BPA done right - finally

"Don't use Business Process Automation (BPA) in your marketing messages.", instructed a senior analyst from Gartner several years ago. We were planning our marketing core messages for our iPaas -product called Frends. It was frustrating - we had an iPaaS that could do APIs and process automation and orchestration, both among all the other tasks that modern iPaas are suitable for. The reason why this analyst would not recommend the use of the acronym BPA was that there were so many failures in automation projects during the last decade.  

The BPA stigma

BPA got stigmatized somewhere in 2009-2015 when it failed to deliver due to several reasons: 

• BPA products and approach assumed that everything is about tech - the human factor was overlooked.
• Automating a mess leads to confusion - you cannot automate a process that you don't know. Automating the assumption in your head leads to a failure. 
• No focus on value
• Inadequate executive support - well, name a thing that does not fail without executive support? Even coffee break does that. 
• The forgetting to manage change and improvements. 
• The wrong assumption that BPA or ERP dictates how the process goes. 

Failures in these lead to a situation where the whole concept of BPA got stigmatized. Lots of things have evolved since. BPA nowadays is called iBPMS or intelligent business process management system. It is just good old BPA upgraded with AI-based decision making, human collaboration and specific line-of-business modules. That is why they're often called iBPMs suites.  Personally, I wouldn't say I like the approach where you have a specific tool for everything if it leads to a bunch of tools that are required if we want to automate processes. 

What if we look at processes a little bit more holistically? Where does your process start? What triggers your processes? It can be a change in the system (e.g. incoming order) and so on, but what if we put SOA2.0 and popular micro- or miniservice thinking together with BPA? 

I believe that APIs and BPA go more hand-in-hand when we slowly evolve towards an event-driven world. A process execution might be seconds if the deliverable is something digital. It might take months if it includes manual work or shipping of physical items. Both can be automatized with a modern integration and automation platform - no suites needed. So - don't be Kermit - care about your processes and try to see the big picture and dig out the details. Both are required for successful automation.

BPA done right

1. See outside-of-the-box: don't think of APIs and automation as separate things. Technically they are different pieces, but quite often, an API is a trigger for an automated process.
2. Aim for the event-driven world. For example, if your company is manufacturing something, your process may start from the call to orderItem-API. The API call may come from your business partner's system that noted their inventory is low. The orderItem-API persist the order and launch another process in your system, like process order, pick order, pack order, warehouse update and delivery order. All this together could be "order fulfilment process". Automatize these subprocesses one by one with the overall process in mind. 
3. Understand how the process truly goes.  Process mining and task mining digs out how your process run on your systems - not how you assume it to run. Process mining dugs out the human parts of steps as well.
4. Allow humans to participate. Not everything can be automated. Look for a solution where humans are allowed to participate. Humans participating in the process are not just input or output targets - the process flow must be able to adjust to humans' decision. For example, we have included Slack and MS Teams to be the channels for interaction with humans inside the process - no need to teach new tools or add yet another app to people. 
5. Spice it with some AI. AI can make decisions inside the process that previously required humans. Especially process automation can use machine learning to control the orchestrations.
6. Use robust tools. Use robust process automation tools like Frends ipaas that run automation on system interfaces and APIs, not recordings. I wrote an integration war story a while ago: Hold my beer, let's do RPA. 
7. Low-code without restrictions. Many integration platforms try to be "no-code" click and play. It works in demos and 20% of the cases but turns out to be "full-code" in 80% just because companies use standard software or SaaS in so many ways. Low-code backend with BPA done in, e.g. BPMN2.0 standard, is an excellent choice. It makes the monitoring and incident management extremely fast, thus lowering the TCO. Use a low-code approach in APIs and automation.
8. Focus on value. How much value a single small automated step in your process brings? Not much. How much value does it produce if it includes your APIs and enables digitalization? A lot more. A sample case of Digital Integration Hub can be found [here]. Understand the TCO is the most critical thing with ROI. Recording based automation lead to good ROI in the short term but eventually is much more expensive than BPA. 
9. Ensure that your executive management is involved and drives the automation and change with improvements in the processes. 
10. Don't let the ERP or BPA system dictate. A common problem in history was that ERPs or automation systems tended to dictate how the processes were executed. Their incapabilities forced the business process to bend - it should always be the other way around.

What do you think?