[exelius]

RPA does eliminate workers. Modern RPA isn’t just “write a screen scraper and never think about it again” — you use BAs and line workers to (cheaply) build out a bunch of RPA integrations, see which ones are the most popular / valuable through usage data from your RPA platform, then implement those via less brittle methods as part of your existing roadmaps. The important part is that the front-end that users access stays the same — you’re basically just swapping an API call to an RPA platform with a direct API call to a backing webservice.

This allows for rapid development of functional integrations delivering real business capabilities — without the overhead of an SDLC. It helps wrangle shadow IT tools into a manageable system and generates lots of structural data on how the actual users of the system interact with it to guide investment in feature development. The RPA scripts with little / no value will naturally fall into disrepair, while the valuable ones will be maintained / improved.

I promise you, it’s way cheaper this way. Software teams stop getting inundated with one-off feature requests that take a ton of work to coordinate, scope, evaluate and test — even if they never get built. Business users get to eliminate time-consuming manual processes. Also keep in mind the first jobs to get replaced by RPA are the ones that have already been shipped offshore... An RPA team for a large enterprise is usually only 2 or 3 engineers and an army of BAs and PMs — but they’re replacing a bunch of individual projects that no longer need to be staffed.