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BIJ
29,5 Robotic process automation for
industry: adoption status, benefits,
challenges and research agenda
1562 Dhanya Pramod
Symbiosis Centre for Information Technology (SCIT),
Received 17 January 2021
Revised 24 June 2021
Symbiosis International (Deemed University) (SIU), Pune, India
22 July 2021
Accepted 22 July 2021
Abstract
Purpose – This study intends to find the industries that have leveraged Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
technology and elucidate the extent of the adoption of RPA in various industry domains with benefits. The
identification of tasks eligible for RPA itself is a challenge. Therefore, the study further brings out the
challenges faced in various industry verticals and postulates the future direction of research and applications
in RPA.
Design/methodology/approach – The study focuses on articles from popular databases such as SCOPUS,
Web of Science and Google scholar. PRISMA methodology is used for systematic literature review and 113
papers are shortlisted for study. Three questions are framed to carry out the review and set the research
direction.
Findings – It is evident from this study that RPA has been widely used in banking and related areas with
moderate use in healthcare and manufacturing leading to operational efficiency and productivity. However,
there are a lot more opportunities in other domains that need to be taped by leveraging technology
advancements and a research agenda has been devised by postulating future directions.
Originality/value – The study brings out a new comprehensive perspective as regards RPA implementation
across domains. There is no promising study found that gathers three-dimensional aspects of the meta-themes
applications, benefits and challenges. The study summarizes the research agenda and projects the industry
domains that have not yet explored, the benefits of RPA. This will be a good reference article for those who
develop RPA techniques and organizations that have plans to go for RPA.
Keywords Automation, Transformation, RPA, RPA industry application, Intelligent process automation,
Software robots
Paper type Literature review

Benchmarking: An International
Journal
Vol. 29 No. 5, 2022
pp. 1562-1586
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1463-5771
DOI 10.1108/BIJ-01-2021-0033
1. Introduction
Information systems and technology advancements drive enterprise agility and
organizations need to adapt to the changes. Social media can be leveraged for business
agility and building technical capabilities (Williams et al., 2020). Robotic Process Automation
(RPA) is a software-based solution used by organizations for automating the routine tasks
involved in business processes that take structured data, processes it and based on rules
gives a deterministic output (Aguirre and Rodriguez, 2017). Business Process Outsourcing
(BPO) front and back office activities automation can be viewed as one of the pioneering steps
of this kind that makes use of RPA.
RPA creates an environment that automates manual and error-prone tasks that are
repetitive and emulates a virtual workforce for performing the tasks. It is essential to
understand process suitability for automation and prioritization of activities for easy
automation and a software application with visualization capabilities can reflect it in a better
way. This is to help managers to decide on how to proceed with the adoption of organization-
wide RPA (Geyer-Klingeberg et al., 2018).
Robots perform the tasks that otherwise a human does when you adopt RPA. This
increases business efficiency, increased productivity, data security, reduced cycle time,
improved accuracy, and so on, and has been experienced in the banking domain (Leshob et al.,
2018). Automation can be a lightweight IT or heavyweight IT automation. Organizations
have to identify suitable automation for their processes. Telco has studied it thoroughly for Robotic
the implementation of the two-dimensional aspects of automation (Penttinen et al., 2018). process
RPA life cycle concept has emerged side by side with the automation phases and starts
with the analysis phase wherein a detailed understanding of the process documentation is
automation for
done. Incomplete or inaccurate documentation could be a challenge here. To analyze the industry
process, the back office staff is monitored using a screen-mouse-key logger and this UI log is
transformed into a process model using process discovering algorithms (Jimenez-Ramirez
et al., 2019). The algorithm selection is very critical in RPA and essentially puts data 1563
intelligently to make decisions (Ljungholm, 2018). The analysis phase is followed by Bot
development and then the bots are assessed in the testing phase. Automation using RPA does
not have consideration for cognitive nature that involves psychological aspects, applying
knowledge attitude, natural behavior and linguistics. This requires artificial intelligence (AI)
capabilities that are integrated into the intelligence stack of the automation framework
(Naidu and Vedavathi, 2019). The RPA automation life cycle has a support and maintenance
phase at the end which continuously monitors the automation process.
The tasks need to be carefully selected for automation to reap benefits. The tasks that are
performed very often with high volume and tasks that access various applications and
systems are usually selected for automation. Also, the tasks that are prone to human error
and tasks that require low cognitive requirements are good candidates for RPA. It was also
noticed that tasks that are standardized and do not require much exception handling are
generally suitable for RPA.
Robotic process automation is considered to be one of the special skill set that is required
for digital transformation (Andriole, 2018). Maalla (2019) studied the application feasibility of
RPA. RPA is implemented at the human–computer interaction layer by behavior capturing.
UiPath Studio, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism is a leading RPA platform. RPA can also
be used for back office tasks in commercial industries. IT industries may automate the remote
management task and various sectors can exploit RPA to speed up execution and thus better
efficiency (Issac et al., 2018). Bosco et al. (2019) proposed a method that identifies actions
triggered on an activation condition wherein data produced by an action can be used
deterministically for identifying parameters of the next action.
RPA is generally used to automate simple tasks while complex tasks that need
interpretation are handled by human experts. Agostinelli (2019) argued the need for a
paradigm shift of RPA for creating software robots that are intelligent and flexible in
handling dynamic and knowledge-intensive situations. Rutschi and Dibbern (2020) proposed
a framework for providing guidelines to build software robots for transforming human
executed routine into an automated routine through the guidelines.
RPA does not have a strong theoretical foundation, however, some of the recent studies
tried to explore this area. Syed et al. (2020) attempt to give a systematic review in their study
and a structured literature review was carried out by Hofmann et al. (2019) with specific
reference to tool analysis. RPA ensures the role of a robot as a virtual workforce and process
mining techniques were used to propose an automatable indicator system (Wanner et al.,
2020). Plattfaut (2020) conducted a study to understand the role of RPA in process
optimization and providing results faster. Jimenez-Ramirez et al. (2020) proposed a testing
environment and test suit using RPA which leverages UI log for interface actions. Action
logger is a tool proposed for UI recording and generates output that can be further fed to
process mining. The tool offers logging that suits RPA, data awareness and context
independence (Leno et al., 2019).
Agostinelli et al. (2019) proposed a classification framework RPA based on some key
dimensions. RPA algorithm requires efforts in identification, elicitation and programming of
the tasks to be automated. Algorithmic RPA rule deduction is carried out by capturing user
behavior to take out the RPA benefits (Gao et al., 2019). Robotics has a great role in the
BIJ industrial revolution and several organizations of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), have
29,5 taken efforts to adopt automation to have a sustainable advantage over its competitors
(Aldossari and Zin, 2019).
There are good studies carried out in RPA concerning the concept and tools available.
However, there is no promising study found that gathers the applications, benefits and
challenges. In this context, this study has the following questions to set the research direction.
1564 Q1. What are the industries that leveraged RPA technology and what is the extent of the
adoption of RPA in various industry domains?
Q2. How RPA adoption has picked up in various domains and what are the benefits?
Q3. What are the RPA implementation challenges in the industry and how industries can
overcome them?
These questions are thoughtfully selected as it gives an overall picture about RPA adoption
and helps practitioners to gain actionable insights on successful RPA implementation. The
researchers could further address the challenges to elaborate the transformation process and
propose mechanisms for wider adoptions across the industry.
The paper is organized as follows. The first section covers the approach with bibliometric
information and methodology. The planning and conduct of the systematic literature review
(SLR) are illustrated here. The next section reports the key findings of SLR and discusses the
RPA adoption in the various industry followed by the benefits, challenges and solutions. The
paper then concludes with the gaps and future research directions.

