What is Business Process Automation Anyway?

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of business process automation in industry, highlighting current vendor capabilities, facets of automation, and future directions beyond Robotic Process Automation.

Contribution

It offers a detailed market analysis of 18 leading vendors, expanding understanding of automation capabilities beyond existing academic focus.

Findings

Identifies various facets of business process automation

Provides a comprehensive vendor capability overview

Highlights promising future automation directions

Abstract

Many organizations strive to increase the level of automation in their business processes. While automation historically was mainly concerned with automating physical labor, current automation efforts mostly focus on automation in a digital manner, thus targeting work that is related to the interaction between humans and computers. This type of automation, commonly referred to as business process automation, has many facets. Yet, academic literature mainly focuses on Robotic Process Automation, a specific automation capability. Recognizing that leading vendors offer automation capabilities going way beyond that, we use this paper to develop a detailed understanding of business process automation in industry. To this end, we conduct a structured market analysis of the 18 predominant vendors of business process automation solutions as identified by Gartner. As a result, we provide a comprehensive overview of the business process automation capabilities currently offered by industrial vendors. We show which types and facets of automation exist and which aspects represent promising directions for the future.