How can RPA and BPM complement each other to optimize your process?

Business process management and Robotic Process Automation partner to advance digital transformation initiatives. Although RPA has garnered much more attention lately, BPM is a crucial discipline and a significant facilitator for scaling RPA projects.

RPA and BPM are distinct in many ways, but the most crucial difference is that RPA automates a particular set of jobs. In contrast, BPM chooses which duties to automate and the processes to eliminate and combine those tasks. RPA tools and RPA solutions automate the tasks identified using BPM.

What is RPA?

Robotic Process Automation or RPA is programmable software, also known as bots; it automates manual, repetitive, rules-based processes by imitating how people click and type through typical business applications, freeing up personnel to work on more value-critical tasks. RPA can also automate access to legacy systems that do not have modern API. RPA tools can automate these simple, rule-based tasks without intervening with the system framework or architecture.

Early RPA systems tended to be somewhat rigid and inflexible, restricting the number of bots deployed to enterprises. As a result, Gartner created the term "hyperautomation" to describe a group of technologies for mass-scale bot automation. In applications like process mining, machine learning, and low-code/no-code development environments, hyperautomation integrates several technologies to provide more automated workflows.

What is BPM?

BPM, or Business Process Mapping, is a business discipline that helps businesses fully understand and improve how they function to streamline workflows, increase overall productivity, eliminate waste, reduce costs, and improve agility, scalability and process efficiency. The current strategies for enhancing quality and efficiency developed by Peter Drucker and the total quality management and Six Sigma methodologies for process improvement build on Frederick Winslow Taylor's early scientific management approach.

Process specialists have historically been required by BPM to manually create process diagrams by observing and speaking with business users. These diagrams were commonly captured as a business process modeling notation using visual diagramming tools. The resulting static files took more effort to implement. But the appearance of better tools to automatically capture processes, identify areas for improvement, and introduce new workflows have begun to change this approach.

BPM is both a technical discipline and a cultural phenomenon. Employees must be open to change, eliminate unnecessary activities, and create new tasks to enhance processes.

How to apply RPA and BPM alone and together?

Strategic versus tactical deployments.

Most RPA projects begin with a BPM process that records an overview of company operations, as one can't properly automate what one doesn't understand. So, some form of BPM is a prerequisite to any RPA deployment.

Robotic Process Automation is typically used as a temporary solution until a more permanent platform is implemented or a longer-term technology roadmap becomes successful. A comprehensive business process map is an excellent tool for discovering and prioritizing RPA opportunities. If the goal is to automate the ingestion of bills, process mapping might be highly targeted to avoid, for example, mapping a complete accounting process.

Automation versus analytics and monitoring

Regarding implementing and maintaining automated processes, RPA and BPM complement one another. RPA or Robotic Process Automation includes data formatting and pushing and pulling information from various systems. BPM involves the workflow design, monitoring and analytics of RPA processes and activities.

For instance, the contact center team might be required to submit a monthly report on the impact of their campaign on sales. The persons initiating the project will be assigned and notified using BPM software. The sales data will be transferred from a CRM or ERP system to a report builder using an RPA tool. BPM software adds a layer of analytics to track how long each step takes to complete and which jobs require the most rework. As each iterative phase is finished, it will automatically transmit progress reports to project participants for approval.

Implementation vs. understanding

While BPM can enhance an existing process, RPA can speed up any process, even a poor one. Deploying robots to automate jobs in an inefficient process merely creates a faster, inefficient process. BPM adoption leads to a better process where RPA can have a significant role to play,

Despite RPA's recent rise in popularity, BPM continues to serve as the cornerstone of automated business processes. BPM oversees the entire process, organizes and manages company data, and synchronizes the interaction of people and technology. Using visibility and process data, BPM offers strategic insights for process innovations and improvements.

Workstreams can be optimized by knowing the order of the process stages, their costs, how frequently they are executed, how frequently they result in errors, and how many deviations there are. Process retraining and optimization may be required in some circumstances, whereas the deployment of RPA may be appropriate when the process is rule-based, highly repetitive, and prone to expensive manual errors.

RPA automates simple, mechanical, rules-based processes, but organizations also need to automate decision-based jobs by adopting intelligent process automation (IPA). By identifying which processes need to be automated and where AI and machine learning may be used in the workflow, BPM can play a role in hyperautomation initiatives that combine RPA and IPA.

Architecture-versus-task orientation

While BPM includes an organization's end-to-end architecture and process management, RPA automates highly specific repetitive operations. RPA most likely not be the main focus of enterprises' attention inside BPM.

The strategy, planning, technology, and execution of business processes are all impacted by BPM. RPA often enters the technology and execution phases, which are the final two. The most important steps in BPM are evaluating the state of the business processes in an organization and describing how the smaller parts of the process fit together as a whole. Process mapping can provide more information on how the process moves.

While BPM can support processes needing more complicated judgments, machine learning and predictive analytics can be incorporated into RPA tools to enable the automation of certain repetitive activities. RPA or robotic automation can only make a tiny contribution to a larger BPM framework, whereas BPM focuses on and addresses an organization's end-to-end process management framework.

End note

RPA and BPM streamline corporate processes and eliminate waste in various forms. While BPM reduces waste in a company's bureaucracy and the human hierarchies that run a corporation, RPA removes waste in technology systems that use bots to accomplish software tasks more quickly and effectively. These process-oriented initiatives are very different from one another, but they work very well together when planning, automating and enhancing crucial business procedures. The truth is that RPA and BPM approach automation from various angles, and neither automation solution can fully realize business process automation independently. However, RPA and BPM working together can offer a more comprehensive automated solution than each one working alone.

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