2. Approach
The study focused on articles from popular databases such as SCOPUS, Web of Science and
Google scholar. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta Analyses
(PRISMA) helps researchers with checklist and reporting methods of systematic reviews and
meta-analyses. It also gives direction to critically appraise published systematic reviews
(Moher et al., 2009). The study followed PRISMA methodology for systematic literature
review and papers are shortlisted based on the search string. The step-by-step process is
depicted in Figure 1.
The search keywords were selected based on the research questions and further scoping
searches were carried out to finalize the keywords in the search query. Preliminary searches
were carried out at the beginning to identify search strings and evaluated the outcome. These
documents were compared against the intended relevant documents. This way we identified
generic keywords which resulted in relevant hits and also specific keywords were identified
to address the nuances of research questions. “Robotic process automation”, “robotic
process” and “intelligent process automation” are some of the generic keywords used initially.
Further, we used “Robotic process automation” AND “benefits”, “Robotic process
automation” AND “challenges”, “Robotic process automation” AND “banking” and so on.
All known sectors were used as keywords separately for finding related papers and those
industries resulted with relevant documents during the search were finally selected. These
search strings were further combined to form the final search query.
The document search process was then carried out with scoping and inclusion and
exclusion criteria and the outputs from the individual database were collated.
The papers selected are in three categories.
(1) RPA process, life cycle and implementation – The no. of papers from this category is
42.
(2) Applications – 60 papers discussed the application in various domains.
 Search Query: Robotic
ALL ( "robotic process automation" OR "robotic process" OR "intelligent process process
automation" OR "Software robots" OR "RPA and automation" OR "robotic process automation for
automation" AND ( benefits OR adoption OR challenges OR opportunities ) )
ALL ( "robotic process automation" AND ( manufacturing OR "capital industry
markets" OR banking OR financial OR accounting OR healthcare OR retail OR energy OR
telecom OR tourism OR social OR agriculture, “wealth and asset management”)
1565
Identification
Step1: Search in SCOPUS resulted in 125 potential documents. It was observed that there was no
much research in this area till 2015 and thereafter increased gradually which shows a growing
interest in the field. Search in the Web of Science resulted in 180 potential documents. A search
in google scholar resulted in 187 suitable articles

This resulted in a total of 492 documents Screening

Step2: In this step duplicate papers were removed

Exclude: Papers which are repeated are removed
Include: Papers with focus on RPA adoption, mentioning of implementation, application,
benefits, and challenges

This resulted in a total of 135 papers

Step 3: Search for additional papers from references using citation search
Exclude: Papers which are repeated and having less focus on RPA and its applications
Include: Papers with focus on RPA adoption, mentioning of implementation, application,
benefits, and challenges

This resulted in a total of 142 papers

Eligibility

Step 4: Assess the paper's relevance based on abstract

Exclude: Papers which are repeated and having less focus on RPA and its applications
Include: Papers with focus on RPA adoption, mentioning of implementation, application,
benefits, and challenges

Included
Figure 1.
Final list of papers is extracted based on the stepwise details given above and selected 113 PRISMA flow diagram
papers that are relevant for the systematic literature review. for systematic review

(3) Impact, benefits and challenges – 11 papers discuss these aspects.

After selecting the required papers, they are carefully read for important facets. The related
themes were extracted and coded as per their relevance for further analysis and reporting.

