Business

Process
Automation
Managing Cost in Your Enterprise
David Chernicoff
Susan Perschke

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 i  

Contents
Business Process Automation—Managing Cost in Your Enterprise
Chapter 1: What Is Business Process Automation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Executive Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
What Is BPA? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Understanding the Difference Between Business Process Automation (BPA)
and Business Process Management (BPM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Run Book Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
How Does BPA Work? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Orchestration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
What Is BPA's Impact on Business Workflow? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
BPA and ROI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
 1

Chapter 1:

What Is Business Process Automation?

Executive Overview
In chapter 1 we outline the basic information necessary to understand what business process automation
(BPA) is and how it can be of benefit to your organization. We look at the basic concepts of BPA, how it
works, how it fits into an existing corporate environment, and its impact on business workflow and the
bottom line. We consider BPA in the context of the related concepts of business process management (BPM)
and run book automation (RBA).
We define BPA as both a business process and an IT component; often a server-not unlike a database
server or communication server in its importance to the organization, identifying the roles for which BPA is
best suited, and explaining what IT departments need to look at to assess where BPA can fit in to their envi-
ronment. This review will help you understand the pressing need for BPA in your organization and provide
the information that will allow you to begin to evaluate which processes are best suited for conversion to an
automated rollout.

What Is BPA?
Business workflow is a task-based process. From simple data entry to the more complex manipulation of that
data, we can almost always define the business workflow process as a series of discrete tasks. The various combina-
tions of these discrete tasks make up your business processes. These tasks can be broken down into their compo-
nent actions, which means they can be automated. Efficiently and effectively automating these types of tasks is
what BPA is all about.
Consider the existing workflow process in your business. I f you take a step back and look at it dispassion-
ately, you likely will see that you can define repetitive tasks in many areas—points in the workflow where the
same action is constantly repeated. Perhaps the data changes or the point at which this action occurs in the work-
flow isn’t constant; but overall you can see a significant percentage of user and IT actions that fit the description
of “repetitive process.”
Further examination of your business workflow will often reveal that these repetitive tasks take considerably
more time than expected. Repeated manual data manipulation, for example, is rarely an efficient use of resources
and most easily demonstrates the value of the BPA concept. Basic tasks that currently use human intervention,
such as purchase order processing, can often be delayed until the specific employee tasked with handling that pro-
cess is available, and the actual requirements of the task could easily be automated.
At its simplest, we can define BPA as removing the human element from existing business processes by
automating the repetitive or standardized process components. But don’t let this simple explanation fool you.
BPA capabilities range from automating a simple data-entry-manipulation task to building complex, automated
financial-management processes using existing applications and a good BPA tool. Nor should we let the obvious
simplicity of the BPA concept underscore the benefits – cost reduction, elimination of human error, and having
people do what people do best: make decisions, analyze data, and provide customer service.

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2    Business Process Automation

With BPA, you can optimize and streamline your business processes by automating process components. By
improving the performance, accuracy, and efficiency of your key business processes, you make your organization
more efficient and responsive to customer and employee needs. Good BPA software can build systems that proac-
tively respond to changes in the data they are responsible for, thus reducing IT workloads and improving overall
efficiencies.
BPA is the basic component of an enterprise-wide automation and management scheme for both business
and IT workflow: Don’t presume that the term business limits the scope of BPA tools. In fact, IT processes are
often excellent candidates for the automation of repetitive tasks. The examination of your corporate enterprise will
uncover a broad range of tasks suitable for the application of BPA (Figure 1) and give you the chance to realize the
benefits this approach can bring to both core business and IT processes.

Identify Business Problem

Analyze Business Need

Develop Business Process

Automate Tasks
That Would Otherwise Require
Human Interaction

Deploy Business Process

Figure 1: Where BPA fits in to the business process.

To recap, finding the right BPA solution for your business can make your business processes faster and more
efficient, robust, and flexible. As with any business problem, applying the right tool as the solution will have far-
reaching positive effects in your enterprise.

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 Chapter 1 What Is Business Process Automation?  3

Understanding the Difference Between Business Process Automation (BPA)

and Business Process Management (BPM)
The differences between BPA and BPM are two-fold: terminology and focus. Part of the problem with the first
issue, terminology, is that, as a concept, BPM is not well defined. So let’s first establish a working definition for
BPM based on the following, which some parts of the U. S. Government use:

Business Process Management (BPM) is the concept of shepherding work items through a
multi-step process. The items are identified and tracked as they move through each step,
with either specified people or applications processing the information. The process flow is
determined by process logic and the applications (or processes) themselves play virtually no
role in determining where the messages are sent (http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/systems/
sacwis/glossary.htm).

