Bartek: Hi, Bartek Śliwa here. Welcome to another episode of the Euvic Talks podcast, where we bridge technology and business. Today, we’re going to talk about business process automation, and our guest is the President of X-Code, Jakub Łytkowski. Hi, Jakub.

Jakub: Hi.

Bartek: First of all, please introduce yourself to our listeners. Tell us about your connection to business, how long Xcode has been around, and how it helps its clients.

Jakub: Sure. About me: I’m a software engineer, and that’s where our company came from. If we count from the first money I ever earned, I’ve been programming for 31 years. I started quite early. Xcode has been around for 16 years and is a continuation of my earlier freelance work. For about 12 years now, we’ve been part of the Euvic Group, creating software for various industries. And what connects me to business? I build software for business. Honestly, it’s hard for me to find an industry today where we haven’t done some kind of system.

Bartek: Today, we’re going to “demystify” RPA. We talked before the show about how Robotic Process Automation is often wrongly associated with a fleet of physical robots driving around and doing strange tasks. It turns out it’s actually a piece of software. What exactly does it do?

Jakub: The Polish name—Business Process Automation—probably describes it better. These are software robots. It’s software you can put on your computer or a server that performs tasks instead of a person. To put it simply: it takes over the user’s mouse and keyboard and clicks for them. The goal is for the robot to handle repetitive, tedious tasks that simply waste people’s time for no reason.

Bartek: What challenges do companies face, and which industries dominate the RPA space?

Jakub: Industries aren’t a limit, but a certain environment is required. If we have a large company with dispersed, legacy systems that aren’t integrated, and they exchange tons of data with contractors—that’s where RPA shines. Often, people enter the same data three times in different places. Or they have data in Excel and manually type it into a system. That’s where we put a robot. It takes data from an email or a file, processes it, and registers it in the system. Currently, two industries dominate for us: Logistics and Energy.

Bartek: Tell us about the energy sector.

Jakub: We have a flagship product there that was created because regulations changed and the energy market was deregulated. Energy distributors had to launch information exchange platforms. Thirteen different platforms were created. An energy seller wanting to operate across all of Poland had to log into 13 different systems. We created a solution 12 years ago, and to this day, more than half of the energy supplier switching processes in Poland pass through our robots.

Bartek: You mentioned that RPA is sector-agnostic. Which processes can benefit the most?

Jakub: It requires analysis, but after years, we know what to ask. We ask: “What are the touchpoints between your company and the outside world?” Do emails come in? Paper documents? Do you have a customs office system where you register things? Usually, there’s room for a robot there. My favorite example: a client insisted they didn’t need robots. We asked: “What do you hate about your job?” It turned out that every month they get 80 settlements that they have to manually check against the system to issue an invoice. Errors occurred in maybe 2 or 3 cases out of 80. A human analyzed everything just to catch those three errors. We deployed a robot in two days. Now, the client only gets those 2 or 3 emails with errors to fix, and the robot handles the rest.

Bartek: Does it pay off financially?

Jakub: We did the math. Those 80 emails took a person two full working days per month. A year later, the client’s company grew threefold. Now, the robot does work that would have taken six working days, while the cost of the robot in a subscription model remains the same. This shows the perspective of scaling.

Bartek: How do you start? Does a client need to be prepared, or is it always an interview with you?

Jakub: That has changed. A few years ago, you had to explain everything. Now we have two types of clients. The first are those who have heard of it and are asking questions—we suggest a short audit, even just two days. We identify the processes and calculate the savings. The second type are those who tried and failed. Because technology is one thing, but who implements it and how is another. We often fix someone else’s work or redefine the process from scratch. After the first deployment in a company, there’s usually an explosion of ideas because people see that it works.

Bartek: In one of our episodes with Bartek Władysi, we talked about AI. Is artificial intelligence used in RPA as well?

Jakub: Yes, I liked the episode with Bartek a lot because he brought AI down to earth. The simplest example is OCR—scanning invoices. These tools use AI models to recognize elements on a document. People often ask: “Why do I need RPA if I have AI?” That’s like saying: “I have a brain, why do I need arms and legs?” AI is based on data; it can make a decision or a prediction, but you have to do something with that result. That’s where the robot comes in—it collects data, asks the AI, and based on the answer, it clicks through the system.

Bartek: Can we use RPA for personal productivity?

Jakub: Personally, I try to disconnect from technology after work, but I can give an example from the pandemic: a robot reserved slots for me in an online grocery store that had a week-long queue. Privately, it’s not always cost-effective, but operating systems will have more and more of these functions. For Excel users, macros are a “seed of RPA.” A robot does the same thing, but across all systems and websites simultaneously.

Bartek: Any other case studies, e.g., from logistics?

Jakub: In logistics, we have the issue of subcontractors. A company must verify them in government registries. I learned about many strange registries through this work, like the registry of entities performing medical activities. A company with hundreds of clients has to check them manually. We offer a Proof of Concept: “Give us an Excel sheet with Tax IDs, and our robot will check debtors, the VAT whitelist, and all government registries in minutes.” For a company called ACP, we did a full verification and automatic registration of the client in the system. Humans don’t touch it at all.

Bartek: What are the measurable results?

Jakub: A client, PGE Obrót, showed at a conference that they save about 28 full-time positions thanks to robots. If systems were integrated, robots wouldn’t be necessary, but for historical reasons, integration is sometimes impossible or too expensive. Sometimes it’s better to put a robot in place, though you have to remember that a robot is “sensitive.” If the system it works on undergoes an upgrade and the field layout changes, the robot will say: “I don’t see this field.” Then you just have to teach it again where the Tax ID or other data is now.

Bartek: So a robot reduces human error?

Jakub: A robot has no right to be wrong. AI has the right to be wrong; a robot doesn’t. It repeats tasks millions of times without boredom. We had a client processing fines on a French police website. The employees didn’t know French, so they made mistakes. The language doesn’t bother a robot—we taught it where the ID number is, where the document number is, and it does it flawlessly.

Bartek: Is this solution only for giants like DPD or PGE?

Jakub: Absolutely not. It depends on the environment, not the size of the company. Even a one-person business that spends a lot of time copying data from Excel to registries can benefit. If you spend two days a month on something, it’s worth setting up a robot that will do it in 15 minutes.

Bartek: Where are we headed? Let’s play with some futurology.

Jakub: I often look into the past to understand the future. Twenty years ago, Google was entering the market. Companies that said, “Why do I need a search engine, I have an encyclopedia,” no longer exist. Today, we do 10 times more things than people did 20 years ago. We pay with an app in our car; we used to go to the post office with a paper slip. In another 20 years, everything will speed up even more. Logistics companies that don’t implement RPA or AI will simply disappear because the competition will have better prices thanks to automation. Labor costs are rising, so it’s better to delegate people to creative tasks. It will be hard to find an employee who wants to spend all day just copying data from one field to another.

Bartek: Final question: what has inspired you lately?

Jakub: This past year changed my perspective a lot. Last spring, I had an accident while playing sports. I became disabled for two months—wheelchair, surgeries, etc. For years, I told myself I “didn’t have time” or “couldn’t” do certain things. In a wheelchair, I realized that now I truly couldn’t, but a month earlier, I could do everything. Since then, I don’t deny myself doing things. In a few months, I completed two certifications I had been thinking about for 10 years. I wish our listeners didn’t have to experience an accident to realize that they “can.” When someone tells me “I can’t,” I say: “You’re lying, you can.”

Bartek: That’s very inspiring. Thanks for today’s conversation. You demystified a topic that I thought was boring. Thanks to you, viewers and listeners. Join us for the next episode.

Jakub: Thank you.