3. Industry adoption of RPA

AI and analytics insights are the catalysts for Industry 4.0 and many organizations have
started adopting business process automation in various sectors including the
manufacturing industry. There are global challenges for transforming the organizational
processes to enable Industry 4.0 adoption (Erro-Garc
es, 2021). RPA along with IoT has a great
BIJ role in modernizing the ecosystem and adoption of Industry 4.0. As more and more
29,5 organizations wanted to experience the benefits of the Industry 4.0 revolution, it demanded
changes in business process models and automation to great extent. In this context,
organizations need to assess Industry 4.0 readiness concerning people, strategy and
technology (Sony and Naik, 2020). Various RPA tools can help organizations in improving the
processes which are inevitable in industry 4.0 (Marciniak and Stanisławski, 2021). The
widespread adoption of RPA across domains is studied and reported here.
1566
3.1 Banking and financial services
Automation and data are the key drivers of business agility. Financial institutions need to
change business models especially the customer service model and internal operation
processes (Met et al., 2020). OpusCapita Group, a Finnish company that focuses on
comprehensive purchase-to-pay and Order-to-cash processes with RPA and offers financial
services to medium size to large corporations (Asatiani and Penttinen, 2016). OpusCapita
created a strong internal RPA capability before it started extending its services to clients
(Hallikainen et al., 2018).
Fintech innovation business models are on the rise especially in product process and risk
shifting. RPA is welcomed in the Banking and Financial services industry along with other
Fintech for business model innovations (Priya et al., 2019). The characteristics of the banking
business need to be understood to identify which processes are suitable for RPA. In the fast-
growing Fintech revolution banking and Financial organizations need to leverage the
benefits of RPA to stay ahead of the competition (Vasiljeva and Novinkina, 2019). Risk
management is one of the key concerns of Fintech, banking and financial organizations in this
era of regulatory changes and the growth of new entrants. Technology adoption especially AI
and RPA enable market movement and enhanced business decisions (Gejke, 2018).
Zhang (2019) proposes intelligent process automation (IPA) that combines RPA and AI
with emerging technologies for application in pension and inventory audits. The audit
workflow concept has experimented with the automation of audit engagements. Though
RPA is expected to bring in benefits, immature models or models that are not trained properly
may lead to a decrease in productivity and an increase in errors. Romao et al. (2019) explores
the benefits and risks of using RPA-enabled Business Process Management (BPM) solutions
in banking. Raza et al. (2020) proposed RPA in financial services organizations in the context
of the security incident. Drivers for digital transformation and security compliance were
studied in this work and also provide an understanding of how interest in this area is growing
among researchers. Monitoring from prevention to response during IS security compliance
has also been given attention and a process model was devised. Williams et al. (2020) argue
that the RPA system that they developed serves in automating the annual compliance
process and ad hoc inquiries of clients of corporate service providers in Singapore. This
system guides the clients to follow the necessary actions for getting a response to their
requests. Thus they claim that this initiative has significantly improved the performance
especially the overall productivity of the company.
NTT Group companies in collaboration with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group have taken
steps for the promotion of fintech by embracing technologies like AI & RPA to improve
operational efficiency (Miyahara et al., 2019). The algorithm selection is very critical in RPA
and essentially puts data intelligently to make decisions (Ljungholm, 2018). Huang and
Vasarhelyi (2019) proposed a framework for the accounting industry for helping auditors by
automating repetitive and low judgment audit tasks.
Kokina and Blanchetle (2019) explored the accounting and finance task automation using
RPA based on Task-Technology Fit (TTF) and Technology-To-Performance Chain (TPC)
theory. These organizations need to standardize and optimize processes, adjust their
governance structure and develop tools for evaluating and prioritizing tasks and review
internal controls in their journey of RPA. Structured, repeated, rule-based processes with Robotic
digital input are considered for automation to gather benefits of performance improvement, process
quality enhancement, reduced error rate, cost reduction and better process documentation.
automation for
industry
3.2 Insurance
AI and cognitive computing can be used for intelligent insurance applications. Virtual agents
can be implemented for various insurance policy handling and claim validations. However, 1567
processing and approval of claims may require slightly higher cognitive experience. Drones
and sensors can be used for data collection for verifying claims. AI algorithms can be given an
edge in predicting fraud indicators using social media data and can be further used in fraud
detection (Lamberton et al., 2017). The agile project management approach is used to connect
business and IT departments for transforming paper-based processes to RPA and thus
requires time and resources. This approach was adopted by Generali CEE Holding insurance
company to automate their inter-company workflows (Marek et al., 2019).

3.3 Agriculture
RPA along with image processing remote sensing and unmanned aerial system experimented
in precision agriculture (Kulbacki et al., 2018). RPA was used to address the problem of grass
cutting in uneven terrain and also explored the controlling of the robot using android devices.
The study also explores heat and thermal sensors to be used as a safety measure to detect
humans, animals and birds for stopping the blade. The ultrasonic sensor is also used to detect
objects to check the collision of the robot with objects. The RPA used the stages Gather,
Analyze, Design, Execute and Improvise (Herrera and Luciano, 2020) in this study.

3.4 Healthcare
The Healthcare industry has embraced AI with technological advancements and the digital
transformation wave. However, there is a need to check the regulatory framework for the
transformation of healthcare product development (Van Belkum et al., 2018). AI and emerging
technologies like RPA have changed the way healthcare practice processes are executed
(Wiljer and Hakim, 2019).
Healthcare and pharmaceutical industries handle a huge volume of data and RPA can be
leveraged for providing a sustainable solution for the operational efficiency of business
processes (Bhatnagar, 2020). New drug discovery, drug formulation process, drug delivery
mechanisms, inpatient and outpatient activities can make use of RPA for better efficiency.
Ratia et al. (2018) proposed enhanced function-oriented value analytics to identify the
potential for automation in the private healthcare industry.
Digital twinning of future operations with RPA solutions has experimented for a
Greenfield hospital to seamlessly integrate RPA with hospital operations and logistics and
understand challenges. This essentially helps in optimizing the transportation system (Liu
et al., 2020). AI and RPA are used in identifying and automate the processing of adverse event
reports in pharmacology (Schmider et al., 2018).