This definition makes clear that BPM is the overview process. The goal of BPM is to enable managers to get
a handle on the processes as a whole—how they fit and work together, and, on a macro scale, how they reach the
eventual goal. In contrast, BPA focuses more on the micro scale. With a good BPA solution, you can automate the
business processes that a BPM solution monitors and manages.
However, the above definition is just one of many that you will find. For example, many vendors consider
BPA simply a component of a BPM system. Although this relationship is true, issues can crop up when some ven-
dors imply that you can implement BPA only as part of that BPM system.
Management organizations have their own definitions of BPM, which usually focus on aligning business pro-
cesses with the need to deliver specific products or services to business clients. This means that significant atten-
tion is on people-driven rather than technology-driven business processes. And this view yields a very different
approach from the nuts-and-bolts improvement process that BPA tools advocate.
Technology vendors use BPM to describe actual management tools designed for monitoring and managing
the plumbing and machinery that makes up the technology side (software and hardware) of the business process.
Some vendors define BPM very specifically, using it as their phrase for the overall software development process
for application delivery by end-user customers, rather than just those pieces of the process that focus on automa-
tion.
SAP, for example, uses the term Process Management Lifecycle to describe and demonstrate the process of imple-
menting new business processes or optimizing existing business processes. SAP breaks its BPM down into these
phases:

1. Analyze phase
a. Analysis of the current environment and any current processes that might be in place
b. I dentification of needs and definition of requirements

2. Design phase
a. Evaluation of potential solutions to meet the identified needs
b. B usiness process design
c. Business process modeling

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4    Business Process Automation

3. Implement phase
a. Project preparation
b. Blueprinting
c. Realization
d. Final preparation
e. Go live and support

4. Run and Monitor phase

a. Business process execution or deployment
b. B usiness process monitoring

The phases cover the entire business lifecycle of a process. Although some of these actions line up well with
what you would be doing with BPA, the BPM focus is less on the actual process automation and more on the
management and monitoring of the business process as a whole.

cess Gover
Pro na
nc
New Processes
De
e

si
e
gn
z
ly
A na

Organization
Existing
Processes People
Technology
t
Ru

en

M
n/

le
m

on p
it o Im
r

Figure 2: SAP BPM Lifecycle

As you can see clearly from the graphic in Figure 2, SAP incorporates both the people and technology issues
that BPM represents, and demonstrates a basic BPM philosophy: ongoing optimization of the business process.
Hardcore BPM advocates make a clear point that business processes always will need to be tweaked and tuned to
respond to the prevailing business practices and climate.

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   5

It’s also important to note that there are, as yet, few if any recognized standards to define either BPA or BPM.
In most cases the vendors themselves select the area they feel their products should be identified with. Some major
vendors look at BPA in terms of discrete parts of existing applications—such as, in the case of IBM, automating
forms via the Lotus Forms application—while they see BPM as a part of their overall management structures.
This brings us to the second difference between BPM and BPA. BPM focuses on the conceptualization of a
complete business environment, the end-to-end optimization of the business workflow Figure 3), without focusing
on the tools necessary to accomplish this optimization. In contrast, BPA vendors offer customers the tools they
will need to build more efficient processes, in most cases without disrupting the operation of the current business
environment and, ideally, without needing to invest in the development of in-house programming and applica-
tion-development skills.

Business Process Analysis

Business Need Identification

Business Process Design and Development

Identification of Processes Suitable for BPA

Development of BPA Tasks

Business Process Monitoring

Automated BPA Optimisation

Business Process Management

Figure 3: This high-level BPM workflow diagram highlights areas where BPA can be used.

BPM and BPA are complementary technologies and concepts, but you can use BPA to make existing pro-
cesses more efficient, not only on an enterprise-wide scale but even for desktop users’ simple workflows. Deploying
a BPA solution can be the first step in a corporate BPM deployment, or the final goal for implementing more

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6    Business Process Automation

efficient business processes on a much smaller scale. Finally, a third, related concept that is relevant to the topic,
called run book automation, deserves a brief overview before we look more closely at how BPA works.

