Your COE has a clear, expensive problem: a six month backlog of automation projects that never ship. Often, the issue is not a lack of demand. It is that every time a business app updates its interface, your bots break. When a user clicks outside the expected area or the screen lags, the bot halts and reports an error. The developer must inspect the new selectors, rewrite the process, and test again. This rebuild-on-change cycle is what turns a two week project into a six month project.
Why RPA breaks here
Traditional RPA works by binding to a specific element on a screen, its ID, class, or XPath. When an application updates those attributes or changes its layout, the binding fails and the bot stops. Many enterprises report that every major system release requires at least one bot fix. If a bot encounters a state it was not designed for, it often halts and hands the task back to a human. This creates a maintenance treadmill that grows faster than the backlog. You build more bots, only to spend more time rebuilding them.
What changes with computer use agents
- Survives UI changes without rebuilding
- No brittle selectors or xpaths to maintain
- Recovers from exceptions instead of halting
- Follows the SOP as written, not a flowchart
- Works across any app, including legacy systems and Citrix
RPA is optimized for stable, high-volume, backend tasks. The durable path forward is agents that can see the screen and act like a human, so your backlog disappears.
How to move without the risk
You do not need to rip and replace everything. A pragmatic path starts with one high-pain process that is changing frequently or has many edge cases. Run a pilot with a computer use agent on that workflow. Measure how long it takes to implement, how many times it breaks, and how quickly it recovers. Keep using RPA for anything that is stable and runs at high volume. Over time, expand the agent approach to more processes. This approach keeps your existing automation running while you build a more durable, resilient system.
The six month backlog is not a capacity problem. It is a design problem. If you are ready to stop rebuilding bots on every change, book a demo with the Coasty team at https://cal.com/coasty/15min .
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