3.5 Manufacturing
Disruptive technologies demanded the redesign of businesses with a focus on innovation and
Industry 4.0 readiness (Rane and Narvel, 2021). This further leads to the implementation of
the business process agility and technology integration. RPA in the manufacturing sector is
slowly picking up and there are tremendous opportunities for automation. Sonmez and
Borekci (2020) proposed an RPA ecosystem model for successful adoption. The industrial
BIJ engineering perspective was presented with an overall approach to RPA implementation and
29,5 life cycle.
The manufacturing industry tried to leverage RPA benefits for master data management.
Radke et al. (2020) proposed a framework for RPA implementation. Cognitive RPA by combining
cognitive approach and automation has experimented for a better level of automation.
In the manufacturing industry robots are deployed for assembly tasks and software
robots are created for RPA by leveraging AI. Optimizing the task allocation between humans
1568 and robots and introducing AI early in the design phase helps with potential benefits such as
improvement in efficiency (Jungling and Hofer, 2019). RPA in friction stir welding brought in
many use cases of automation from sensing, joint tracking, evaluating the weld quality and
control of the process (Gibson et al., 2014). Fominykh et al. proposed RPA for redefining the
probability of loss in welding quality by criterion characterization of losses and the
combination of events that causes it (Fominykh et al., 2018).
The popularity of RPA was also noticed by semiconductor manufacturing industries and
the notion of software robots is used to prepare AI workers. This initiative toward achieving
automation facilitates remote control of equipment and anticipated that the adoption of such
methods can realize the goal of the unmanned factory (Lin et al., 2018).
Buhulaiga et al. (2019) proposed guidelines for Oil and Gas multinational companies for
digital transformation with building capabilities through technologies like analytics, RPA
and so on. The proposition explores the possibility of a cyber-physical system as a service.
The manufacturing sector has picked up Industry 4.0 adoption at a faster pace to improve
industrial efficiency. However, there are barriers to the convergence of vertical and horizontal
production systems such as lack of technology readiness and cost of implementations
(Nimawat and Gidwani, 2021). To some extent, RPA helps in improved interactions in the
transformation journey.

3.6 Other application areas

RPA was found much explored in Banking, Financial, Healthcare, Agriculture and
Manufacturing areas and started gaining interest in sectors like Tourism, Telecom,
Governance and so on. Tsaih and Hsu (2018) proposed a conceptual framework that uses AI
in smart tourism. In this work, RPA has been leveraged to promote cognitive engagement and
automation. The Telecom sector in the process of digital transformation inherently faced
customer complaints that lead to an immediate focus on fault clearances, service
enhancements and product provisioning. There is a need to adopt RPA to improve
processes through automation of rule-based, routine and predictable tasks. The structured
and stable data collected and mined by telecom organizations can be leveraged to achieve
better results in terms of response time and efficiency (Schmitz et al., 2019).
Kobayashi et al. (2019a) explore the adoption of RPA for consumer services that can be
used by the elderly. An application of RPA is proposed by Kobayashi et al. (2018) for
integrating SNS, QR code recognition and interphone systems. This can be used for parcel
delivery service intimation to users and re-delivery arrangements if not delivered. Home
automation is another domain that experimented with RPA. Home appliances can be
controlled. Ramakrishnaiah et al. (2018) proposed a prototype using GSM (Global System for
Mobile communication) for home automation.
The RPA concepts are not synthesized by the academic world to that extend and Santos
et al. (2019) proposed a model to put together the main RPA concepts into perspective and
used them as a schema. For analyzing student’s results RPA is proposed and Automation
anywhere tool is used for the same which was found to save time and reduce error (Patil et al.,
2019). Kihara et al. (2019) made an attempt to automate the partitioning of students’
department-wise based on the grades.
 RPA does not require massive investment and needs only very minimal capital and Robotic
infrastructure. Van Chuong et al. (2019) proposed RPA for the Vietnam market and fields. process
Uskenbayeva et al. (2019) proposed RPA for automating processes of public administration.
Processes related to E-Governance can benefit from RPA which enhances the interaction
automation for
between Government to citizens and businesses. This brings benefits like transparency and industry
accountability (Bhuyan et al., 2018). RPA has been adopted by a German organization in
alignment with the German Laws of federal and regional authority’s efforts for digital
transformation. RPA complimented the legal aspects and lead to increased compliance 1569
(Alpers et al., 2019).
Kobayashi et al. (2019b) suggested a basic model for automating the consumer service
system based on IOT using RPA. Torkhani et al. (2019) proposed an interoperability
framework based on event-driven architecture for RPA wherein actions are interpreted by the
robot. The consulting industry has also enhanced technologies including RPA in its efforts to
relate digital transformation. IT consultants must acquire the necessary skillset and market
orientation so that they can take a strategic HR management approach and gather
information on the labor market for discovering the behavior patterns (Bensberg et al., 2019).
After the thorough literature study, we concluded the findings of the first question
as below.
Q1: What are the industries that leveraged RPA technology and what is the extent of the
adoption of RPA in various industry domains?
The study revealed that RPA adoption is found mostly in Banking, Financial Services and
Insurance and has maximum use cases of adoption. The implementation in Healthcare and
Manufacturing domain was found moderate. The RPA automation in Telecom, Agriculture,
Energy domains has also progressed wherein some use cases are available. In addition to this,
the academic literature also hints that other sectors such as Retail, E-Governance,
Construction, Tourism are exploring the possibilities of RPA.

