Digital Process Automation Explained!

Last week you ran out of wild birdseed. It was a catastrophe! The birds were hungry and upset. You needed to refill their feeders pronto. You buy your seed by the 40 lb bag, opting to pick it up from a nearby lawn and garden retailer. While they usually have your favorite birdseed in stock, this time they were completely out. Panicked, you sought out a salesperson.

“We haven’t had that item for weeks,” the bored sales associate said. “The last batch we got was moldy so we had to dump it. You can try back in a week or two to see if we have more in stock.”

You nodded and thanked her but left the store baffled. Why on Earth would you check back with the store when you could go to the local Lowes and see if they had your seed? (They did and disaster was averted!)

More importantly, why couldn’t the lawn and garden store send you an automated alert when your favorite birdseed was back in stock? You’re a regular customer. You had joined their rewards program ages ago. They have all your customer information (including what you regularly buy). How hard would it be to get an alert on your phone or via email telling you when the seed was back in stock?

By automating the process of alerting you when your favorite seed was back in stock, the store would’ve made your life — and the sales associate’s life — so much easier. This is an example of a Digital Process Automation opportunity missed. Let’s dive a little deeper.
 

What Is Digital Process Automation?

Digital Process Automation (DPA) improves the customer journey by helping businesses design better customer experiences through automation. With DPA software, companies can produce new products quickly by automating their workflows, reducing operational frictions and facilitating easy collaboration between customers, employees and suppliers. DPA orchestrates all the moving parts inherent in running a business — from data to processes to channels to customer service. Sounds like a lifesaver for business, right?

A key characteristic of DPA is that it streamlines tasks that require human interaction. Thus, the teams that benefit most from DPA tend to be people-facing employees (e.g., management, sales, marketing and operations).

Any type of customer request — whether in-person or digital — can become a trigger for DPA. In the birdseed example, your question could have prompted the salesperson to automate the process of following up with you once your desired item was in stock. Instead, the associate suggested you check back in a week or two, so you went to a competitor where you found your birdseed and happily went home to fill your feeders. The experience at the first store was a frustrating one for you and a missed opportunity for the retailer.

Digital Process Automation extends to every department within a business including IT/ IS, Finance, Purchasing, Human Resources, Marketing and Operations. However, before we go into more detail, it’s helpful to know how it all started.
 

A Brief History Of Digital Process Automation

Digital Process Automation tools evolved from Business Process Management (BPM) which was widely implemented in the 90s to help organizations standardize business functions and reduce costs. Here’s a high-level timeline of how we got from BPM to DPA.
 

• 1990s

  BPM tools and approaches were embraced by organizations who wanted to be more efficient with their time and resources. The primary goal was to save money (Isn’t it always!). BPM helped streamline the steps involved in specific tasks like onboarding a new employee or shipping a product to a buyer. The software associated with automating business processes was typically managed by the IT department. Above all else, BPM focuses on cost reduction.

• 2000s

  BPM tools began shifting to Business Process Automation (BPA) with a focus on streamlining operations versus saving money. The associated tools helped simplify human-centric tasks like employee onboarding while improving end-to-end process orchestration across an organization. For example, BPA software helped companies manage their data warehousing environments by unifying platform-specific tools and scripts into one automated IT framework.

• 2010s To Present

  Digital Process Automation, a buzzword coined by Forrester in 2017, emerged to describe a category of tools that optimize communication between multiple platforms, software tools, systems, employees and customers. DPA focuses on streamlining communication and information exchange, making information accessible in real-time for businesses and customers.

Digital Process Automation is central to digital transformation. By combining data, systems and people, DPA tools ensure that businesses can innovate quickly and meet customer demands. Now, the biggest question – how does it all even work? Don’t worry, we have it covered in the next section.
 

How Do Digital Process Automation Tools Work?

