BPM Vs Workflow automation: Key differences explained

Business process management (BPM) and workflow automation are both powerful tools that can help you streamline and improve operations. But, when taken together, which one is better for you and what you’re trying to accomplish?

That’s what we’ll answer in this BPM vs workflow automation guide. You’ll get a deep understanding of both disciplines, how they’re used, and which approach you should choose to maximize results.

Understanding BPM

Business Process Management (BPM) is a discipline that focuses on improving the efficiency, effectiveness, and adaptability of business processes within an organization. It involves analyzing, modeling, optimizing, and monitoring processes to achieve operational excellence and drive continuous improvement.

BPM encompasses both the strategic and operational aspects of managing processes, aligning them with organizational goals and customer needs. Its scope extends across various industries and sectors, including manufacturing, services, healthcare, finance, and more.

Key components of BPM

1. Process identification and modeling: BPM begins with identifying and documenting the organization’s business processes, mapping out their steps, inputs, outputs, and dependencies. Process modeling techniques, such as flowcharts or BPMN diagrams, are used to visualize and understand how processes work.
2. Process analysis and improvement: BPM involves analyzing existing processes to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or areas for improvement. Techniques like process mining, data analytics, and performance metrics help in gaining insights and making data-driven decisions. Process redesign or reengineering may be undertaken to optimize processes and eliminate unnecessary steps or activities.
3. Process automation and technology: BPM leverages technology and automation tools to streamline and digitize processes. This includes workflow management systems, robotic process automation (RPA), and integration with enterprise systems. Automation reduces manual effort, increases speed, enhances accuracy, and ensures consistent process execution.
4. Process governance and control: BPM emphasizes establishing governance structures and control mechanisms to ensure process adherence and compliance. This involves defining roles, responsibilities, and accountability, implementing policies and standards, and monitoring process performance against defined metrics. Continuous monitoring allows for timely intervention and course correction.

Benefits of BPM

1. Enhanced efficiency and productivity: BPM eliminates process bottlenecks, reduces duplication of effort, and streamlines workflows. This leads to improved productivity, shorter cycle times, and increased throughput. By automating manual tasks, employees can focus on value-added activities, resulting in greater efficiency.
2. Improved quality and consistency: BPM promotes standardization and ensures consistent execution of processes. By defining clear process guidelines, organizations can deliver products or services with higher quality, fewer errors, and reduced variability. This leads to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
3. Agility and adaptability: BPM enables organizations to respond quickly to changing market demands, customer preferences, and regulatory requirements. By continuously monitoring and optimizing processes, organizations can adapt and evolve to stay competitive in dynamic business environments.
4. Cost savings: BPM helps identify and eliminate non-value-added activities, reduce waste, and optimize resource allocation. Through process automation and streamlining, organizations can achieve cost savings by reducing manual effort, minimizing errors, and optimizing resource utilization.
5. Enhanced customer experience: By optimizing processes, organizations can deliver better customer experiences. BPM helps in understanding customer journeys, identifying pain points, and improving process touchpoints to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.
6. Compliance and risk management: BPM aids in ensuring regulatory compliance by embedding control mechanisms and process governance. It helps identify and mitigate risks associated with process execution, data security, and compliance breaches.

Overall, BPM provides organizations with a systematic approach to managing and improving their processes, driving operational excellence, and facilitating continuous improvement.

Understanding Workflow Automation

Workflow automation refers to the use of technology and tools to automate and optimize the flow of tasks, activities, and information within a business process. It involves automating repetitive and manual tasks, enforcing business rules, and streamlining the sequence of activities to improve efficiency and productivity. Workflow automation can be applied to various processes across different industries and sectors, such as procurement, HR onboarding, customer support, and financial approvals.

Key components of workflow automation:

1. Process mapping and design: The first step in workflow automation is mapping out the steps, dependencies, and decision points of the process. This involves identifying the tasks, their sequence, and the inputs/outputs associated with each step. Process modeling tools, such as flowcharts or BPMN diagrams, are used to visualize and design the workflow.
2. Task automation: Workflow automation involves automating individual tasks or activities within the process. This can be achieved through the use of software, scripts, or robotic process automation (RPA) tools that mimic human actions to perform tasks such as data entry, document processing and automation, or system integrations. Automated tasks can be triggered based on predefined conditions or events.
3. Business rules and decision logic: Workflow automation incorporates predefined business rules and decision logic to guide the flow of the process. Business rules engines or decision management systems are used to define and manage these rules. The automation system follows these rules to make decisions, route tasks, or escalate issues within the workflow.
4. Integration and connectivity: Workflow automation often requires integration with various systems, databases, or external services. Integration capabilities enable the exchange of data, retrieval of information, or triggering actions between different applications. This ensures seamless connectivity and facilitates the flow of information within the automated workflow.
5. Notifications and alerts: Workflow automation systems provide notifications and alerts to relevant stakeholders to keep them informed about the progress of tasks, pending approvals, or changes in the workflow. These notifications can be sent via email, mobile notifications, or integrated into collaboration tools, ensuring timely communication and reducing delays.