4. RPA opportunities and benefits for industry

RPA enables to divert money spending from transaction-based processes to strategic
initiatives and thereby helps in repositioning the budget. Technological advancements lead
to business innovations and transformations that focus on the relooking of strategy,
operations and budgets (Driscoll, 2018; Balogh, 2017). Dey and Das (2019) explores the
motivation and challenges of RPA implementation through the user’s perspective and
developer perspective and argues that organizations need to find ways to align both
perspectives for value creation.
To find out key factors in aligning business and RPA, a multi-valued qualitative
comparative method and IT business alignment theory can be used (Zhang and Liu, 2018).
Prototyping based on virtual visual samples that imitate interactive physical objects is used
as a methodology for validating designed systems and experiments. This is useful in process
automation wherein desired functionality is modeled through observation and experiences
with virtual objects (Sklyarov and Skliarova, 2009).
RPA is a game-changer in shared services transformation (Naga Lakshmi et al., 2019).
RPA is proposed in various applications related to recruitment and the impact on the industry
and their clients’ related studies (Nawaz, 2019). RPA has promising benefits in workforce
planning and talent acquisition. However, there needs to be a check on the change
management aspects whether it takes away the control from HR people (Gupta et al., 2018).
Identifying the processes and tasks that can be automated is certainly a challenge and
efforts are required to check whether the business process has any tasks that can be
completed without human intervention (Leopold et al., 2018). RPA helps in improving data
quality aspects such as completeness and correctness. However, the training and testing of
BIJ bots require time. Most of the process discovery techniques focus on control flow aspects of
29,5 the process than UI logs which leads to complex models and hence a multi-perspective
technique is proposed for process discovery (Leno et al., 2018). Fintech organizations have
also automated order and payment processes with RPA and offer financial services to other
corporations (Asatiani and Penttinen, 2016).
Robotic Service Orchestration (RSO) and RPA together are used in enterprise HR
management. The main challenge is that the current Business process Management Systems
1570 (BPMS) does not have the provision of allocation of human and software robot workforce
together (Simek and Sperka, 2019). Value-driven RPA concept leverage BPM capabilities to
capitalize on the value of process led digital transformation by minimizing risk (Kirchmer and
Franz, 2019). A four-step approach is proposed to analyze processes to find its suitability for
RPA. The steps include validation, assessment, evaluation and classification (Balasundaram
and Venkatagiri, 2020). The proposed approach is used to automate the relevant processes in
HR such as HR strategy, Talent acquisition and operations. Helpdesk automation and
support center automation can be done about why RPA and is being popular. Another
promising area is knowledge mining. Mrsic et al. (2020) explore chatbot for effective
interaction with students for their support.
Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina (BCBSNC) implemented RPA to improve business
performance. This certainly creates dilemmas in dealing with redundant staff and evaluation
of the work of retained staff (Dunlap and Lacity, 2017). It is necessary to diagnose the tussles
between various stakeholder’s departments, management and labor. RPA adoption helps in
improving effectiveness and efficiency and is driven by lower-level employees (Cooper et al.,
2019). This study discusses the various pros and cons of RPA adoption in accounting.
Urabe et al. (2019) proposed a visualization tool to visualize user actions using images.
This is further used to modify the granularity of visualization and find operational
improvements. RPA is used in software test automation by emulating user actions with the
graphical user interface to facilitate execution faster and reliable (Yatskiv et al., 2019). IT
support and help desk processes can be automated especially in the areas of email
categorization and handling technical queries through email. Machine learning algorithms
XGBoost, Bi-LSTM are found to be suitable for email topic modeling (Shanmugalingam et al.,
2019). Tian and Lijima (2020) studied RPA implementation in the context of DEMO (Design
and Engineering Method for Organizations) perspective and efforts were made to capture
human interaction and capabilities in business process and modeling.
Cybersecurity attacks are growing rapidly with digital transformation (Nisha and
Pramod, 2019) and there is a need to protect assets. The shortage of skilled professionals
causes challenges for cybersecurity. RPA could be leveraged to automate cybersecurity
audits and related tasks (Cazacu et al., 2019). RPA is complimented with Cognitive
Automation for achieving knowledge-based services automation. The study conducted by
Suri et al. (2019) shows that majority of experts and executives are aware of the need for such
systems though unclear about their value and investment aspects. Software robots aim to
automate the work performed by a human. Software robots are implemented at various levels
such as data, interaction and process. At the data level, it can be used for data transfer,
processing files and data analysis. At the integration level, it can be implemented for
providing access to the application, services or to mimic a human for operating a device. RPA
can also be leveraged for event triggers and control flow at the process level (Hofmann
et al., 2019).
AI, when combined with RPA, is called intelligent process automation (IPA) and is an
emerging area. Audit engagements are leveraging IPA to improve audit in terms of efficiency
and effectiveness (Zang, 2019). Automated decision making by leveraging technologies like
AI and RPA is introduced in the public sector, e-government and social services. The study by
Ranerup and Henriksen (2019) has four value propositions to analyze the automated decision
making in social services. The value professionalism deals with the human component and Robotic
the proposition efficiency talk about cost reduction. Service and engagement values deal with process
citizen-centric rapid assistance and relationship. The study revealed congruence among most
of the values concerning automation in social service while there were some divergences as
automation for
far as the engagement value is concerned. RPA that focuses on consumer services for the industry
elderly with a dementia detecting application is one such attempt to leverage the technology
for the common man’s daily activities (Kobyashi et al., 2019a, b).
The introduction of RPA through an institutional logic lens in the field of Global 1571
accounting services revealed benefits in terms of dealing with the shortage of the right skilled
people and productivity (Fernandez and Aman, 2018). Table 1 gives a summary of the
functions automated in domains using RPA predominantly and the primary benefits reaped.
This discussion has unveiled the answers to the second research question and
reported below.
Q2: How RPA adoption has picked up in various domains and what are the benefits?
RPA adoption has picked up gradually in core function areas in some of the domains as
mentioned in Table 1. Time reduction and efficiency improvement were found to be the most
appreciated benefits of RPA across domains. Other acceptable benefits include resource
savings, productivity improvement, improved scalability, flexibility, accuracy, optimization,
cost savings and quality improvement.

