Professional Documents
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Process
Automation
Managing Cost in Your Enterprise
David Chernicoff
Susan Perschke
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Contents
Business Process AutomationManaging Cost in Your Enterprise
Executive Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
What Is BPA? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Understanding the Difference Between Business Process Automation (BPA)
and Business Process Management (BPM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Run Book Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
How Does BPA Work? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Orchestration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
What Is BPA's Impact on Business Workflow? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
BPA and ROI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Chapter 1:
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 combinations of these discrete tasks make up your business processes. These tasks can be broken down into their component 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 dispassionately, you likely will see that you can define repetitive tasks in many areaspoints in the workflow where the
same action is constantly repeated. Perhaps the data changes or the point at which this action occurs in the workflow isnt 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 process 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 dont 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.
Automate Tasks
That Would Otherwise Require
Human Interaction
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 farreaching positive effects in your enterprise.
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
3. Implement phase
a. Project preparation
b. Blueprinting
c. Realization
d. Final preparation
e. Go live and support
cess Gover
Pro
na
A na
ly
z
Organization
People
Technology
on
le
n/
en
Ru
Existing
Processes
gn
nc
De
si
New Processes
it o
p
Im
Its 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 applicationssuch as, in the case of IBM, automating
forms via the Lotus Forms applicationwhile 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 application-development skills.
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 processes 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
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.
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 BPAs 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 integration 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 branchesall 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 implementing a BPA solution. With repetitive
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
of manual intervention in these types of tasks.
Orchestration and integration unite with automation to deliver the capability to provide a
rules-based process of automatic execution that
can span multiple systems and enable a more
effective, nimble, and efficient business process
(Figure 4).
Orchestration
Automation
The
Fundamental
Enabling
Process
for BPA
The Direction,
Integration
and On-Going
Optimization
of the Business
Across the
Enterprise
A BPA Process
That Takes
the Manual
Repetitive Tasks
and Makes the
Process More
Efficient
Order
Received
Order
Received
Order
Entered
Order
Entered
CC or PO?
PO Data
Manually
Entered
CC or PO?
CC
Approved
PO Sent for
Approval
CC
Approved
PO
Approved
Order Sent
for
Fulfillment
Order Sent
for
Fulfillment
Unautomated Process
BPA
Automated
PO Approval
Process
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 further down the process chain.