Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has become a popular topic in the information technology and digital transformation communities since the last decade. The deployment of RPA technology may reward organisations with an improvement in productivity and quality and a substantial return on investment. However, the implementation of RPA has not been a smooth journey for some companies. They have encountered difficulties during the implementation, or their projects have been abandoned and replaced by other solutions. The purpose of this dissertation is to identify critical success factors (CSFs) for RPA implementation to improve the chance of success and enable organisations to achieve the full potential and benefits of RPA.

The method of investigation was a systematic literature review on academic articles since 2010 presenting cases studies of RPA implementations. A thematic analysis was carried out on 20 selected RPA case studies from the academic articles, first to produce a primary set CSFs, and then to refine the preliminary result to a final set of CSFs. There were 14 CSFs derived from the thematic analysis. After further analysis of the findings and relationships among CSFs, a set of 7 fundamental CSFs and 7 secondary CSFs were established.

There is limited academic literature available on factors contributing to RPA implementation success and the topic has not been systematically examined. The empirical identification of relevant CSFs is a useful contribution to both theory and practice in this area. A comprehensive analysis of each CSF’s findings and their key aspects produces a better knowledge of the implementation issues and the relevant CSFs that can be applied to tackle particular implementation issues.