5. RPA challenges
The RPA adoption challenges are multidimensional including technical, strategic,
operational and human aspects. Enriquez et al. (2020) conducted a study for identifying
gaps in scientific and industrial literature and presents the RPA status, future directions and
challenges. Identifying the processes and tasks that can be automated is certainly a challenge
and efforts are required to check whether the business process has any tasks that can be
completed without human intervention (Leopold et al., 2018). The implementation of RPA
requires lots of time and effort and may not achieve the desired goals always (Marek et al.,
2019). It was also argued that there is a need for business model change and process (Met et al.,
2020), build internal capabilities and capability maturity models (Hallikainen et al., 2018).
Lack of standardization and stabilization of process is a major roadblock in many adoption
initiatives. Organizational readiness assessment and infrastructure requirement audit need
to be carried out in advance before stepping into the adoption process.
It is a tedious task to identify business processes that can be automated with software
bots, which is a fundamental element of RPA. The challenge is to quantify tangible savings
and the cost of implementation (Suri et al., 2017). The cost involved in adoption may require a
sponsor (Willicocks et al., 2017). People and process factors are critical in deploying RPA for
Business Process Management. Organizations also need to understand the difference
between RPA and BPM (Ivanci
c, 2019) as it is one of the critical success factors in RPA
adoption. Automation intention factors that are more impactful are explored with challenges
to facilitate a smooth transition to the digital transformation initiative (Mishra et al., 2019a). In
another study, they explored the technological factors that impact RPA deployment in the
BPM industry (Mishra et al., 2019b).
Low usage of technology and digital transformation resistance among stakeholders is the
main challenge. A culture that stimulates innovation and technology adoption is the need of
the hour. Governance and architecture of technology infrastructure need attention to make
RPA implementation effective. Customer perspectives are not addressed properly during
RPA implementation and it leads to unforeseen issues of non-acceptance. Building robots
with multiple skills-based capabilities are cumbersome, and designing an optimum solution
using statistical and machine learning techniques is not easy. Organizations need to find the
 BIJ
29,5

1572

Table 1.

automated and

specific industries
advantages of RPA in
Summary of functions
Industry domain Functions automated Advantages

Financial and banking, accounting and auditing,
capital markets, wealth management Driscoll (2018),
Asatiani and Penttinen (2016), Zhang (2019), Raza
et al. (2020)
Insurance Marek et al. (2019), Oza (2020), Dirnberger
et al. (2018)
Opening accounts in the organization, handling Stay ahead of the competition with Increased
payments, purchase-to-pay and pay-to-cash processes, transactions, volumes processed, Improved accuracy
analysis of application, financial risk assessment, by reducing the error rate, cost reduction and
posting and renewal and support related to credit performance improvement (Vasiljeva and Novinkina,
processes. Management of increasing transaction 2019; Kokina and Blanchetle, 2019)
volumes, fetch data for processing claims Improves overall productivity (Williams et al., 2020)
Card management such as facilitating replacements of Improves operational efficiency (Miyahara et al., 2019)
stolen or lost cards. Processing mortgage-related
documents, manage the processing of failed payments
allowing resubmission, fraud detection
Risk monitoring, reconciliations, internal control
testing, and detail testing
Card activation, identifying fraud claims. Internal
control Testing and Substantive Testing
Payments, sweeps and reconciliations
Asset transfers
Reconciliation of trade and account data. Correction of
reference data
Transaction reporting
Corporate action processing
Customer onboarding and off-boarding
Debit balance clearing
Validating documents/data across systems
Claim processing Reduce turn over time substantially and cost reduction
Prepare for new business quotations, complaints Enhanced customer service Reduce errors customer
handling inquiries are addressed immediately boost
Data protection regulation requests productivity and efficiency, scalability (Lambortim
Scanning and uploading necessary documents for et al., 2017; Guttridge, 2015; Willicocks et al., 2015)
processing, automation of bank transfer transactions

(continued )
Industry domain
Manufacturing and retail (Jungling and Hofer, 2019;
Van Chuong et al., 2019; Mungla, 2019)
Healthcare (Wiljer and Hakim, 2019; Ratia et al., 2018)
Telecom (Schmitz et al., 2019)
Energy and environment (Lacity et al., 2015)
Table 1.
Functions automated
Redeployment of FTEs to more efficient other areas
Re-engineering of existing systems
Generation of Bills of material
Accounts payable and receivable general ledger
Invoice processing
Report production status smart semiconductor
manufacturing
Predicting and matching consumers’ needs to
availability, location and delivery
Enabled retailers to meet peak demand
Inventory control
Validation of health plans and third-party insurance
eligibility
Improving processes for patient-responsible balances
New drug discovery, drug formulation process drug
delivery mechanisms or in-patient and out-patient
activities related to automation using RPA
transportation system within the hospital, dispatching
rule of the lifts and robots, are optimized through
extensive simulation
Initiation of new services that leverage RPA
RPA for efficient external data collection
Automated core processes especially SIM swaps,
Unlatching and porting
Processing of order
Process of Credit checks
Automated billing
Automated troubleshooting
Advantages
Eliminated limitation of human working hours
Workforce reduction/reallocation
Reduced-order to fulfillment time
Improved operational efficiency
Personalization of customer experience and thereby
improve satisfaction
Supports the right product to be delivered timely in the
right place (Van Chuong et al., 2019; Rutaganda et al.,
2017)
Improved billing efficiency and cash flow
Accelerated turnaround of claims and payments
Financial value efficiency through reduced manual
work, less workforce requirement and saving time of
expensive workforce
The increased volume of the task performed
Scalability of work
Resource optimization
Quality and improved performance
Improved customer service
Improvement in the process (Bruno et al., 2017;
Davenport and Kalakot, 2019)
Turnaround time reduction
Achieve greater flexibility and scalability (Lacity et al.,
2016)
Improvement in overall customer services
Reduction in failed meter-readings
industry
process
1573
Robotic
automation for
BIJ blend of various technologies and the pattern in which it affects business process
29,5 transformation (Mendling et al., 2018). Training of RPA agents and making robots work with
humans are certainly matter of concern and it is also very important to identify the robot
misbehavior situation (Van der Aalast, 2018). There are ethical concerns also related to
software robots taking the role of humans. The RPA journey may be planned as per the
earlier experience in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementation and post-
implementation risks identification (Pramod et al., 2014).
1574 Some of the key challenges are summarized in Table 2 here and an effort is made to
propose how organizations can deal with these challenges.
The study exposed the answers to the third question and is summarized in this section.
Q3. What are the RPA implementation challenges in the industry and how industries can
overcome them?
The study revealed that the challenges fall into major categories such as Technical,
Operational, human and strategic aspects. These challenges can be overcome by setting up a
good governance structure, standardizing processes, Employee awareness and skill
development, infrastructure strategy and effective use of technology.
The main benefits captured are depicted in Figure 2 and the challenges found were in four
different categories. The most benefited domains from RPA are also depicted with the RPA
focus areas concerning industry adoption such as life cycle.
RPA technologies have widely been used as a strategic approach to improve business
processes. The increased attention toward RPA adoption has motivated the conduct of this
systematic literature review on basic themes of adoption status, benefits, challenges and
solutions. This study will benefit the industry in making informed decisions in RPA
adoption and make strategic steps in overcoming the challenges otherwise faced.
Organizations can refer to this study for deciding their RPA goals and selection of tasks.
This paper contributes to the literature by consolidating the overarching facets of RPA
adoption and presenting holistically. The academic researchers can use the findings of this
work and further come up with new methodologies, techniques and frameworks for
streamlining the RPA adoption process. In a nutshell, this paper will provide various
viewpoints to strengthen the RPA adoption in a systematic way and pave way for future
research directions.
The major highlight of this study is the status reporting across various industries and the
major functions that are generally chosen for RPA implementation. This will be a reference
for industries to evaluate their RPA journey and learn from what others have done. Even
organizations can take inputs from RPA adoption opportunities gained by other industry
domains which were presented in this work. Thus this work will have practical implications
in industry adoption of RPA and theoretical contribution to existing literature.

