Differences between attended and unattended bots

An RPA or robotic process automation is a program designed to automate certain tasks and procedures in a company, offering us different options, which requires knowing the differences between attended and unattended Bots. This in order to make much more efficient by reducing costs and improving the productivity of organizations. According to Automation Anywhere, 98% of IT leaders consider automating business processes vital for driving benefits.

For an RPA to work, it is necessary to have Bots, since these will be responsible for the robotic automation of processes. There are currently two types of bots, attended and unattended, both being fundamental in RPA. Here we will tell you what are the main differences between the two so that you can get a better return on investment from your implementation.

 

What is an Attended Bot?

An attended Bot, broadly speaking, is a type of roBot which runs under the supervision of a user on the same computer or PC. Its goal is to help users perform simple and moderately complex tasks by serving as an assistant.

 

What is an unattended bot?

The unattended bot is the next step in digital transformation. This operates completely independently and automatically, without having to be executed by a person. It also does not require supervision and can operate on multiple PCs or servers.

 

Differences between attended and unattended bots

Price

One clear difference is the price. Acquiring RPA under the licensing modality is very expensive, since a license for an attended bot starts at $1,500 while an unattended bot costs more than $6,000. Costs can increase depending on the vendor and license type, with an Orchestrator license easily exceeding $15,000.

In the case of RPA as a service, the cost turns out to be much lower, since here it is not necessary to pay the full license. This cost not only decreases considerably but the complexity of the implementation becomes much less. In addition to being cheaper and easier to implement, you can also get more benefits in less time.

Complexity: Attended and unattended bots

Another difference is in the complexity of the Bot itself. An unattended bot works completely independently which requires more robust programming. These robots will learn the steps you teach them so they require some artificial intelligence to process and understand the learning.

On the other hand, attended Bots work under the supervision of the user, which implies that the user has to teach the robot what to do in a certain “manual” way. Here the operation is based entirely on simple steps and indications since the robot does not have the ability to operate automatically and make its own decisions.

 

Supervision

This point is somewhat logical, since as you can imagine, the attended Bot needs to be “attended”. This means that to work the Bot must be executed manually, as well as it must operate under the supervision of a user or IT employee.

On the other hand, the unattended robot does not require human supervision, what’s more, you don’t even have to turn it on, since it runs automatically. This total independence makes the productivity improvement and the ROI (return on investment) much higher, since you do not have to invest in a Bot and an employee to supervise it.

 

Reach of attended and unattended bots

Reach is another big clear difference between both types of RPA Bots. The Unattended Bot has a much greater reach, as the automation is comprehensive. This means that it performs complete robotic process automation taking care of every part of the process even if it is complex.

On the other hand, the attended Bot usually has a much smaller scope because it does not cover the entire process, nor is it usually involved with more complex processes. And to this we must add that its operation is under supervision, which limits its operation to the availability of a user.

 

Availability for attended and unattended bots

While both Bots are available in the world’s leading RPAs, the Attended Bot is perhaps the best known of all for being the most accessible. There are many examples of attended bots such as chat bots or customer support with bots.

Here the availability we could say that it is similar, since these are available in almost all RPAs, although if we talk about popularity, the attended Bot is more common. This does not mean that it is better because in terms of benefits for the automation of processes, the unattended wins.

 

Front and Back Office 

Finally, we found that the unattended Bot works in the Back Office completely autonomously, which means greater operational efficiency. A perfect example is that items such as payment management, purchases, and finance and accounting invoices can be fully delegated.

On the other hand, the attended Bot works in the area known as Front Office by the employees working in the part of the company that has direct interaction with customers. In short, the attended bot works at the front end of the customer-related business while the unattended one works behind the operational side.