Importance of Process Flow and Logic Criteria for RPA Implementation

Robotic process automation (RPA) is a promising technology within the area of management of business processes. Firms are adopting RPA to digitalize and transform processes with the goal of increase of productivity and efficiency, cost reduction, and service improvement. As such it is crucial to identify processes and activities suitable for RPA. Research in this paper is focused on process flow and logic criteria which is neglected in the RPA literature. It is based on the analysis of real-life event log and its common pattern composed of tasks, which is found in the process using process mining techniques with Apromore tool and modeled using Bizagi modeler. The BPMN model is used for simulation of 3 scenarios with the common pattern. We found out that process flow and logic is important criteria to consider while implementing RPA solution. More specifically, in the case of fixed resources, it is necessary to first automate the task with the worst cycle time based on the productivity and efficiency of the common pattern. In the case of the pool of resources, the automation of the common pattern using RPA is less restrictive regarding cycle times of particular tasks due to its reallocation possibilities allowing for higher flexibility of gradual automation.