RPA is a breakthrough technology that saves employees many hours spent on manual tasks, freeing up time and energy for more strategic activities that drive business growth. Improving efficiency should be a priority for any company that targets growth.
However, companies face an important question: which type of RPA tool is right for their needs?
The answer to this question often leads to a comparison of the two main categories of RPA tools: open-source (open-source) and commercial tools. Both open-source and commercial tools have their own unique features, advantages and disadvantages that influence the choice. In this article, we will take a close look at both categories.
Commercial RPA
Commercial RPAs are paid software, often available as a SaaS or on-premise service, with licensing depending on the number of installed bots. These products are developed by a dedicated team that ensures that no bugs appear and that they are updated regularly.
Importantly, commercial RPA provides dedicated support channels, which means customer service teams.
Commercial RPA benefits
If you are considering implementing commercial process automation software in your business, consider the following benefits, as they will help you understand why it is worth it.
Friendly UX and easy learning process - companies that develop this software need to provide an understandable learning process to stay competitive.
Comprehensive integration - commercial RPA software usually works with popular enterprise applications. Again, the competitive nature of the market means that business tools work well with other software used in many businesses.
Long-term support and easy upgrades - the company that licenses the software has a dedicated team that manages everything on its own initiative.
Commercial RPA drawbacks
Despite such excellent benefits, you need to be aware of some challenges.
High cost - the commercial version of RPA software has many features, modules, and support when you are implementing automation. However, all this means that in addition to the cost of implementing automation, you also need to add the high cost of the license.
Problematic infrastructure changes - automation on a larger scale may require significant changes to the IT infrastructure. So, it is worth considering whether the cost of implementing such automation is justified by the expected benefits.
Open-source RPA
The key difference of open-source RPA is that it is available for free and can be modified, allowing companies to save on licensing fees.
Now you're probably wondering why open-source RPA, as opposed to closed-source RPA, is particularly beneficial to organizations. It provides a solid foundation for creating customized robots without having to work with a commercial vendor, which typically offers limited technological capabilities and high upfront costs.
Open-source RPA benefits
Low cost - licensing a complete RPA platform can be prohibitively expensive. Here, that cost is minimized to 0. This can be an ideal solution for small and medium-sized businesses, especially if they are just beginning to understand the benefits of bots.
Better scalability and flexibility - an effortless way to customize automation to meet an organization's individual needs. As well as there is nothing to prevent the development team from developing this software on their own and creating more useful features.
Open-source RPA drawbacks
Security - companies using open-source RPAs should analyze in advance whether the code has any vulnerabilities because, during an audit, the target organization is responsible for the security of the tool.
Limited support - usually tools of this kind do not have dedicated support, so here you should rely on community activity. However, in the case of RunBotics, you can always contact us via a special form, and we will be happy to help you.
Summary
There is no tool better than the other, it depends on the type of organization you run and your automation requirements.
Large companies with complex IT requirements readily lean toward commercial tools. After all, they offer an off-the-shelf solution with dedicated support, in exchange for a much higher automation cost.
It seems an open-source solution would only be suitable for slightly smaller companies...Nothing could be further from the truth. By design, RPA is used to optimize effective working time and therefore costs. This is nothing to prevent you from looking for this optimization of automation expenses. Especially when many open-source RPA tools are already mature enough to automate complex processes that consider a wide variety of applications popular in large enterprises.