Run Book Automation

Run book automation (RBA), a term coined by the Gartner Group, is similar to BPA in that both technologies
are used to automate processes. But in the case of RBA, the focus is on IT responsibilities (which is part of the
reason the process is also known as IT process automation). For example, RBA software often is used to perform
IT processes that go beyond the simple job-scheduling features found in operating systems, and RBA includes any
number of features that focus on the administration and maintenance side of IT business requirements.
Automated service start and stop, data backup, and emailed report generation and transmission, all across
multiple clients or servers, are common tasks of RBA software. Event tracking, log monitoring, and change-
request management are all features often included in RBA products. With these capabilities, the IT department
can monitor, control, and automate actions that it otherwise would need to do manually.
RBA aides IT departments in meeting quality-of-service and uptime goals, along with proactively moni-
toring mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) and mean-time-to-recovery (MTTR) statistics, which they can use to provide
cost justifications in IT budgets. RBA should not be confused with the automation that you can find in network-
and operations-management software. Those tools usually require specific modules to drill down into individual
applications. Automation that is available with such tools is only for automating alerts or actions within specific
supported applications and is rarely usable across applications.
The goal for RBA is similar to that for BPA: Take the manual, redundant tasks out of the hands of users and
automate them, to free those users up for other activities. The RBA market tends to be separated into products
that are specific to a certain vendor or management product, and to those products that attempt to work across
the many different network- and system-management tools commonly found in IT departments.
With this general foundation about BPA and related concepts and technologies, let’s look at how BPA works.

How Does BPA Work?

Three activity classes define a BPA solution:
1. Integration
2. Orchestration
3. Automation

BPA applications tightly tie these three components together, enabling them to be used to automate applica-
tions on almost any scale, from simple keystroke automations, to complex integration of multiple applications
with completely automated operation. Good, solid techniques and application of these three areas of responsibility
allow the automation software to scale as the enterprise and business needs grow.

Integration
Integration is the fundamental enabling concept for BPA. BPA allows applications and operating systems not only
to read data that the systems produce, but also to pass data between the component applications of the business
process, and to modify the data as necessary.

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 Chapter 2 Piecing Together Fragmentation  7

Based on the parameters outlined when the BPA process is configured, BPA tools make use of this integrated
data exchange to make decisions and to make changes to the process to keep it updated and optimized. Given
that the purpose of BPA is to tie together processes that are occurring anywhere in the computing environment,
regardless of application or location, integration is the glue that allows the BPA processes to run.

Orchestration
Orchestration, as its name implies, is the process that gives the business side of the house the input on how things
will work, and to direct the BPA process. The orchestration engine works hand in hand with BPA’s integration
capabilities both to read and report on the steps that are being taken in any managed process –and also to provide
the decision-making capability that is critical to an effective BPA solution. From the top down, orchestration
provides the tools for designing the BPA solution, the intelligence to apply the information acquired via the inte-
gration that the solution requires, and ties together what can be an incredibly diverse selection of applications and
systems. The process of orchestration also enables the ability to bring tasks that exist across multiple machines—
and perhaps even across different business silos or branches—all under one umbrella that is the business process
itself. Orchestration is the key to maintaining ongoing optimization of the BPA solution.

Automation
Automation is the whole point of imple-
menting a BPA solution. With repetitive Business Process Automation
manual tasks soaking up a disparate amount of
resources, the bottom line for the technology
of a BPA solution is to deliver a solution that
eliminates or even just minimizes the amount Integration Orchestration Automation
of manual intervention in these types of tasks.
Orchestration and integration unite with auto- The The Direction, A BPA Process
mation to deliver the capability to provide a Fundamental Integration That Takes
Enabling and On-Going the Manual
rules-based process of automatic execution that
Process Optimization Repetitive Tasks
can span multiple systems and enable a more for BPA of the Business and Makes the
effective, nimble, and efficient business process Across the Process More
(Figure 4). Enterprise Efficient

Figure 4: The three pillars of BPA

A More Effective and Efficient Business Workflow

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8    Business Process Automation

What Is BPA's Impact on Business Workflow?