Being part of digital transformation strategy, most businesses deploy dedicated tools and software for DPA initiatives. Most DPA applications incorporate low-code assembly tools that offer drag-and-drop workflow design capabilities. Users can quickly create and modify workflows by using prebuilt connectors that make it relatively simple to manage data, create business rules and manage dependencies across multiple systems and tools. Essentially, any process that touches on data, enterprise applications, people (both consumers and employees) and business processes can be streamlined using a DPA tool.

To do that and more, here’s all the features you get!

Key Features Of DPA Include:
 

• Process Building

  Low-code assembly of complex processes (e.g., drag and drop workflow design)

• Reminders/Notifications

  Proactively sends alerts to relevant teams.

• Automation Of Customer Tasks/Support

  Automates tasks for customer-facing teams e.g., stock availability notifications for birdseed lovers

• Reporting/Team Collaboration Tools

  Enables full transparency to all team members on workflow processes and tasks performed.

• Application Programming Interface (API) Integration

  Connects existing enterprise systems to streamlined and optimized workflow processes.

• Mobile Access/Integration

  Allows your employees to use their smartphone for interacting with the tool. Although the features remain the same, businesses should be aware that there are two types of digital process automation tools (as defined by Forrester):

•  DPA Deep Tools

  represent the evolution of BPM software into business process automation tools. They’re easier to integrate with an organization’s existing software and applications and cloud infrastructure.

•  DPA Wide Tools

  are “lighter”— meaning they’re cheaper to acquire and implement. They’re focused on automating simpler processes than DPA Deep Tools. They’re also more accessible to a variety of departments, users and skill levels.

Now, let’s check why we need these tools!
   

Why Do We Need Digital Process Automation Tools?

Digital Process Automation tools help companies save time, reduce expenses by automating repetitive tasks and improve agility (e.g., the ability to pivot if something unforeseen like a global pandemic changes consumer behavior overnight). They also facilitate a much better customer experience, for example, by connecting a retailer’s available inventory to a customer’s purchase behavior, so that automated alerts can be sent when something (*ahem* birdseed!) is back in stock.

We’re sure you’re convinced about the value a DPA approach adds to your business processes and workflows. However, if you’re still not entirely convinced, we have listed down some of the key benefits for you.
 

Key Benefits Of DPA

 

• Save Employees’ Time (And Sanity) Through Automation

  The modern office worker no longer has to suffer through hours of mindless repetitive tasks. DPA tools can remove much of the drudgery of repetitive processes, enabling employees to focus on more interesting and important things, like what to have for lunch and where to get their nails done.

• Improve Customer Experience

  DPA improves CX by streamlining customer-centric processes like orders, returns and customer support. The focus of DPA systems is on improving processes with the customer top-of-mind. DPA software and tools ensure that your organization doesn’t have a “birdseed” moment.

• Save Money

  By automating processes once formerly controlled by humans. Basically, get more done in less time.

• Improve Data Accuracy And Reduce Errors

  Mind-numbing, repetitive tasks tend to inspire mistakes — at least if you’re human. DPA helps reduce errors by achieving better accuracy in processes and reducing common (human) mistakes.

Organizations who embrace DPA become more agile and scalable by improving internal efficiencies through automation and enabling employees to focus on better serving customers. Yet, that’s just the beginning – DPA is sure to get better in the coming years!
 

The Future Of Digital Process Automation

DPA technologies will continue to improve organizational productivity, reduce errors and focus on strategies that improve customer experience. DPA’s future is bright! Machine Learning algorithms and Artificial Intelligence will help automate even more manual, time-consuming office tasks, saving trillions of dollars in the process. According to PwC, 45% of activities within a workplace will be automated in the next few years. That shows a huge scope for DPA to help businesses save money, reduce human errors and improve customer experiences.

To Sum Up

Organizations of all sizes, across all business sectors, are embracing digital transformation — not necessarily because they want to but because they have no other choice. Customers demand a high level of connectivity, modernization and responsiveness. Businesses that fall short, may find their customers looking at their competitors to provide another birdseed solution. DPA will be crucial for most organizations in catering to these customer needs.