6. Key ingredients of RPA implementation

Governance, risk and compliance models have evolved over a period to solve implementation
challenges and mitigate risks (Raman and Pramod, 2017). We have summarized the outcome
of this study as a Conceptual Governance framework for RPA implementation. This
governance framework proposes the major design factors of RPA implementations in
industry domains which can lead to success (See Table 3).
To rollout successful RPA implementation the people and organizational structure to
be aligned with RPA strategy and goals. Accordingly, processes, frameworks and policies
to be standardized. The culture, ethics and behavior of people in the organization along
with the skills and competencies of the team decide the fate of the RPA implementation
outcome. This conceptual model factors could be further developed as a benchmarking
framework.
RPA key challenges Author Recommended solutions
Robotic
process
Operational stability, maintenance and Stople et al. (2017) A mechanism for infrastructure automation for
further development of RPA solutions scalability and talent acquisition
(Operational) Organizational ecosystem industry
Appoint a sponsor/Champion
Disorganized data is a challenge for Vishnu et al. (2017) Systematic collection and storage of
automation (Technical) data with proper data strategy 1575
Human-like interaction required by Kumar and Socio-technical factors to be studied
customer, security and privacy concerns Balaramachandran and proper change management
(Human) (2018) process to be put in place
Immature or not well-trained models Romao et al. (2019) RPA maturity frameworks and
lead to a decrease in productivity. business agility for successful
unsupported or even wrong decisions implementations
lead to an increase in errors (Technical)
Ensuring compliance to security and Wojciechowska-Filipek Strategic approach to technology
banking law act (Strategic) (2019) compliance
People dimension should be managed, Schmitz et al. (2019) Orientation for benefits realization and
technical and organizational methodological approach to transition
interrelations to be studied (Human) employee engagement
Redefining the capabilities of the Rutaganda et al. (2017) Training and change management
workforce to interact with Robots,
Integrating RPA in organizations IT
process, Identification of technology to
deploy, where and how (Human)
Lack of standardization and quality of Leshob et al. (2018) Governance infrastructure through
processes (Strategic, Operational) industry Allianz
Optimization/redesign of processes
Stabilize processes before automation
Security aspects handling, financial Priya et al. (2019) Employee training and roadmap for
stability, regulations (Technical, technology adoption
Operational)
Clients may ask for fee reductions as Cooper et al. (2019) Awareness and gradual transition
employee hours are reduced, driven Reskilling
primarily by lower-level employees
(Operational)
Automation is possible only for routine Huang and Vasarhelyi A systematic approach for task
tasks and the software makes decisions (2019) identification
based on explicit rules (Technical)
Complexity because of need to document Kokina and Blanchette Method for systematic development
a process at a granular level of detail, (2019) and implementation and governance
need to possess technology-related Streamline internal communications
skills, requires a new understanding of
risk and internal controls, need
Establishment of centralized or
federated governance models (Strategic,
Technical, Operational, Human)
Stakeholder buy-in, privacy and Moffitt et al. (2018) Identify critical success factors and
security, and the economics of RPA, provide support for reaping benefits
reliability of RPA tools, size of notable
items (Technical, Human)
The dilemma between humans and Fernandez and Aman A perfect blend of human and
robots, high level of works such as (2018) analytical capabilities
analytical aspect could not be Design of human-computer interaction
completely replaced by robots pattern
(Technical, Human) Table 2.
Summary of RPA
(continued ) adoption challenges
BIJ RPA key challenges Author Recommended solutions
29,5
Robots need more explicit instructions, Lacity et al. (2015) Expert outsourcing/upskilling
infrastructure to be upgraded Multiskilling of robots
(Technical)
Need capabilities within the Ratia (2018) Mechanism for infrastructure
organization, if workflow process scalability
1576 creation is not taken care of mistakes
that may crop in (Human)
Standardization requirement, data Bhatnagar (2020) Data acquisition and storage strategy
coming from various sources (Technical)
Structural issues, such as data access Wiljer and Hakim (2019) Data and infrastructure capabilities
and the readiness of tools for clinical Rethink employees’ roles
practice, need to build their capacity and
capabilities for adoption (Technical,
Human)
Automated decision-making could Ranerup and Henriksen Explainable technology use
increase certain control features and (2019)
decrease transparency (Strategic)
Moving from manual to technology Radke et al. (2020) Employee and stakeholder awareness
adoption will have resistance (Human)
Social acceptance and the impact on the Zaharia-Radulescu et al. Promote best practices of benefits
Table 2. labor market as a society (Human) (2017) realization

