Rolling Back to Manual Work: An Exploratory Research on Robotic Process Re-Manualization

Abstract

Robotic process automation (RPA) is a technology that is presented as a universal tool that solves major problems of modern businesses. It aims to reduce costs, improve quality and create customer value. However, the business reality differs from this aspiration. After interviews with managers, we found that implementation of robots does not always lead to the assumed effect and some robots are subsequently withdrawn from companies. In consequence, people take over robotized tasks to perform them manually again, and in practice, replace back robots—what we call ‘re-manualization’. Unfortunately, companies do not seem to be aware of this possibility until they experience it on their own, to the best of our knowledge, no previous research described or analysed this phenomenon so far. This lack of awareness, however, may pose risks and even be harmful for organizations. In this paper, we present an exploratory study. We used individual interviews, group discussions with managers experienced in RPA, and secondary data analysis to elaborate on the re-manualization phenomenon. As a result, we found four types of ‘cause and effect’ narrations that reflect reasons for this to occur: (1) overenthusiasm for RPA, (2) low awareness and fear of robots, (3) legal or supply change and (4) code faults.