Tech Talk: BPA… What the heck is that?
Business Process Automation (BPA) is the practice of reducing human intervention wherever possible, integrating different software tools where needed, and assembling software services into end-to-end process flow. BPA’s goal is to significantly improve an organization’s operational efficiencies, reduced time, and reduce human error risk. Thus, BPA allows you to automate your data processing, sort your data and file it - all by the computer, rather than by hand.
Any place within your organization where a processes that needs to be tracked, where data is being input, stored and reported upon, where repetitive tasks are involved... these areas are prime candidates for Business Process Automation.
Technology is a great thing! Surprisingly BPA is not used as often as you might think by small-to-mid sized organizations. Many are reluctant to transfer these duties to a computer for a myriad of reasons; concerns regarding losing valuable information if a computer crashes, fears about “losing the human touch,” issues around trusting the technology, confusion as to how to implement, and concerns regarding cost all play into delay in learning more.
Many of these concerns can be assuaged with the help of a good IT consultant; and the benefits greatly outweigh the risks. And as the industry matures, most of the perceived risks are reduced.
So specifically, how can BPA help?
- Reduce Costs: In most cases, if a computer can perform a task it will do so more cheaply per cycle than a human being.
- Improve Speed: A computer can often perform actions many times faster than a human.
- Resource Flexibility: Managing peaks and troughs in workload can be extremely difficult if not impossible when handled by your employees, as staff cannot simply be turned on and turned off at will. Computers can however.
- Quality Improvement: Computers are optimized for performing repetitive tasks with complete consistency; employees, on the other hand, tend to make mistakes simply through boredom and distraction when faced with a long-running repetitive task.
- Data Mining: Computers can facilitate collection, analysis, delivery and presentation of large amounts of data.
- Workflow Automation: Software can automate workflow where documents, information or tasks are passed from one employee to another in a way that is identified by rules or procedures.
How is BPA delivered? What does it mean to you?
IT companies can consult with your organization on which solution works best based on your business needs. Options include extending existing systems/software, integrating systems, purchasing off-the-shelf software systems, or custom-building systems.
Most IT companies offer some style of BPA and all can achieve similar results. Let the computer work for you, rather than you work for the computer. Figure out how to take the tasks that are repetitive and let the computers handle them automatically.
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