Digital Process Automation (DPA)

Do you know all the workflows in your company? Are you sure that the workflows in your company have not changed? Do all your colleagues know about workflow changes?

These are questions you should ask yourself as a manager or executive, because it is important that employees receive the information that is relevant and up-to-date for them. But what is Digital Process Automation and how can its use help to answer the previous questions with "yes, of course"?

BPM (Business Process Management)

First of all, it can be stated that Digital Process Automation is an extension to the conventional BPM process. BPM stands for Business Process Management and deals with the identification, design, documentation, implementation, control and optimisation of business processes. A BPM tool is software that focuses on the process-oriented management of business processes of all kinds. However, BPM is not a technology, but a process carried out by people in the company. However, identified process improvements can be implemented with the help of BPM software and automation technologies (Digital Process Automation). BPM is therefore the first step towards a comprehensive automation of business processes.

Extension of BPM

Digital Process Automation (DPA) is the digitisation of processes and systems and the automation of information transfer to help companies transform processes and achieve enterprise-wide digital transformation. Digital process automation involves digitising processes and systems and then automating the transfer of information so that every employee has access to all the information and data they need to perform their jobs successfully. Digital process automation improves global effectiveness and efficiency in the organisation by complementing and optimising workflows that actually require some form of human interaction. Automation focuses on tasks to optimise the customer experience (CX) and the level of information that should be available to employees during customer contact.

Areas of application

• repairing obsolete processes
• optimise obsolete processes
• orchestrate workflows
• monitor impact of decisions
• support for automated governance control

Automating these processes gives organisations a key competitive advantage by making them much more responsive and customer-focused . This is because employees no longer have to waste time adapting their workflows to ever-changing workflows.

If a company now digitally measures the increasing success of a product, production can scale faster, for example. Conversely, if a product is not well received, its production can be stopped quickly to avoid overproduction and thus losses. The digitalisation of processes thus enables a company to quickly adjust goals if necessary. The full advantage of DPA can only be exploited when activities are automated across organisations, people and processes.

The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning methods also helps DPA to enable greater precision in process execution, for example by preventing the loss of information.

Difference between DPA and RPA

In contrast to Robotic Process Automation, which aims to replace human labour with software robots, DPA is used to automate processes and thus optimise workflows. So you can combine these two approaches to establish a successful digital transformation strategy in your company. As a result, your employees will be less burdened with repetitive tasks, leaving more time for higher-value, creative activities.