# RPA Bot Clean-Up: When Automation Itself Becomes Legacy

Author: Marin Niehues, Niehues Consulting · Published: 2024-01-22 · AI Adoption & Operations
Source: https://www.niehuesconsulting.de/en/blog/rpa-bot-clean-up-legacy-automation/

You clean up RPA bots in four steps: take inventory, assess, decide and assign an owner. A bot becomes legacy when the system it clicks through changes, or the process it mirrors, and nobody is responsible for its upkeep. Assessing bots by benefit and maintenance effort separates the automations that pay for themselves from those that cost more time than they save.

In recent years Robotic Process Automation has taken over tasks that employees previously did by hand in user interfaces: transferring data from one system to another, entering invoices, reconciling master data. This article describes why such bots age, how a company records and assesses its estate, and which four decisions are possible for each bot. It is written for heads of department and managing directors who steer the operation of their automation and want to know whether it still pays off.

**A bot costs upkeep every month it runs, and its benefit shrinks with every change to the process. An estate without inventory and owners grows until maintenance exceeds the working time saved.**

## Why do RPA bots become legacy?

RPA bots become legacy because they work on the surface of applications, and any change to that surface or to the process damages them. A bot reads fields at screen positions, clicks buttons and copies values. If the vendor updates the application, a department renames a field or a screen layout changes, the sequence breaks or returns wrong results.

The pattern is familiar from software engineering. In 1992 Ward Cunningham described the image of technical debt: those who build quickly without regard for maintainability take out a loan whose interest falls due as extra effort at every later change. A bot built in a week that has neither documentation nor error handling nor an owner is exactly such a loan. The interest is paid by whoever has to repair it months later and does not know which process stands behind it.

Four causes recur. First, the target systems change: updates and migrations shift fields and flows. Second, the process itself changes without the bot being adapted, so that it automates a sequence that no longer exists. Third, developers and business users leave the company, and with them the knowledge of what the bot does and why. Fourth, credentials and service accounts expire or are blocked, and the bot fails silently. The article on [waiting times in processes](/en/blog/process-waiting-time/) describes how such failures leave work sitting without anyone noticing.

## How do you know the bot estate needs clearing up?

The bot estate needs attention as soon as several of the following signals occur together. The team running the bots spends more time on repairs than on new automations, and business units learn of failures only when a customer asks. Nobody can say how many bots are running and who is responsible for them. A bot has run for years although the underlying process has been changed, or employees routinely check its results by hand because they no longer trust it. In that case the automation has already lost its benefit and still costs money to run.

## How do you take inventory of RPA bots?

The inventory records each bot with ten pieces of information and ends with a complete list that an owner in the business unit confirms. Sources are the vendor's orchestration platform, the servers' schedulers and interviews with business units, since some bots run on desktop machines that appear on no list.

**Inventory of one bot: ten items**
- Name and purpose of the bot in one sentence
- Process it mirrors, and the business unit that owns it
- Target systems it works in, and their version
- Run frequency and monthly volume
- Working time saved per month, confirmed by the business unit
- Faults in the last twelve months and the effort to fix them
- Documentation: present, current, findable
- Service account with credentials and expiry date
- Last change to the bot and last change to the process
- Replacement option, such as an interface offered by the target system

The inventory first delivers a sobering result that is useful for what follows: for many bots part of the information is missing. Where the owner is missing, the bot has no future until someone takes responsibility. Where the time saved is missing, the benefit is unproven.

## How do you assess whether a bot is still worth it?

A bot is worth keeping as long as the working time it saves exceeds the cost of running and maintaining it. The calculation compares both sides over one year. On the benefit side stands the working time actually saved multiplied by the department's hourly rate. On the cost side stand the licence or a share of the platform cost, the maintenance hours for adjustments and fault repair, and the effort of the business units that spot-check results.

A worked example with assumed values shows the logic. A bot saves 60 hours a month in the business unit; at an hourly rate of 50 euros that is 3,000 euros a month or 36,000 euros a year. It causes a licence share of 6,000 euros a year, 80 hours of maintenance a year at 90 euros, which is 7,200 euros, and 30 hours of checking in the business unit at 50 euros, which is 1,500 euros. The cost comes to 14,700 euros and the net benefit to 21,300 euros. If maintenance rises to 300 hours because of a new release of the target system, the cost climbs to 34,500 euros and the bot barely pays for itself. The example is illustrative; your own estate supplies the real values.

**Assessing a bot by benefit and maintenance effort**
Criterion | High benefit, low effort | High benefit, high effort | Low benefit | With Niehues Consulting
Decision | Keep | Rework or replace | Switch off | Decision per bot with owner and metric
Typical trait | Stable application, clear process | Unstable interface, frequent updates | Rare runs, outdated process | Baseline from the inventory
Action | Secure documentation and owner | Interface instead of screen scraping, better error handling | Switch off, reassess the process | Sequence by benefit and risk
Review | Quarterly | After each release of the target system | Once | Metric after 90 days

## What are the four decisions for each bot?

Four decisions are possible for each bot: keep, rework, replace or switch off. Keeping applies to bots with a clear benefit and low maintenance effort, which receive an owner and documentation. Reworking applies to bots with a clear benefit and high effort, where error handling, logging and monitoring can be improved so that faults are reported at once.

