Each of these was one named process, not a department-wide rollout. The before and after numbers are published in full on the case study behind each row.
Approvals were sitting in one person’s inbox while he was on leave. Now they arrive in Slack with approve and reject buttons and most clear the same day.
Case studyRead the full buildApplications parse, match against open roles, and land on the right recruiter’s desk with a summary attached instead of being forwarded by hand.
Case studyRead the full buildA workflow that crossed three subscriptions, rebuilt as one system across four modules. Their own engineers extended it twice in eighteen months.
Case studyRead the full buildMarcus K. · Founder, marketing services agencyOur print supplier rang my mobile on a Sunday because we’d paid him late three months running and he’d started to wonder what was going on with us. His invoice was sitting in Radu’s inbox and Radu had been on leave since the 4th.
That went on in one form or another for about four years. Nothing catastrophic ever came of it, it was just a slow embarrassing drip.
If you are automating dozens of processes across departments and the rules change constantly, a platform is the right purchase, because its licence buys you a maintenance model you would otherwise have to build yourself.
If you can name the process, it has held its shape for six months, and it is the same process next quarter, then the licence is buying generality you will never use. That is the case where rebuilding the path directly costs less than the first year of the platform and leaves nothing to renew.
Three or more hours a week, running every week, stable for six months or more. Stability is the one that gets skipped and it is the one that decides whether the build pays back, because a process still being argued about will change shape before the code is finished.
Quoted against a fixed written scope. The builds published on this site ran between $3,400 and $14,500, and the invoice approval rebuild came in at $4,800 with the Bill.com seats cancelled on day 14.
It takes a process a team runs by hand and rebuilds it so it runs without them. The large vendors do it by selling a platform and a rollout that can automate many processes at once. We do it one process at a time, in code, on infrastructure you already own, and you keep the repository at the end.
RPA drives the user interface, clicking through screens the way a person would, which is why it works on systems with no API and why it breaks when a screen changes. Rebuilding the process talks to the underlying systems directly, which is more work up front and considerably less fragile afterwards. If the system you need has no API at all, RPA may genuinely be the right answer.
One that burns three or more hours a week, runs every week, and has been stable for six months. Stability decides whether the build pays back, because a process still being argued about will change shape before the code is finished.
Only if you are automating many processes with rules that change often, in which case the licence is buying you a maintenance model. For one named, stable process the platform is generality you will not use, and rebuilding the path directly usually costs less than the first year of the licence.
Single processes start at $500 and multi-process systems start at $2,500, against a fixed written scope. The builds published on this site ran between $3,400 and $14,500, and the invoice approval rebuild was $4,800.