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Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a collection of tools and techniques for creating software-bots that mimics human interaction in existing information systems. RPA takes advantage of the user interface to perform repetitive tasks and is the fastest-growing automation technique. Organizations capitalize on RPA by automating repetitive, rulebased, and tedious tasks without making changes to the underlying systems.

Many Swedish organizations have already implemented RPA, and many new organizations will be implementing the technology in the future. This study focuses on organizations that have not yet implemented this technology and the challenges surrounding communication and process selection in an initial RPA project.

Several vendors and suppliers are competing in the RPA market. Meanwhile, scientific research in the field has just begun and struggles to keep up with the fast-evolving technology. Vendors and suppliers often exaggerate and hype terms and concepts, which creates confusion and may slow down the learning curve for beginners. Additionally, Organizations risk designing suboptimal automation strategies from biased guidelines and frameworks from vendors and suppliers.

Newcomers often confuse RPA with physical robots, and many definitions do not use any of the words in the abbreviation RPA. Communication is a prerequisite for any type of project but especially in the multidisciplinary field of RPA. Process selection is commonly described as the first challenge that new organizations will encounter. Choosing a process is considered an essential and complex phase due to the difficulties in measuring automation.

This study explores the literature and conducts six interviews with Swedish RPA experts to identify RPA related themes and challenges for future research.