Agentic Process Automation
The next evolution of business process automation that combines traditional rule-based automation (RPA) with AI agent capabilities—language understanding, decision-making, exception handling, and adaptive behavior. Coined by Gartner and other analyst firms, APA describes systems that automate not just structured, repeatable tasks but also judgment-heavy, language-rich, and exception-prone workflows. An APA system can handle the 80% of cases that follow the happy path with RPA-like efficiency while using AI agents to handle the 20% of exceptions that would traditionally require human intervention.
Written by Max Zeshut
Founder at Agentmelt · Last updated Sep 9, 2026
Example
An invoice processing workflow handles 80% of invoices automatically (matching PO, verifying amounts, routing for approval). The remaining 20%—invoices with discrepancies, missing POs, unusual line items—previously required human review. With agentic process automation, an AI agent reads the exception, compares it to past resolutions, emails the vendor for clarification, and resolves 15 of those 20 exceptions autonomously.
Frequently asked questions
- Is agentic process automation just RPA with AI bolted on?
- No. RPA augmented with AI typically means adding an OCR or classification model to an existing bot. APA is architecturally different—the AI agent is the orchestrator, not an add-on. It plans the workflow, decides which steps to automate rigidly vs. handle flexibly, manages exceptions, and learns from outcomes. The result is automation that handles variation, not just repetition.