Benefits of workflow automation:

1. Increased productivity and efficiency: Automation reduces manual effort and speeds up the execution of tasks, leading to improved productivity. By automating repetitive and time-consuming activities, employees can focus on more value-added work, resulting in enhanced efficiency and output.
2. Improved accuracy and quality: Automation minimizes human errors and inconsistencies associated with manual processes. By enforcing predefined rules and validations, workflow automation ensures consistent and accurate execution of tasks, leading to improved data quality and reduced rework.
3. Faster turnaround time: Automated workflows reduce cycle times by eliminating delays caused by manual handoffs or waiting for approvals. Tasks can be automatically routed to the right individuals or departments, enabling faster processing and reducing overall turnaround time.
4. Enhanced visibility and transparency: Workflow automation provides real-time visibility into the status and progress of tasks and processes. Stakeholders can easily track the workflow, identify bottlenecks or inefficiencies, and take proactive measures to address them. Increased transparency enables better decision-making, collaboration, and monitoring of performance metrics.
5. Scalability and flexibility: Automated workflows can handle larger volumes of work without requiring additional resources. As the workload increases, automation allows for scaling up without compromising quality or speed. Moreover, automated workflows can be easily modified or adapted to accommodate process changes, variations, or new requirements, enabling organizational agility.

Key Differences between BPM and Workflow Automation

BPM (Business Process Management) and workflow automation are related but distinct concepts within the realm of process optimization. While they share similarities, there are key differences between the two:

Scope and Focus:

• BPM: BPM is a comprehensive discipline that encompasses the strategic and operational aspects of managing business processes. It involves analyzing, modeling, optimizing, and monitoring processes across the organization. BPM focuses on process improvement, aligning processes with business objectives, and driving continuous improvement.
  • Workflow Automation: Workflow automation, on the other hand, specifically deals with automating and streamlining the flow of tasks, activities, and information within a single process or workflow. It involves automating repetitive and manual tasks, enforcing rules, and improving the efficiency of a specific process.

Level of Automation:

• BPM: BPM does involve automation as one of its components, but it extends beyond just automation. It encompasses various activities such as process modeling, analysis, optimization, and monitoring. Automation is used strategically to improve process efficiency, but it is not the sole focus.
  • Workflow Automation: Workflow automation is primarily focused on automating the execution of tasks and activities within a specific process. It aims to eliminate manual effort, reduce errors, and streamline the sequence of tasks. Automation tools and technologies play a central role in achieving these objectives.

Organizational Impact:

• BPM: BPM has a broader impact on the organization as it involves analyzing and optimizing processes across different functions, departments, and systems. It considers the organizational structure, culture, and strategic goals. BPM initiatives often require organizational buy-in, and involvement from various stakeholders, and may involve significant process changes.
  • Workflow Automation: Workflow automation typically has a more localized impact within a specific process or department. It focuses on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of that particular workflow. While it can have positive ripple effects, its impact is often limited to the specific area where automation is implemented.

Process Design and Control:

• BPM: BPM emphasizes process design, modeling, and control. It involves mapping out end-to-end processes, identifying process owners, defining process metrics, and establishing governance and control mechanisms. BPM seeks to optimize processes by considering the entire process lifecycle and ensuring compliance with standards and regulations.
  • Workflow Automation: Workflow automation primarily deals with the automation of predefined tasks and activities within a process. It focuses on the execution of tasks, routing them to the appropriate individuals, and ensuring the smooth flow of work. While it may include some level of process design, its main objective is to automate and streamline specific activities.

BPM is a holistic approach to managing and optimizing processes throughout an organization, while workflow automation specifically targets the automation and improvement of a particular process or workflow. BPM encompasses a broader range of activities and considerations, while workflow automation concentrates on task-level automation and efficiency gains within a specific process.Top of FormTop of Form

Conclusion

BPM and workflow automation both have their place in large and small organizations alike. BPM is all-encompassing while workflow automation is more targeted.

Use this guide to determine which one suits your needs the best. For example, if you’re looking to streamline a specific process, workflow automation may be the best choice. If you’re looking to optimize a large portion of your organization then BPM may be best.

Whatever the case, let me know what you think in the comments, and don’t forget to share.