Robotic process automation follows rigid scripts. Agentic AI adapts, reasons, and handles exceptions. We compare the two approaches across real-world use cases.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) promised to automate repetitive business processes by recording and replaying human actions on software interfaces. While RPA delivered value for highly standardised, rule-based tasks, it has proven brittle in practice: a small change to a UI layout or data format can break an entire automation. Agentic AI offers a fundamentally different approach.
RPA's Limitations
RPA bots follow predefined scripts step by step. They cannot handle exceptions not explicitly programmed, adapt to interface changes, or make judgment calls when data is ambiguous. Maintaining RPA scripts as applications evolve becomes a significant ongoing cost. Studies show that 30-50% of RPA implementations fail to deliver expected ROI, primarily due to maintenance overhead and limited scope.
How Agentic AI Differs
Agentic AI systems understand the intent behind a process, not just the specific steps. When a form layout changes, an agentic system can still find and fill the right fields because it understands what each field represents. When it encounters an exception, it can reason about the appropriate response rather than simply failing. This resilience dramatically reduces maintenance costs and expands the range of processes that can be automated.
When to Choose Which
RPA still makes sense for extremely stable, high-volume, rule-based tasks where the interface never changes, such as mainframe data entry. For everything else, agentic AI delivers better results. The sweet spot for agentic automation is processes that involve unstructured data, require judgment, span multiple systems, or operate in environments that change frequently.
The transition from RPA to agentic AI does not have to be abrupt. Many organisations start by augmenting their existing RPA workflows with AI-powered exception handling, gradually expanding AI's role as confidence in the technology grows.
