Leveraging the competition: Robotic Process Automation (RPA) enabling competitive Small and Medium sized Auditing Firms

Abstract

By using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) companies are looking to improve their performance. In RPA, robots, or ‘bots’, are software agents which carries out activities within software systems in the same way a human would [27], [30]. This positions RPA as a lightweight tool to automate information handling at the user interface layer of existing applications without the specialized technology skills required for automation at the logical and data layers [29]. Therefore, RPA is a potential tool for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) who cannot compete with larger firms in resources required for large scale automation. This paper presents a case study of how a small auditing firm use RPA to automate repetitive tasks freeing time that can be used for higher value-added tasks. The results show that RPA can eliminate workload bottlenecks and give access to more high-quality data for auditing at low costs. Interestingly, RPA caused process redesign that constituted 62,5% of the time savings, while the remaining 25% were attributed to RPA alone. The results are valuable for SMEs evaluating RPA as a tool for performance improvements, and for researchers by challenges identified for future research.