The real reason your RPA center of excellence has a six month backlog
Your RPA center of excellence has a six month backlog. Deeper look, it is not a shortage of developers. It is a shortage of durable automation. You have bots that break when a dashboard refreshes or when IT rebrands a portal. Each break restarts a rebuild cycle that can take weeks. The backlog is essentially a maintenance treadmill.
Why RPA breaks here
Most enterprise RPA tools work by binding to selectors, xpaths, and object IDs. A UI refresh shifts a class name or a DOM structure, the selector becomes invalid, and the bot halts. Industry research on RPA maintenance shows teams spend 60 to 80 percent of their time on fixes and updates rather than new development. Each time IT updates a SaaS portal, your bot team must reassess IDs, rebuild workflows, and retest. That rebuild cost is predictable, but it adds up fast. When a process involves multiple systems and frequent releases, a six month backlog is almost inevitable.
What changes with computer use agents
- ●Survives UI changes: Coasty agents see the screen and act like a human. They do not rely on brittle selectors. When a dashboard updates, the agent simply recomputes the next step.
- ●No brittle selectors: Agents click where they see the correct label or button. If the DOM shifts, the agent still finds the target.
- ●Recovers from exceptions: Instead of halting on an error, an agent reads the exception, decides what to try next, and continues. This reduces the need for extensive exception handling logic.
- ●Follows the SOP as written: A standard operating procedure in plain English is almost a prompt. An agent can follow it directly, with no flowchart bot to build and babysit.
- ●Works on legacy and Citrix: Coasty agents operate on real desktops and browsers. That means they can automate on legacy systems and virtualized desktops where traditional RPA struggles.
RPA excels at high volume, stable, backend tasks. Computer use agents are the durable answer for changing UIs, exception-heavy work, and SOP-driven processes.
How to move without the risk
You do not need to rip and replace everything at once. Start with one high-pain process that has frequent UI changes or heavy exception handling. Run a pilot with Coasty to measure uptime, maintenance effort, and time to value. Use those results to build a business case for expanding to other processes. RPA still has its place for stable, rule-based, high-volume workflows. The goal is to layer computer use agents where they give you the biggest durability gains, while keeping RPA for what it does best.
Your backlog is not an inevitability. It is a sign that your current approach cannot keep up with the pace of change. Coasty agents see the screen, adapt instantly, and follow SOPs directly, so you can reduce rebuild cycles and focus on new value. Talk to the Coasty team to see how this works for your processes. Book a demo at https://cal.com/coasty/15min.