How does RPA work in practice? Examples of processes a robot takes over in a company

RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation. In practice it is software that repeats a person’s actions on a computer: clicking, typing, copying and saving. The closest familiar comparison is an Excel macro, except that an RPA robot works with any program, not just a spreadsheet.

The robot’s most important feature is that it works through the ordinary application screen, just like an employee. To an accounting system or a customer portal it looks like just another user. This means a robot can handle an old program that cannot be connected to other systems, a government portal and a modern application in a single run.

The same feature is also its weakness. If a button moves or a field is renamed in a system, the robot may stop. That is why RPA is a solution for stable processes, not for ones that change every month.

Take a hypothetical packaging manufacturer with 110 employees. Its largest customer sends orders through its own supplier portal, which cannot be connected to the manufacturer’s ERP system. Every day a salesperson logs in to the portal, downloads about 40 orders and retypes them into the ERP system. At 4 minutes per order, that is about 2 hours 40 minutes a day.

Once the robot is in place, the work follows the steps below. In the morning the salesperson no longer retypes orders but reviews a handful of exceptions. The time saved can go into talking to customers.

Processes that suit RPA have features in common: they are repeated often, follow clear rules and involve several systems that cannot easily be connected. In the table below we list the five most common types, together with a sign that will help you spot them in your company.

Note that entering domestic purchase invoices is not on the list. Until recently it was the textbook example of RPA, but KSeF has changed the picture – we explain this in the next section.

From 1 February 2026 all companies in Poland receive invoices through KSeF, Poland’s National e-Invoicing System – the government platform for exchanging invoices. From 1 April 2026 most sellers must also issue invoices in it. A domestic purchase invoice is usually no longer a PDF in an email but a file with data in structured fields.

This is a big change for automation. Instead of a robot that opens a PDF, reads the data and types it into a program, it is better to download invoices from KSeF directly into the accounting system. Many accounting programs already have this feature, so first check what your supplier offers.

Robots and reading data from scans (OCR, which converts an image of a document into text) are still useful for documents outside KSeF. These are invoices from foreign suppliers, receipts, warehouse and transport documents. Until the end of 2026 they also include invoices from small sellers who may still issue them outside KSeF. A robot can also transfer invoice data from KSeF into an old system that cannot download it by itself.

A robot only applies rules that can be written down, for example: if the amount is below PLN 5,000, post it; if above, pass it to the manager. It will not judge whether an expense was necessary, whether a customer deserves an exception or whether a contract can be signed. Such decisions stay with people or, to a limited extent, with AI-based tools.

Nor will a robot fix a bad process – it will only speed it up. If data from system A currently reaches system B through manual retyping, first ask whether the two systems can be connected directly. Such a connection is usually more durable than a robot clicking around a screen.

The most important issue is maintenance. A robot on a stable process can run unchanged for a long time, but every update to a system or portal it works with means checking whether the robot still works. It is impossible to say in advance how often this will happen, because it depends on the system vendors. So before you start, decide who checks every day whether the robots have completed their tasks, and who fixes them.

RPA is one of several automation tools, and not always the best. The choice depends on whether the systems can be connected directly and whether the process requires understanding content. The table below helps you judge which approach suits your case.

There are several major vendors on the market, including UiPath, Automation Anywhere and Microsoft with Power Automate. For a mid-sized company that works on Microsoft 365, Power Automate is usually the natural starting point. The part of it that automates work on a computer is called Power Automate for desktop.

With a basic work account you can record a robot and run it manually on your own computer. Running on a schedule, sharing robots with a team and working without human involvement require premium licences. A robot that is to work at night on a separate computer also requires an unattended licence. Check Microsoft’s current price list before pricing a project.

When choosing a tool, who will maintain the robots matters more than the feature list. If someone in the company already knows Power Automate, that tool’s advantage grows. If an outside partner is to maintain the robots, ask them about their response time when something breaks.

A good first candidate meets four conditions. The process can be described step by step on a single page, it is repeated daily or several times a week, it takes a noticeable amount of time and it does not require expert judgement. Half an hour a day over 250 working days is 125 hours a year – a good threshold to start with.

It is worth treating the first project as a pilot on a single process. Its purpose is to find out how the robot works in your company, how to monitor it and what to do when it stops. Later robots are built faster, because the rules are already in place. The steps below structure the preparations.