A question that looks technical and actually decides the cost
An automation that drives the business software you already use does not live in thin air. It runs inside a machine that has to be switched on, connected to the company network, and able to open that program exactly the way a person opens it
There are two machines it could be. The computer sitting in the office, perhaps the one belonging to whoever does the work by hand today, or a machine dedicated to this alone, that nobody uses for anything else
It is not a choice to leave to a technician at the last minute, because it touches the reliability of what you are buying and it touches the cost, so you look at it before you start
The office computer
The simplest road is to run the automation on a computer the company already has, with the business software on it, the logins in place, the printer connected and the network folder within reach
That is the whole strength of it. You buy nothing, you install nothing new in the server room, you ask nobody for permission, and if something goes wrong you see it with your own eyes, because the screen moves in front of you
The drawbacks are just as real, and anyone who hides them from you is selling you something, because that computer belongs to a person too. While the automation works the keyboard is taken, the mouse moves on its own, and whoever is sitting there is left watching
Then there is the human factor. Somebody switches it off on Friday evening because they were brought up to switch it off, and Saturday's work never starts. Or an overnight update reboots it and finds the session closed
With a bit of order these problems stay under control. You pick the computer that is least fought over, you start the automation when the person is away, and you put in writing that the machine does not get switched off
The dedicated machine
The other road is a machine that does only this, a computer set aside or a virtual machine carved out of the server you already have
The real advantage is not the power, it is that nobody disturbs it. It stays on, the automation can start at three in the morning and in the morning you find the work done, nobody closes a window by mistake halfway through the procedure, and the log of what happened does not get mixed up with what a person did on the same machine
There is a cost, and inside it are the machine, whoever keeps it running, the updates, the backups, and in some cases an extra license for your business software, because many programs count the logins and an extra login is paid for. I give no blind answers here. We look at your contract and at your supplier's rules, and it is one of the first things to check
Often the network makes the choice, not you
With business software installed on site the road is sometimes forced on you. The program demands a workstation with certain features, or the supplier has tied the license to one machine, or the network lets only some workstations into certain folders
If you work on web portals the constraint loosens. A portal is within reach of any machine with a connection, and there the choice really is free again
There is a link with the data too. If the automation runs on a machine inside your company and touches programs already installed there, the data stays where it is today, and the guide on where your company data stays has the questions to ask before deciding
The rule for choosing
There is only one rule, look at when the work has to run. If it fits inside office hours and takes half an hour a day, the office computer is perfectly fine and spending on a dedicated machine would be throwing money away, feel free to say so to whoever offers you one
If the work has to run while the office is closed, or lasts hours, or cannot be missed because somebody downstream is waiting for it, the dedicated machine stops being a luxury and becomes the part that makes the rest reliable
The thing that must not happen is finding out later, because where the automation runs is decided together before the work starts, it goes into the monthly fee and it is written into the project contract, as I explain on the page about how it works