What is Digital Process Automation (DPA)?

Enterprises adopting Business Process Management (BPM) platform to drive cost reduction as their primary objective is a thing of the past. Now, the organizations are moving towards a customer-centric operating model with an overall digital transformation as their primary goal. Focus on digital transformation has urged organizations to build and deliver applications faster, focus on superior user experience, and drive innovation at the customer’s pace.

Digital Process Automation (DPA) is a set of tools and technologies that accelerates organization-wide digital transformation by bringing together people, processes, applications, devices, systems, and information. It uses rapid development tools to automate or partially automate tasks and processes that involve human interaction and span across multiple applications.

Since digital transformation requires access to systems and processes that are complex and mission-critical, a strong BPM will always be there at the core a modern and versatile Digital Process Automation Platform. It is because of this reason that DPA is often considered as the evolution of BPM.

What is the scope of DPA Platforms?

DPA platforms are increasingly used across industries to automate processes simple to complex process while also addressing data-centric needs of an organization. As a result, a complete DPA platform should be able to:

Handle complex and mission-critical use cases

DPA platforms having BPM at their core should be designed to handle sophisticated mission-critical processes that span across enterprises. With the growing business complexities, organizations need platforms that provide a wide array of functionalities including but not limited to, case management, complex decision and logic support, integrations, robotic process automation (RPA), content management, process optimization, document automation, embedded AI/ML, and many more

Deliver large number of digital applications that handle unique, less complex, and wide use cases

With digital being an imperative, organizations are also demanding larger number of simpler applications and workflows that can handle unique and situational requirements spanning across departments and teams. These tools should offer simple-to-use development experience along with governance capabilities that enable their adoption across a wider range of developer personas

Provide general-purpose low code capabilities

In addition to automating applications that involve critical processes and workflows, organizations are also looking to develop applications that are data-driven. As a result, organizations now expect DPA platforms to offer capabilities beyond workflows to develop modern user interfaces, web portals, mobile apps, conversational interfaces, and others. These platforms should also offer intuitive developer experience to a wide range of developer personas to rapidly deliver applications.

What to look for in a DPA platform?

Listed here are 14 key considerations for selecting an ideal Digital Process Automation Platform:

  • Low code development
  • Process modeling and orchestration
  • User interface designer (web portals and forms)
  • Complex rules and logic support
  • Dynamic case management
  • Data modeling and management
  • Robotic process automation
  • Content management
  • Analytics and process intelligence
  • Omni-channel customer engagement
  • Document automation
  • Integration capability with other systems
  • Scalability
  • Administrator features and role-based access control