Figure 2.
RPA focus areas in
industry adoption

7. Future directions and research agenda

RPA is achieved through software robots that can work in tandem with humans or through
automation of tasks that do not require human intervention. RPA applications across
domains will significantly improve if organizations become capable of leveraging technology
and address challenges.
Design factor Focus areas
Robotic
process
Strategy The organization to devise how the RPA can bring in customer satisfaction, automation for
innovation, cost leadership and differentiation
Goals RPA benefits to be clearly understood industry
Role of RPA RPA is a major driver for customer satisfaction, innovation and growth
IT infrastructure issues As technical issues are the main challenges faced by organizations, they need to
resolve the gaps. IT infrastructure investment to be made as per strategy 1577
Risk profile Technical, operational, strategic and human-based risks to be well understood and
processes to mitigate the same to be put in place
Technology adoption As RPA is the first step toward Industry 4.0, the technology adoption factors and
model cost factors need to be analyzed and processes for automation to be identified
Implementation The implementation may be holistic across all business processes or phase-wise
methods based on agile methodology
Sourcing model As per the human skills and competencies required, the appropriate sourcing
model such as outsourcing/insourcing/hybrid for RPA implementation to be
identified
Challenges and solutions Organizations need to adopt best practices from other organizations to overcome Table 3.
the challenges in implementation Conceptual governance
Awareness and training All stakeholders are to be given awareness of the use and benefits. Users to be framework for RPA
trained for effective use implementation

AI, computer vision and machine learning technologies are used in RPA robots (Dogue, 2019).
Further research is rooted in Intelligent RPA with brain intelligence-based technologies with
cognitive and natural language integration (Lu et al., 2018). Efforts are also in deep learning and
analytics-based smart pattern matching applications to improve RPA implementation.
RPA enables to divert money spending from transaction-based processes to strategic
initiatives and thereby helps in repositioning the budget. Technological advancements lead
to business innovations and transformations that focus on relooking of strategy, operations
and budgets.
Practitioners have come up with various adoption frameworks with various features
accepted across domains. However, there is a dire need to assess the scalability and
customization aspects of these frameworks. Process mining techniques, metrics that can be
used to analyze processes for their RPA suitability, RPA evaluation framework and metrics
are promising areas of research. Monetary and tracking tasks can be very well executed
using RPA and hence regulatory and compliance practices need to be explored further for
coming up with standards, frameworks and tools.
Feature convergence across industry verticals needs to evolve with acceptable maturity
models and standards. Security concerns and risk assessment and overall IT governance
models are growing concerns that need immediate attention.
Organizational culture and dynamics have a great role to play in any business
transformation and the same is the case with RPA too. There are no extensive studies that
unearth the linkages between these aspects and automation success and hence the gap
identified here for future research. The human aspects, myths and trade-offs between job loss
or reskilling and operational efficiency need a thorough study to assess the impact of RPA on
humans.
Social robotics and RPA in social living were not explored much, especially RPA for
elderly people assistance is an area that needs profound attention and huge scope. There are
no much work done in customer services in social and governance domain and hence
automation of tasks that address queries of citizen is an area that could be explored.
The literature also lacks case-based studies that provide end-to-end RPA automation
scenarios in various sectors though it is available in some selected sectors like banking and
BIJ insurance. Scaling organizational practices to RPA and scaling adoption across
29,5 organizations will go up tremendously by devising critical success factors and a strategic
approach for dealing with challenges coined in technical, human, strategic and operational
directions.
Future research needs to be focused in these directions and the discussed research agenda
is summarized here.
1578 (1) Techniques for leveraging cognitive and natural language programming (NLP)
capabilities for RPA to be developed.
(2) Explore how deep learning techniques can be adopted for intelligent RPA and
models to be developed.
(3) Build data models to support heterogeneous sources that act as input to RPA.
(4) Review organizational strategy, business models and technology and align them to
make organizations capable of RPA.
(5) Build an RPA robust framework for implementation and evaluation.
(6) Build Capability Maturity models that can be aligned to various domains.
(7) Need to address how human factors such as operational efficiency and reskilling
affect RPA implementation and benefits are reaped.
(8) The adoption of RPA in sectors that are not explored or have limited implementation
to be studied concerning the challenges and develop strategies for implementation.
(9) Social living and customer service enhancement through RPA-develop use cases
that benefit society.
(10) Establish regulatory and compliance practices for the Standardization of RPA
across domains.

8. Conclusion
RPA is envisaged to change enterprise workforce management and business process
management by leveraging digital and AI technologies. The value-driven RPA approach
enables businesses to embrace agility and achieve better governance through process
improvements. Systematic literature of 113 relevant papers is presented here focusing on the
adoption aspects of RPA and future research directions. The study has a unique contribution to
bringing in the use cases and their benefits across domains. It is evident from this study that
RPA has been widely used in banking and related areas with moderate use in healthcare and
manufacturing. However, there are a lot more opportunities in other domains that need to be
taped to reap the benefits. As there is more interest from the industry in recent times, RPA is
expected to grow in various domains soon leading to operational efficiency and productivity.

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Corresponding author
Dhanya Pramod can be contacted at: dhanyaspramod@gmail.com

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