Is there any difference between them?
The sea of technologies has grown within the realm of modernization. It is making us navigate the world with ease and enhancing human productivity. Automation has made things easier for us. It increases productivity, cut down cost, and at the same time provide a high-quality end product.
So, now dwell on the most used tools of automation: Business Process Automation (BPA) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). These two play a critical role for enterprises in achieving goals and strengthening their relationship with the customer.
What is Business Process Automation?
Business process automation fuels workflows to boost organizational efficiency. BPA focuses on an entire department by executing a software system that incorporates all existing applications. It aims at the overall end-to-end process rather than targeting individual tasks.
With business process automation, inefficiency present in business is analyzed by business process automation to look through the larger aspect of the problem faced by the organization. It lays the foundation for back-office and front-office business functions. From handling invoices and maintaining records to the opening of customer accounts, the business process does it all.
Business process automation provides a platform for the efficient and effective working of an organization. BPA is implemented by Back-end functions like customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). Some of the benefits of BPA are customer satisfaction, lower costs and, an increase in employee productivity.
What is Robotic Process Automation?
Robotic process automation has software robots that copy human tasks. By recording the process workflow performed by humans, bots complete the rule-based task. Bots can easily log into systems, search for pages, and input and extract/copy data by imitating the interactions performed by humans with a computer system.
Bots adapt dynamic circumstances by following trained illustrative steps. Traditional automation faces issues following steps outside of its code. For example, traditional automation would find an error in a blank field while processing data in an excel sheet. Robotic process automation Bots, can look through the issue and identify the missing data without any human intervention. Bots are designed in a way to interact with other applications regardless of the technology used by the application.
RPA is incorporated by small and large corporations to improve their productivity. RPA market is growing with the increasing needs of vendors. Finance, marketing, healthcare, and many other industries have implemented robotic process automation to increase productivity, streamline processes and lessen risk. Easy implementation is another benefit of RPA. It gets integrated into current software without changing existing computer systems. It leaves employees with more time to add value-adding activities such as emotional intelligence, creativity, and customer service.
What makes them different from each other?
The business automation process and robotics automation process serve the same purpose of execution of functions effectively through automation. In the technology market, BPA was first introduced. It can implement RPA within its system. Three major factors differentiate between BPA and RPA. These are pricing, integration, and workflows.
- Integration: a holistic approach is followed by BPA to address the end-to-end process. BPA aims at streamlining all the work processes in an organization to make more sound and accurate decisions. While when we talk about RPA, its main function is to replace time-consuming human work with software. RPA is trained not to disrupt existing business processes and can be incorporated in BPA software like customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning. One must have seen chat boxes on the website. This is an example of RPA implemented in CRM. Pop up in chat boxes saying “how can I help you” are run by bots. The information collected by bots is transferred to an employee who then handles the customer. On the other hand, BPA overtakes existing systems and with its software and executes its system.
- Workflows: the primary goal of RPA and BPA is to create an effective workflow but both use different forms of automation. The existing user interface of the desktop is used by RPA bots. It then performs human tasks example- sending emails, copying and pasting, moving files, etc. Bot repeat and record the entire workflow thus replacing human tasks.
BPA follows more complicated workflows. A single processing model is used to create workflows that integrate the diverse system. To automate the task, these systems exchange and extract information with each other which requires APIs and database access. Heavy IT support is needed for coding and development. API plays no role while using RPA. The bots record, train, and act by themselves.
- Pricing: The price of RPA varies. The cost of a studio license ranges from $2000 to $3000 annually. Attended bots’ costs between $1,200 to $1,800 (annual) and unattended bots are $8000 (annual). The pricing of BPA depends on the size of the tier.
A good investment in the automation process can help in the growth of your company. With BPA providing a guiding force and RPA providing improvements, your business will be highly benefited both through strategies and tactics. Building a winning strategy with BPA and investing in tech tools to function with RPA, can very well improve your workflows. It will provide you lasting efficiency and profitable gains for your organization.
Credits:- Anjali Kumari
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