Replacing comes into question when the target system offers an interface. A connection through an application programming interface is insensitive to layout changes because it uses no screen positions. For documents, text recognition with AI support that classifies invoices or e-mails and reads out fields can replace parts of a bot, provided the quality of recognition has been tested in the real process with real data. This option requires a testing task of its own.

Switching off applies to bots whose process has lapsed, whose benefit is unproven or whose upkeep costs more than the manual work. Switching off easily slips out of view during a clean-up. A bot that is retired saves licence, maintenance and checking effort, and after one month the business unit sees whether the manual work actually arises. How the whole stock of initiatives can be reduced is described in the article on [clearing out the project portfolio](/en/blog/declutter-project-portfolio/).

## How do you keep the estate clean in the long run?

The estate stays clean when every bot has an owner in the business unit, every change to the process includes the bot, and operations report faults actively. Four rules suffice to begin with.

1. Every new bot goes live only when owner, documentation and error handling are in place. The bot's Definition of Done contains these points, in the manner described in the article on the [Definition of Done](/en/blog/definition-of-done-what-done-means/).
2. Every change to a target system or process triggers a check of the bots concerned. For that, operations need a list showing which bots work in which system.
3. Every bot has monitoring that reports failures and unusual results, and a metric for the time saved that the business unit confirms.
4. Once a quarter the owner of bot operations reviews the list with the business units and decides whether to keep, rework, replace or switch off.

## Clearing up with Niehues Consulting

[Niehues Consulting](/en/) is a consultancy for AI management and organisational design from the delivery perspective, based in Düsseldorf. Founder Marin Niehues brings AI into operations, in projects from VC-funded scale-ups to DAX 40 corporations and in more than 20 countries on six continents. In the AI management service the work extends from business analysis and requirements through the business case to the selection and sequencing of applications and portfolio steering.

The approach follows the Niehues Delivery Model. Three of its test questions count for clearing up a bot estate: what is the baseline, and how do we measure success? Is the business case confirmed with real values? Who is responsible for operations from day one? The result is a decision per bot with an owner and a metric, and for the estate as a whole a sequence that weighs benefit and risk. The scope and terms of an engagement are discussed in the free initial consultation, which you can arrange via [contact](/en/#kontakt).

**Conclusion**
An RPA estate ages like any software, and its upkeep belongs on the leadership agenda. Inventory, assessment by benefit and maintenance effort, and a clear decision per bot turn an unwieldy estate into a portfolio that pays its way. Every bot needs an owner in the business unit and a metric that proves its benefit.

**Sources**
- Cunningham, W.: The WyCash Portfolio Management System, OOPSLA experience report, 1992:::

## Frequently asked questions

### What does it mean to clean up RPA bots?

Cleaning up RPA bots means taking inventory of the estate, assessing each bot by benefit and maintenance effort, and deciding whether to keep, rework, replace or switch it off. The aim is an estate in which every bot has an owner and a proven benefit. The work starts with a complete list.

### Why do RPA bots fail so often?

RPA bots fail because they work on the surface of applications and any change to layout, field names or sequence disrupts them. Expiring credentials and service accounts add to this, as do process changes that nobody tells the bot's team about. Monitoring that raises an alert on failure shortens the time to repair.

### How much does it cost to maintain an RPA bot?

Maintenance costs hours for adjustments and fault repair, a share of licence costs and checking effort in the business unit. The figure varies with the stability of the target systems and the quality of the build. The calculation in this article shows how to work out the values from your own estate. The scope and terms of an engagement are discussed in the free initial consultation.

### When should an RPA bot be replaced by an API?

A bot should be replaced by an API when the target system offers one and the bot often fails because of interface changes. An API works with data rather than screen positions and survives layout changes. The conversion pays off when the bot's upkeep costs exceed the cost of switching within a year.

### Can AI replace RPA bots?

AI can replace parts of bots, above all where unstructured documents or e-mails must be classified and read. Before use, recognition quality must be proven in the real process with real data. Rule-based steps with clearly defined fields remain well placed in a bot or an interface.

### How many bots can a company sensibly run?

The sensible number follows maintenance capacity rather than a fixed ceiling. A company can run as many bots as its team documents, monitors and adjusts when target systems change. If the number of bots grows faster than that capacity, the share of time spent on repairs grows too.

### Who is responsible for bots in a company?

The business unit whose process the bot mirrors is responsible, supported by technical operations. The business unit decides whether the process continues in its present form and confirms the benefit. Without such an owner nobody decides whether the bot continues or is switched off.

### How long does it take to clean up a bot estate?

The duration depends on the number of bots and the quality of the existing records. The inventory is the first step and shows how much effort the later steps need. A pilot with the five most important bots produces a template for the rest within a few weeks.