Over the past years, many organizations have been promoting and implementing robotic process automation (RPA) to solve repetitive tasks fast, efficiently, and at relatively low prices. Unfortunately, not all organizations have been reaping significant benefits or can successfully scale RPA as a stand-alone technology.
The most sustainable way to scale the RPA technology and extract all related benefits is by combining it with a BPM (a case management tool). This article will explain the differences between RPA and BMP, how to pair them, and their joint advantages.
Business process management (BPM) is a structured approach to designing, implementing, monitoring, improving, and standardizing business processes. When used correctly, it can eliminate process gaps and human errors while optimizing compliance and efficiency.
Each department in an organization takes some raw data or materials and coordinates the behavior of systems, information, people, and other things to develop more valuable products. BPM focuses on putting automated and very consistent processes in place for human interactions and routine transactions. It helps reduce the company's overall operational costs by minimizing waste and rework without compromising the team's efficiency.
RPA is a software technology governed by structured inputs and business logic that enables businesses to build, deploy and manage robots to emulate human interactions with software and digital systems.
Like humans, software robots can understand what is on the computer screen, navigate systems, complete perfect keystrokes, extract data, and perform many defined actions. They can perform these tasks more consistently and faster than humans because they don't necessarily need a coffee break or get up and stretch breaks.
Using the RPA software tool, companies can configure robots to capture and interpret different applications for processing transactions, triggering responses, manipulating data, and communicating with other digital software. Their functionalities range from simple tasks like generating automatic responses to business emails to deploying numerous bots programmed to automate various jobs.
Businesses are ultimately the sum of all decisions, tasks, and events that add to the entire operations. In the workflow automation realm, BPM is a structured approach to automating and optimizing business processes from the start to the end. In contrast, RPA uses bots to automate smaller repetitive tasks that comprise a part of the overall business processes.
Generally, BPM automates all business processes in an organization, while RPA complements a solid BPM approach. Although the two can reap similar benefits sometimes, such as improving efficiency and reducing human error, the RPA cannot certainly replace BPM.
The RPA technology empowers non-tech savvy to run bots that automate the rules-driven process. These bots perform human activities such as logging into digital systems and copying and pasting information from one system to another. The RPA requires less technical integration with the current IT stack. It is the best fit for organizations that performs high-volume transactions because it boosts productivity while keeping time and money in check.
On the other hand, BPM helps businesses optimize processes, making them more efficient, streamlined, and dynamic to potential changes. This software empowers non-tech savvy to build and model most business operations with low-code technology. BTM technology is more than workflow automation. Its analytics and reporting can help an organization minimize bottlenecks and silos in any given process, giving a clearer picture of the processes that should be adapted or adjusted to boost productivity.
RPA and BPM are often viewed as mutually exclusive technologies. Although there are many differences, combining them offers an extensive range of benefits.
Pairing RPA with BPM equips the organization with the right tools that enhance successful interactions with various people and digital systems across multiple departments. The combination helps the organization orchestrate and administer an end-to-end workflow to harvest more automated benefits.
RPA technology is excellent in entering and extracting information from different sources or applications. However, its toolbox features don't allow the administration of complex decision logic to create interfaces for administrating accesses, passing assignments across departments, etc. These lacking features are commodities in the BPM tools. Combining RPA with BPM will enable the organization to leverage the best.
RPA provides analytics and statistics in every process the robots carry out. But these robot-performed tasks may pile up later in the process, requiring manual handling. Coupling this RPA functionality with the BPM tool can enable statistics that identify bottlenecks and the general improvements of the entire process.
Combining RPA with BPM technologies automates repetitive and time-consuming human tasks, giving employees enough time to focus on higher-value tasks.
Although combining RPA with the BPM tool provides a solid foundation for orchestrating and automating processes, it cannot offer high cognitive computing solutions. The technologies are best suited for rules-based and judgment-based processes. They require structured data and may not read or interpret graphic or image data such as machine drawing or network topology.
Combining RPA and BPM functionalities reduces the need for human power, thus eliminating the job opportunities for repetitive tasks.
Most automated technologies are rules-based, hence fail to adapt to the shifting trends and technologies required to boost organizational productivity. No matter how the latest or great a technology is, it needs to be coupled with human labor to realize its full potential and effectiveness.
While BPM and RPA systems can share matching goals and offer related benefits, they are significantly different in the areas they work in. When selecting a BPM software solution, you need to choose a platform that provides low-key functionality and can be effectively integrated with RPA solutions.
At Techendo, we offer top-notch business process management and robotic process automation to help organizations achieve hyper automation and reap numerous benefits from integrating a broad range of automation technologies. For example, strategic deployment of RPA systems can boost the effectiveness of your pre-existing BPM infrastructure. This combination promotes digital transformation efforts to propel your business to higher horizons.
The margins in businesses are steadily diminishing in the current world, and effectiveness is paramount. Pairing BPM and RPA can offer you a much-needed edge in business competitions. Contact us today to enjoy the leading automation technologies that will guarantee the best return on your investment.
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