Business Process Automation of BPA is predicted to quickly become the new normal. Therefore, businesses left behind will have lower chances to stay competitive and grow. But what is Business Process Automation and why you should be planning your first steps towards automation? Gartner has listed BPA as number one among the top ten strategic trends for 2020.
BPA – What Is It?
Business Process Automation refers to the entire process within your company. The key here is end-to-end automation, not just single automated tasks, by combining complementary technologies to augment business processes.
How To Begin with BPA?
It is important to define your digital ambitions. For example, enterprise architects and business process owners must collaborate to set a vision for their digital business initiatives and define goals.
Automation goals should answer three key objectives:
- Revenue
Firstly, what are your key drivers for revenue? For instance, you may choose to focus on enhancing processes, automating tasks, increasing customer engagement or introducing new services. - Costs
Secondly, does it help to optimize cost? You could improve efficiency by automating tasks but also by redesigning processes, reducing the cost of errors and expediting processes. - Risks
Lastly, what are your compliance risks due to inefficient processes? By redesigning and automating processes, you could minimize the risk of noncompliance with a regulatory process.
Once you have a set of goals, you can start planning the project with these steps:
- Firstly, plan a long-term strategic road map by aligning business goals, identifying processes to optimize and choosing complementary technologies.
- Then, build and integration strategy that enables end to end automation.
- Finally, Augment business processes by implementing automation with DevOps/DigitalOps tools.
BPA Technology Selection
Leaders in the BPA include companies, such as UiPath, Appian and Microsoft Power Automate. However, implementing BPA in your business means knowledge and experience both strategy and technology as well as the tools or DigitalOps elements. Therefore learning it all might be a big investment and delay the benefits.
If your company doesn’t have the experience, knowledge or resources to transform your process, it’s recommended to partner up with Texas Software to help obtain the initial goals and benefits of BPA. Remember, only successful implementations will bring the actual sought after benefits.
Read more about Business Process Automation.
Biggest Secret You Need to Know
Now a days, DigitalOps tools are very sophisticated. Majority of the chosen tools do not require any coding or custom development to automate repetitive tasks. This is one of the biggest benefits to BPA, because it speeds up projects and lower implementation costs.
Many repetitive tasks can be automated using existing tools by using the right BPA tools. With a proper roadmap and a technology partner, automating your business is quicker, more cost effective and increases employee satisfaction when implemented correctly.
Contact us for a free process evaluation to see if your business processes can be automated!
Useful Terminology Cheat Sheet
| AI | artificial intelligence |
| BPA | Business Process Automation. This is how Wikipedia defines BPA. |
| BPM | business process management |
| EA | enterprise architects |
| DMS | decision management suites |
| iBPMS | intelligent business process management suites |
| iPaaS | integration platform as a service |
| LCAP | low-code application platforms |
| ML | machine learning |
| NLP | natural language processing |
| OCR | optical character recognition |
| RPA | robotic process automation |
| SaaS | software as a service |