The hidden costs of poorly designed RPA bots

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) promises efficiency, speed, and cost savings—but poorly designed bots can silently drain resources and damage trust.

RPA which stands for robotic process automation is a tool to help businesses cut costs and man hours on structured or repetitive tasks, it achieves that by building the entire workflow that would be done manually in a process that will be then automatically performed by the bot in the time that it is assigned to trigger.

RPA bots have helped streamline business processes and allow for better productivity as staff have more time to focus on other tasks. This is the case for well designed bots, poorly designed bots would have the opposite effect and cut into the efficiency of automation, hindering businesses instead of uplifting them.

What Makes an RPA Bot ‘Poorly Designed’?

There are many reasons a bot can be poorly designed, here are a few common flaws:

• Poor requirement gathering.
• Lack of transparency from the business regarding needs and common issues.
• Ignoring user experience or process context.
• Hardcoded values and lack of flexibility.
• Fragile workflows tied to specific UI elements.
• No error handling or logging.
• Lack of scalability or modularity.

These flaws as you can observe begin with the first phase of the project to the last, We will discuss how to avoid them later on this blog.

A personal experience with this is when I was overseeing the training for the RPA citizen developers, one of the trainees approached me in assisting him on a process that would cut his daily workload by half. I applauded the effort, but he came with concerns that the process is taking up more time than if he had done it manually, and now instead of being free to perform other tasks his task load has grown and he had trouble catching up.

While the process was functional and produced some value it was not consistent. After reviewing his process structure, I found many of the issues highlighted above, he had hardcoded a lot of the values which diminished the processes’ flexibility, he didn’t do the proper error handling while developing the process, the process lacked space for scalability so he could not add more scopes as they appeared and the main issue was with the UI automation was not done up to standard causing lots of failures.

We tackled this by going through the workflow and fixing the issues in order we did so in the steps below:

• Replaced any hardcoded values with variables.
• Cleaned up the UI automation to be dynamic
• Set the proper error handling.
• Improved the scalability to account for future enhancements.

This example highlights the issues one might face that will not be apparent at first without a proper solution architect or QA (Quality assurance) specialist. If this was a normal process done by a professional, there will be many consequences the business may face.

The Hidden Costs You Might Overlook

Below is a list of the most common hidden costs that go beyond the notice of businesses:

Financial Costs – The most obvious issue would be the rising costs below are a few points on where the extra cost lies:

• Increased maintenance and support
• Frequent downtime or process failure
• Need for manual intervention

Time Costs- Time spent fixing easily preventable issues is time wasted that could be spent more productively, Welook into where the wasted time is spent below:

• Time spent troubleshooting brittle bots
• Delays in process cycles due to bot errors
• Time lost training staff to deal with unpredictable behaviors

Operational Costs 

• Reduced trust in automation from business users
• Poor scalability across departments or use cases
• Technical debt that’s hard to unwind

Risk & Compliance Costs

• Missed regulatory steps if bots fail silently
• Data exposure or privacy risks due to poor error handling

How to Avoid These Pitfalls

We discussed the common issues that may arise with poorly designed bots, we’ll be discussing the ways to avoid them.

Always start with strong process mapping, make sure to gather all the requirements and keep the stakeholders in loop for their input. It is crucial to understand all the ins and outs of the process, the common issues and the ways it will be different when handled by a human vs a bot.

Implement error handling and retry mechanisms to ensure smooth operation of the bot with minimal support or intervention. Support team should be free for deployments and hyper care, taking away their time is inefficient for robust operations.

Have thorough UAT sessions with the business team, run through all scenarios to really stress test the process. Don’t accept enhancements (within reason) as constant changes can lead to oversight and for some errors to slip through.

And finally, choose the right governance model, having a dedicated COE (Center of excellence) will ensure that none off the issues highlighted occur, as a team of professionals oversee the process from planning to delivery that would otherwise be difficult for individuals or small groups, especially with higher deliver pipelines.

Conclusion

While Robotic Process Automation offers tremendous potential for efficiency and cost savings, poorly designed bots can quietly become a costly liability. Hidden expenses such as increased downtime, and the need for frequent fixes can quickly negate the expected benefits. To truly attain RPA’s value, organizations must invest in thoughtful design, rigorous testing, and ongoing governance. By doing so, they ensure bots work reliably, provide value, and support long-term scalability. Fully gaining all the advantages of RPA without any downsides.

The real cost of a poorly designed RPA botisn’t just measured in Riyals, it’s in lost trust, wasted time, and missed opportunities. Design with intention, or automation will work against you.