This article is a summary of a recent webinar discussion on deep Digital Process Automation between Bizagi, Forrester and the Institute for RPA and AI on the importance of having DPA in place before deploying RPA.
“There’s a renewed appreciation for automation. Something is changing.” – Rob Koplowitz, VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester.
Cost reduction used to be the leading reason organizations chose to improve their processes, with 32% declaring this to Forrester Research two years ago. However, in 2019 49% stated that they were improving their processes with the primary focus of accelerating their digital transformation.
It has become a common misnomer that automation, and RPA specifically, is the catalyst organizations need to accelerate their transformation. Before you begin deploying robots to carry out task automation, you need an orchestrator to co-ordinate your processes, people and apps.
I recently sat down with President of the Institute for Robotic Process Automation & Artificial Intelligence, Daniel Goodstein, and Forrester VP Analyst, Rob Koplowitz, to discuss why deep process automation, combined with RPA is driving digital transformation across organizations.
If you would like to learn more about the benefits of Deep Process Automation, it is well worth watching, ‘Understanding Deep Process Automation and How it Helps Scale RPA’ in full. Read on in this article for three pieces of advice that will help you when considering your next steps for automation.
Digital transformation is now the primary focus of process improvement, and with a change of focus comes a change of tactic. Organizations will find that their transformation projects will no longer be one mammoth effort like they were in previous decades, but instead they need to take an agile, coordinated approach.
“If we think about the classic automation project, the classic BPM-led project, this drove a lot of savings, but was a massive project with specific goals: much like turning an aircraft carrier. We’re moving now towards something more like moving speedboats in tandem,” explained Koplowitz.
“That connection between IT and Business becomes important because there are literally thousands of processes that have to be automated. We’re looking at a much more radical level of automation that has to be done in a coordinated fashion.”
The “classic BPM projects” that Koplowitz mentioned, would have been managed by IT in a limited number of controlled applications. But with the advent of low-code tools, RPA, decisioning tools, and AI, there’s no single technology that does everything. As the graph below shows, so many of these applications are managed by Business Developers. So it is important to find a way to get all these speed boats to move in tandem. This is where Digital Process Automation comes in…
“There has to be a master of these technologies. Something has to orchestrate that end-to-end flow that includes all the discrete technologies. I think that’s DPA,” said Koplowitz.
“DPA has the mature view of process mapping and orchestration and is really well suited to managing and orchestrating all the discrete technologies [such as RPA and AI] as well. So, you must have digital process automation as part of your transformation strategy.”
DPA deep platforms in particular, as opposed to DPA wide platforms, are the best way to handle multiple technologies under a single umbrella. Deep DPA evolved from BPM, so by nature they can handle multiple design environments.
“DPA deep vendors are those that can not only take very complex and simple, fast process automation, but can orchestrate the actions of a lot of other types of process technologies as well. So, RPA can live within the process orchestration layer of a DPA deep vendor,” said Koplowitz.
Once you have your DPA platform orchestration layer in place, you need to consider which discrete technologies you will deploy. While many organizations are keen to deploy RPA to ease their processes, it is not a one-size-fits all solution. You need to understand where it fits.
RPA tends to mimic human behavior and is suited to task-orientated processes with a limited number of steps. This often happens within the context of a broader process. This is opposed to chatbots which understanding the users’ intent via conversation and then either provide an answer or trigger an action.
“There’s a lot of value in combining technologies like RPA and AI to provide cognitive bots – robotics that can think more intelligently”, said Koplowitz. “But the real value comes from that end-to-end process automation where you apply intelligence across the whole operation that you get the best return and the best value. Then you can start to look at data flows and intelligence across the entire operation and not just specific tasks related to robotics within that.”
Bizagi was recently named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Software for Digital Process Automation (DPA) for Deep Deployments and was also recognized as the widest of the deep for “Balancing deep DPA functionality with a platform designed to go wide”.
To find out more about how Bizagi’s DPA platform can help you to transform your organization into an intelligent digital business, watch the webinar Understanding Deep Process Automation and How it Helps Scale RPA on-demand now.
