Process mining and RPA: How to pick your automation battles?

Robotic process automation (RPA) has lowered the threshold for process automation. Repetitive tasks done by people are handed over to software robots. For RPA, there is no need to change or replace the pre-existing information systems. Instead, software robots replace users by interacting directly with the user interfaces normally operated by humans. Actually, RPA can be seen as "the poor man's workflow management solution" because it is cheaper than traditional automation. Therefore, it can be used to automate routine work that would normally not be cost-effective. Process mining plays a key role in deciding what to automate and how. Therefore, RPA is closely related to process mining. Before introducing RPA, one needs to analyze the processes to be automated. Process mining can help to identify promising candidates. Moreover, after RPA has been implemented, process mining can be used to monitor processes and systems even if these use a mixture of RPA, workers, and traditional automation.