Managing business processes can quickly become incredibly expensive and time-consuming for organizations, with an estimated $230 billion spent on such tasks globally. To tackle customer and market demands quickly and at lower costs, outsourced business process management (BPM) is becoming more digital. Many companies today are moving past the need for individual task-based automation and using a more comprehensive approach. By combining robotic process automation (RPA) with BPM, companies can take advantage of fully digitized end-to-end processes.
This allows for the seamless integration of their digital solutions with their human workforce. However, to secure long-term success and viability, companies will need to ensure their RPA and BPM solutions are orchestrated from a single platform. It’s also important for the platform to include process intelligence tools, such as process mining and task mining, to pre-populate BPM and RPA flows and provide enhanced monitoring capabilities.
While RPA and BPM are powerful stand-alone tools, organizations miss out on a host of transformational benefits if they fail to unleash the capabilities of these solutions when used together. For example, while BPM is great at orchestration, it cannot directly interact with legacy systems. On the flip side, RPA is great at automating any user interface, but struggles with long-term case management. Combining the two creates a powerful solution that can tackle end-to-end processes. Robotic process automations are managed under BPM software, using automations wherever possible.
BPM solutions work alongside human employees to agree on task delegation and coordinate tasks between human and digital workers. This transformation will optimize the experience for customers and employees alike.
Businesses combining RPA and BPM in a single IA platform can create opportunities for competitive advantages, if they are willing to invest the time and resources needed to find the right platform and implement it effectively.
Single platforms are vital
Seamless digital integration is about a lot more than just cobbling together the best digital solutions on the market. How these advanced technologies interact makes a huge difference. Technologies designed to work together are key to achieving the productivity gains promised by digital transformation. With a comprehensive platform, organizations don’t need to worry about building integrations because the platform already includes them.
A single platform is easier to buy and manage because it comes from the same licensor, rather than multiple suppliers.
Companies need to take care when determining the IA platform they want to adopt. The benefits of a comprehensive platform are increasingly recognized by vendors as well as their customers, pushing suppliers to put together their own multifeatured automation platforms.
Lou Bachenheimer is CTO for the Americas with SS&C Blue Prism.
Real-time benefits of combining RPA and BPM
By combining the potentials of RPA and BPM, organizations can achieve scale.
While RPA can complete simple tasks, such as validating business applications, this then provides human workers to complete more complex and valuable tasks by delegating using BPM. When BPM and RPA are deployed in tandem and work seamlessly together, this can save businesses time and money by allowing them to achieve time-sensitive projects quickly and efficiently.
Organisations can also coordinate processes and avoid inevitable human errors that arise from manual data input. This is vital in healthcare and the financial services. Errors in financial services can cost firms and their customers money and lost investment opportunities. The stakes are ever higher in healthcare, where data errors can lead to patient mix-ups, getting the dose of a medication wrong, and even cost lives.
Using BPM and RPA solutions ensures the effective use of resources in any industry with especially tight margins and increases business productivity and capacity.
Effective integration is vital for success
A BPM and RPA solution is only going to work well if it is implemented and integrated effectively. This is why a single platform is key.
Integration and time to value are much faster because adopters are only working through one provider. Executive sponsorship is instrumental to scaling out automation programs. A top-down approach ensures the resources needed are provided and the right work culture is fostered to promote successful digitization.
Business processes are becoming more digitized with more that 65% of senior executives increasing investments in automation and AI. In order to achieve great results and strive for efficient process management, companies must avoid automating individual processes in isolation. To maximize impact, companies must look to reimagine entire end-to-end processes and reimagine a comprehensive automated process. With companies quickly moving toward a digital-first future, the power of BPM and RPA combined within an intelligent automation solution can offer businesses the possibility to seamlessly and cost-effectively achieve their goals.
