High Integration and interoperability enable automated data accessibility and harvesting from one system to another. But when integration is limited or not possible, they have to be done manually. However, manual activities is expensive, time-consuming, redundant, and error-prone.
A solution is the robotic process automation that automates and simulates manual activity. During the study, we found 7 open-source robotic process automation tools and based on 14 criteria (pricing, DB handling, orchestration, parallel execution, GUIs robots work with, image handling, usability, versatility, reporting, community and support, popularity, web services, operation system, file handling) we chose Robot Framework as the most suitable one. Robot Framework is a versatile, flexible, and popular robot developed by the professional community, based on their needs.
Robot Framework was applied for a test-case study in Lithuanian Payment Agency (NPA) where it automatically accessed and compared farmers’ application data in different systems, edited it based on mapped values, processed and saved in a certain data storage. Such application showed that open source robots, although can be challenging to deploy for inexperienced staff, drastically improve farmers’ application processing times, reduce the number of errors and operational costs.
Robot framework has a great potential for NIVA project and its use-cases, developed by different Payment Agencies and their partners. Especially where data integration between different use-cases is limited. Robot framework would ensure continuous data flow and processes.
More information find it here: Robot data harvesting tool white paper