Business Process Automation (BPA) refers to the use of AI tools, software, and strategies to automate repetitive processes across an organization, reducing manual work and errors to improve efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and customer and employee satisfaction.
Also called workflow automation, enterprise automation, or process automation, BPA keeps a business functioning smoothly by achieving specific goals through automated tasks.
What is Business Process Automation?
BPA streamlines day-to-day operations by automating business processes, tasks, and workflows. A business process is a series of activities that build upon each other to achieve a specific goal. This applies to a variety of departments:
- Production
- HR and accounting
- Workforce management
- Customer support
Tasks can be fully or partially automated. Automations can improve customer and employee experiences through comprehensive contact center application:
- Customer self-service
- Smart routing
- Workflow optimization
- Live agent assistance
- Automated tips, escalations, and summaries
Why Business Process Automation matters
The benefits of business process automation span customer experience, employee experience, productivity, and quality.
- Customer experience (CX): Automation enables immediate assistance around the clock, reducing the need for companies or customers to rely on live agents for routine requests.
- Employee experience (EX): Employees are supported, not replaced, by automated processes. Efficient workflows and live assistance reduce overwhelm and enable employees to focus on core competencies, improving satisfaction and reducing attrition.
- Cost: Technology and software integrations can come at extra costs, with additional costs for specific tools and features, depending on the platform. Partnering with a BPO can mitigate costs, and enhanced efficiency can boost long-term profitability.
- Quality: Business Process Automation boosts quality across departments by reducing manual errors and following predefined rules. Automations pull from continuously updated knowledge bases and learn by continuous feedback to improve results.
- Speed: Automations enable immediate assistance, streamlined workflows, and reduced speed to answer through efficient routing.
- Compliance: BPA ensures strict regulatory and compliance adherence by tracking conversations and flagging potential issues, enabling proactive correction and mitigated risks.
BPA in practice
Routine, repetitive processes can be automated across departments for organizational success.
- Inbound support: Automations handle routine inbound calls, answering simple requests and routing to live support when necessary.
- Sales: Business process automation can automate sales tasks such as lead management, follow-ups, order processing, and CRM updates. Automation technologies customize strategies and communications for each customer, personalizing service and improving performance.
- Workforce management (WFM): Workforce automation optimizes tasks traditionally handled by human agents, eliminating gaps in service and ensuring the appropriate allocation of resources.
- Quality assurance (QA): AI technology can score 100% of interactions, ensuring peak performance with live tips, post-interaction notes and summaries, and personalized coaching.
- Back office: BPA integrates with IT systems to streamline non-client-facing workflows and tasks.
While automation can enhance efficiency and reduce the need to rely on staff throughout an organization, effective BPA preserves and elevates human talent. It also relies on operations agents, QA experts, managers, team leads, and client service representatives to verify automation accuracy, to develop meaningful customer relationships, and to handle complex situations with nuance and contextual knowledge.
Process | Automation | Result |
Inventory management | Stock management software makes purchases based on product thresholds, updates product information based on supplier data, generates reports, and forecasts demand. | Reduced costs of manual error and fewer gaps in service due to delays. |
Financial processing | Automated tools generate and process invoices and submit expense reports. | Transparent finances and greater compliance adherence. |
Employee onboarding and training | Automated document management, training schedules, communications, and training tools provide timely resources and enhance knowledge retention. | Consistent training maintains high compliance adherence and improves agent confidence, proficiency, and retention. Smooth onboarding reduces errors and time to go-live. |
Order assistance | Bots, guides, FAQs, and self-service portals notify customers of changes and updates. | 24/7 order support and higher customer satisfaction. |
Call queue management | Interactive Voice Response menu answers routine queries and automatically routes callers to appropriate teams. | Shorter wait times, higher customer satisfaction, and reduced call overwhelm. |
Live agent-customer interaction assistance | AI tools such as sentiment analysis track how customers feel through an interaction, providing tips for improving service quality, de-escalating situations, and improving compliance. | Higher satisfaction, consistent quality, and greater compliance adherence. |
Factors that influence Business Process Automation
Operational: Automation can efficiently handle fluctuating volume, ensuring cost-effectiveness and productivity regardless of demand. BPA also allows staff to complete training independently, improving onboarding times and learning.
Policy and compliance: BPA tools enhance regulatory adherence by tracking interactions, evaluating solutions against predefined rules, and flagging potential errors. This ensures strict compliance with regulations such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, and TCPA.
Common pitfalls of Business Process Automation
Lack of process mapping: Understanding processes is vital to automating them. Automation without comprehensive, accurate mapping leads to errors, redundancies, and inefficiencies.
Unclear outcomes: AI tools complete tasks to achieve specific goals, so undefined outcomes can negatively impact performance.
Data privacy concerns: As organizations implement automations across departments, sophisticated attackers can put cybersecurity at increased risk. Mitigating these dangers requires rigorous compliance adherence, clear protocols, and secure implementations, access controls, and frameworks. Additionally, the handling of customer information should align with all privacy laws and be validated by live experts.
Over-reliance on AI: Automation should support, not replace, live human agents. Over-reliance on artificial intelligence can lead to a loss of human connection and agent skills, contextual understanding, and expertise vital for handling complex interactions.
Monitoring and improvement
Measure the success and efficiency of automated processes by evaluating these Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
- Service Level Agreement (SLA): The contractual agreement between an organization and a service provider, SLA spells out services to be provided and expected performance levels. It might include which processes will be automated and metrics automations will target or help improve.
- Average Handle Time (AHT): The time it takes, on average, to handle an interaction, including after-call work. Automations can reduce AHT by streamlining call handling and automating after-call work.
- First-Call Resolution (FCR): FCR demonstrates the quality and success of specific solutions as the rate at which issues are resolved the first time a customer reaches out. Automations improve FCR by elevating service quality through live assistance and compliance adherence.
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): More efficient, accurate processes and relevant around-the-clock guidance improves service quality, consistency, and speed, boosting customer satisfaction scores. Automated post-interaction surveys increase the accuracy of feedback gathering.
- Quality Assurance (QA): Automated QA tools measure service quality against predefined rules, capturing a complete look into individual and team performance.
BPA vs. RPA vs. RDA
- Business process automation is the general approach to streamlining processes across an organization through automation software, tools, and strategies.
- Robotic process automation (RPA), or software robotics, performs repetitive, rules-based tasks.
- Robotic desktop automation (RDA) uses software robots on individual desktops to automate repetitive tasks and actions. They respond in real time, optimizing workflows and increasing operational efficiency and productivity.