Citation: Kim, S.-H. Development of
Evaluation Criteria for Robotic
Process Automation (RPA) Solution
Selection. Electronics 2023, 12, 986.
https://doi.org/10.3390/
electronics12040986
Academic Editors: Sanjay Misra,
Robertas Damaševiˇcius and
Bharti Suri
Received: 18 January 2023
Revised: 12 February 2023
Accepted: 15 February 2023
Published: 16 February 2023
Copyright: © 2023 by the author.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
Article
Development of Evaluation Criteria for Robotic Process
Automation (RPA) Solution Selection
Seung-Hee Kim
Department of IT Convergence Software Engineering, Korea University of Technology & Education (KOREATECH),
1600, Chungjeol-ro, Dongnam-gu, Cheonan-si 31253, Chungcheongnam-do, Republic of Korea;
sh.kim@koreatech.ac.kr
Abstract:
When introducing a robotic process automation (RPA) solution for business automation,
selecting an RPA solution that is suitable for the automation target and goals is extremely difficult for
customers. One reason for this difficulty is that standardised evaluation items and indicators that can
support the evaluation of RPA have not been defined. The broad extension of RPA is still in its infancy
and only a few studies have been conducted on this subject. In this study, an evaluation breakdown
structure for RPA selection was developed by deriving evaluation items from prior studies related to
RPA selection and a feasibility study was conducted. Consequently, a questionnaire was administered
three times, and the coefficients of variation, content validity, consensus, and convergence of factors
and criteria were measured from the survey results. All of these measurement results are reflected
in the final suitability value that was calculated to verify the stability of the evaluation system and
evaluation criteria indicators. This study is the first to develop an RPA solution selection evaluation
standard and the proposed evaluation breakdown structure provides useful evaluation criteria and a
checklist for successful RPA application and introduction.
Keywords: robot process automation (RPA); RPA selection; RPA evaluation criteria
1. Introduction
Robotic process automation (RPA) is a business-process-based software solution that
automates and processes simple and repetitive tasks using software robots [
1
–
5
]. Specifi-
cally, it processes organisational structured data and provides rule-based outputs [
6
,
7
]. The
term was coined in the early 2000s by the Blue Prism company, which introduced software
robots based on screen scraping technology [
8
]. RPA automates human behaviour and
tasks, whereas artificial intelligence (AI) automates analysis and decision making by imitat-
ing intelligence and reasoning. Both technologies can enable various services individually
or in combination [
9
]. RPA has facilitated innovation in the productivity improvement
of many industries [
10
]. It originated in the field of information systems as a disruptive
innovation that, among other automation solutions, has had a profound effect on job de-
scriptions and work itself [
11
]. Since then, RPA adoption has grown because RPA does not
require dedicated software development and is a low-cost solution that requires a small
workforce and minimal implementation time to automate operations. It can automate the
functions of existing software, promote communication between IT and other departments,
and can more easily recognise coding-related capabilities and knowledge compared to
other development methods. In particular, software integration is made possible based
on various tasks in existing environments, which facilitates low complexity with high
efficiency and productivity [
12
], and inevitable process improvement [
7
,
13
] in Industry 4.0.
Therefore, automation using AI technology has recently been widely introduced across
many industrial sectors. RPA has been applied to more than 20 diverse business areas,
including internal organisational operations, functional improvements, risk management
audits, data analysis, and reporting [
2
,
3
], and many enterprises have successfully integrated
RPA [2,6,14–18].
Electronics 2023, 12, 986. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12040986 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/electronics
