Case Study: a big national bank achieves scalable robotic process automation performance with PFLB load testing

Load Testing for Robotic Process Automation

The customer, a big national bank, needed to perform load testing on its Robotic Process Automation (RPA) system, which used robotic virtual workspaces to automate employee tasks. They engaged the vendor, PFLB, to determine the system's maximum capacity, identify performance bottlenecks, and reproduce production incidents. The primary challenge was creating a realistic load to test the system, which consisted of multiple application servers and hundreds of virtual automated workspaces.

PFLB developed a solution using JMeter to emulate the activity of the robots and the application servers, successfully replicating the complex production load. This allowed them to identify key performance issues related to network bandwidth, database CPU usage, and process logic. The results provided the bank with a sizing table for future capacity planning and specific recommendations for optimization, including creating additional instances of the Blue Prism software to boost system performance.