Learning analytics (LA) is an emerging area that has had extensive development in higher education in recent years, focused both on the learning process of students within subjects and on monitoring their trajectories in training programmes. However, most of the developments remain in the pilot phase without reaching institutional adoption. This paper reports the results of a systematic review of the literature carried out with the aim of identifying the factors that influence the adoption of LA, as well as the existing strategies that facilitate such adoption in higher education institutions. The results show that factors for LA adoption are situated in multiple dimensions, including stakeholders at different levels, institutional and pedagogical processes, technical limitations and ethical considerations. This work contributes with a consolidated list of 14 critical factors to be considered to effectively adopt LA tools, addressing planning, strong leadership, collaboration and prioritizing senior management commitment, goal setting, cross-organizational design, educational process redesign, system integration and legacy system linkage. On the other hand, a variety of frameworks, models and approaches are distinguished in the literature to help the adoption of LA, however, none of them cover all the factors involved in such adoption. Therefore, we provide a compilation of strategies that have been used in the literature to reduce the gaps associated with the different factors described.