Let’s look at the average type of business workflow that requires human intervention. For example, in most cases
there is a point at which data needs to be entered or manipulated. Often, this data is drawn from other sources
already available to the user in electronic form.
So the user needs to move the data from its current location to its desired location, move the data between
applications, or generate additional data using the existing data and applying formulas or reporting tools to the
existing data. The data that the user has massaged and manipulated is then delivered to other applications or
users, with the help of all sorts of delivery mechanisms that can range from uploading a file to a server, to entering
the data into a Web publishing system, to emailing a report to a manager.
This process occurs anywhere from hundreds to thousands of times daily in the average business environment,
and it is fundamentally fraught with potential problems. Repetitive tasks are just that: repetitive; and although
machines are very good at this sort of thing, people rarely are. Constant repetitive tasks often lead to inattention
which, in turn, leads to errors in the process. And people are human: They focus on other activities during the
business day, such as going to lunch, grabbing a cup of coffee, answering the phone, or just responding to emails
from a coworker. During such times, their attention cannot possibly be focused on doing those repetitive, infor-
mation-processing tasks that are a staple of the business world. Simple errors, such as spelling mistakes, to major
errors, such as using outdated data to generate updated reports, are often simply the result of a few moments of
inattention. And, of course, people take vacation, get ill, and are often not on-site for any number of reasons, all of
which directly impacts getting their work done.
Properly implemented BPA solutions reduce the number of repetitive tasks that users must get involved
with. A task that has been automated now puts less impact on the users who interact with the task. Automating
as many tasks as is reasonable within a business process streamlines that business solution and makes it more
capable. With automation, larger amounts of information can be handled faster and more efficiently than if the
same processes were still being done manually.
The bottom line for business workflow (Figure 5) is that companies that comprehensively implement and
apply BPA in areas where it can be most effective will see a significant streamlining and optimization of their
business workflow processes. Their workflow becomes more effective and flexible, and better able to support busi-
ness growth and expansion.

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 Chapter 2 Piecing Together Fragmentation  9

Order Order
Received Received

Order Order
Entered Entered

PO Data
CC or PO? Manually CC or PO?
Entered

CC PO Sent for CC
Approved Approval Approved
BPA
Automated
PO Approval
Process
PO
Approved

Order Sent Order Sent

for for
Fulfillment Fulfillment

Unautomated Process

Figure 5: A sample BPA workflow

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10    Business Process Automation

BPA and ROI

Automated processes don’t get tired, lose focus, make mistakes in data handling, or spend time on other business
activities. They allow the business to take the time-consuming, repetitive tasks, which are better handled by the
computer anyway, out of the hands of the users and refocus those users’ efforts on other business activities that can
be more in line with business goals and needs. Doing this multiplies the effectiveness of both users and applica-
tions. But let’s look at the direct, specific effects and improvements that BPA can have on ROI, not just the ROI
of the BPA software, but the effective ROI of other applications in place in the user’s environment.

1. Reducing errors.
By automating the movement of data between applications, common errors that occur in the process of rekeying
data entry are eliminated. Issues related to using the wrong data sources or sending erroneous data to other users,
clients, or customers are eliminated. Once the BPA process has been tested and deployed, there are simply fewer
opportunities for common user-introduced errors to have an impact. This reduction in errors results in saving both
time and money that would otherwise be spent fixing the errors and any problems that the errors introduce fur-
ther down the process chain.

2. Improving performance and process effectiveness.

In many cases, tasks that must be done manually are the bottleneck in the process. Automating those manual
tasks speeds up the effective throughput of the application, thus allowing the existing software solutions to deliver
their results more efficiently and effectively. This combination can reduce the need for additional spending to
meet the needs of the business for that specific process.

3. Making users more efficient and effective.

By automating tasks that were consuming personnel resources, those resources can be redirected toward core busi-
ness needs. This allows the business to effectively gain available man hours that it can apply to other business
projects without additional expenditures. People can focus their energies on the tasks they do best, allowing the
computers to handle those that machines are best suited for.

4. Making the business more responsive.

With a good BPA tool, the business can easily automate new applications and processes as they are introduced,
and so allow the business to become more responsive to business and customer needs, without significant new
expenditures. BPA deployment can take days/weeks instead of the months required to implement a manual pro-
cess change. Furthermore, a good BPA platform will enable an organization to implement BPA without requiring
highly technical development resources making the automation application life cycle much easier to implement
and maintain.
Fundamentally, effective BPA results in an improvement on ROI for many aspects of the business model,
in turn increasing the effectiveness of both new and existing applications that are suitable for use with a BPA
solution.
ROI is usually met with proper implementation within 3-6 months, if not sooner, depending on the scale of
the implementation and intended use. Typically, the larger the implementation, the quicker the time to recoup
investment—for example, a large manufacturing/distribution company might digitize its ordering process with
BPA. The elimination of paper and storage costs alone would pay for the deployment.

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