Toward robotic process automation implementation: an end-to-end perspective

• Published in: Business process management journal Vol. 26; no. 2; pp. 405 - 420
• Main Authors: Santos, Filipa, Pereira, Rúben, Vasconcelos, José Braga
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bradford Emerald Publishing Limited 06-04-2020; Emerald Group Publishing Limited
• Subjects: Automation; Customer relationship management; Data science; Enterprise resource planning; Literature reviews; Organizations; Research methodology; Robots; Software; Process automation; Robotic process automation; Data science; Business process management
• ISSN: 1463-7154; 1758-4116
• DOI: 10.1108/BPMJ-12-2018-0380

Purpose
Robotic process automation (RPA) seeks to automate business processes, using software robots that interact with systems through their user interface, improving efficiency and reducing costs. However, some critical steps, such as identifying processes suitable for RPA automation, can have a tremendous impact in organizations if a wrong process is selected. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide an approach for analyzing RPA development in business organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
This research presents a cohesive literature review about RPA, in order to identify RPA main concepts, which should be reported and considered in all RPA case studies. A model connecting the main elicited RPA concepts is presented as well as its evaluation and applicability grounded of past RPA case study (CS) analysis, using design science research.
Findings
The results from this research show that most of the RPA main concepts gathered in the literature review are not reported in the selected RPA CSs.
Originality/value
As RPA is a recent topic, literature lacks a synthetization of RPA main topics. This research aims to fill the gap on that, by identifying and synthesize the main topics related to RPA and proposing a model that connects the main RPA concepts, which can be used by researchers as a schema for conducting and writing RPA case studies.