The Adoption of Robotic Process Automation Technology to Ensure Business Processes during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The study provides knowledge on the adoption of the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology during the COVID-19 pandemic in 110 Polish service companies. As this research was the first of its kind in Poland, the objectives of the CAWI survey were to identify the technology features of the RPA technology and the related determinants and barriers influencing the adoption of the RPA as well as to determine correlations between them. Moreover, the statistical analyses involved considering whether there were differences in the evaluation of individual RPA technology features, mainly in terms of perceived usefulness, ease of use, security and functionality. The results of the study show that almost 60% of the respondents indicated that robotization tools allowed maintaining continuity of business processes during the pandemic. The highest rated were features related to usefulness of the RPA technology. Furthermore, the analysis pointed to the most frequently indicated barriers to technology implementation that were related to nonoptimized, nonstandardized and non-digitized processes with a large number of exceptions. The study contributes to scientific knowledge and has practical implications for process automation decision-makers concerned with the adoption of the Robotic Process Automation technology. The obtained results can help them to understand the potential drivers of and barriers to the adoption of software robots by enterprises and may be an important determinant for companies’ managers in the field of implementing such solutions.

Assessment of the Readiness of Industrial Enterprises for Automation and Digitalization of Business Processes

“…Future extension of this research will be associated with developments in the field business digitalization and automation of business processes in the context pandemic COVID-19, circular economy, Society 5.0, smart manufacturing system, implementation robotic automation business process. As the experts in these areas predict a high potential for their effectiveness and the need for implementation at enterprises of a national and international scale [32,35,37,39,46]. The authors of this publication suggest the need for future extension of various aspects of the impact of the conditions of digital transformation of the economy on the activities of enterprises in a more representative sample of the national scale.…”

“…The automation business process and introducing ICT also have a separate area of research today [35,36]. The business process and ICT have a field of research especially in the contexts of COVID-19 [37], robotization [38], Industry 4.0 [35], circular economy [39] and other issues driven by business digitalization. Siderska J. notes that, in the area of robotization of business processes, there is still insufficient literature available on robotic process automation [40,41].…”

Systemic analysis of a manufacturing process based on a small scale bakery

“…Digitisation of processes (Gajdzik et al 2021 ; Kordel et al 2021 ; Liu et al 2021 ; Akazi et al 2020 ; Pirocă et al 2021 ) in a manufacturing business is employed increasingly often and forms one of the key factors of introducing Industry 4.0 (Miśkiewicz et al 2020 ; Gajdzik et al 2021 ; Stawiarska 2021 ; Pirocă et al 2021 ). Also, robotisation is a prerequisite element for implementing Industry 4.0 in business (Botlíková et al 2020 ; Siderska 2021 ; Marinoudi et al 2021 ).…”

The Impact of Robotification on the Financial Situation of Microenterprises: Evidence from the Financial Services Sector in Poland

“…Generally, sustainable business continuity becomes the most important priority just to ensure essential functions during and after a crisis, collapse, catastrophe, disaster, pandemic, etc. (Siderska 2021).…”