPA needs Production environment. So when there is a change in business process, you need to update the RPA process flow quickly. If your RPA flows are scripted using Automation Tool, then updating the scripts needs time since you have coded the business process.

If you fail to update the flow as and when needed, your RPA implementation has serious flaws or your team has limited knowledge in RPA tool.

Execution Order

Automated regression test suite executes test cases one by one. Each test case should be independent. For example: If 5 test cases have failed out of 150, then it does not mean that your automation implementation is not good.

However, for RPA, the execution order matters and each execution should happen based on rules and flow decisions without failures.

Both automation testing and RPA automate Repetitive and boring tasks. We hope that this article answers What’s the Difference between Automation Testing and RPA?

In the subsequent blog articles, we will publish more on RPA and tools.