A Systems View Across Time and Space
Table 1 Softbot functionalities
Functionality | Description | Author |
|---|---|---|
RPA accepts a varied set of sophisticated objectives | Learns new commands, the locations of several objects, and its human partners’ preferences | Etzioni et al. (1993) |
RPA technology sits on top of the current IT systems and does not substitute but supplements BPM | No coding experience is required for human users. No need to develop expensive platforms, replace existing applications or manipulate their code, resulting in significantly lower IT investment expenses | Willcocks et al. (2015) |
RPA serves as a digital worker and interacts as a human user would with other systems | RPA is granted the same user access rights as given to humans to perform mundane, repetitive processes to reduce the transactional workload of humans. RPA software acts as a digital worker with a login ID and password to perform routine tasks like the HR onboarding process for new employees. RPA releases humans to focus on non-routine HR tasks requiring critical thinking and skills | |
Softbots mainly automate white-collar work, such as accounting, sales, logistics, trading and managerial occupations | Softbots can execute business processes, such as humans typing and clicking in different applications, alternatively taking information from one system and capturing it into another system or analysing documents to gather data | Acemoglu and Restrepo (2019); Agostinelli et al. (2020); Deloitte (2018); Willcocks et al. (2015) |