Robotic Process Automation ― Current State and Future Directions

Abstract

The increasing use of digital technologies leads to a deep transformation in the functioning of both individual entities and entire industries. These changes are referred to as digital transformation. In the first period, the scope of transformation focused primarily on ensuring the highest quality of customer service / customer experience. Currently, more and more attention is being devoted to the digitisation of operational and business support processes. It turns out that in many organisations, the IT tools that have been used so far are fragmentary, and the so-called legacy systems are often in use. Many components of the processes require employees to manually transfer data between systems that are not integrated with each other. In order to digitise operational and support processes, more and more entities implement IT tools classified into the currently developing category of RPA (Robotic Process Automation). The objectives of the article were (O1): to examine the current literature on issues related to business processes robotization, in particular with regards to RPA tools; (O2): general assessment of the current state of implementing RPA tools in Polish organizations, which could be classified as leaders in computerisation; (O3): identifying the possible direction of RPA tools development. The article uses the literature research method and pilot questionnaire surveys. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with persons who declared that they had carried out at least a pilot implementation of RPA tools.