A Business Guide To Process

Automation For CTOs

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 A Business Guide To Process Automation For CTOs

Contents Guide Updated: March 2023

Business Process Automation 1

The Problem It Solves 1
Type Of Business Process Automation 2
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) 2
Business Process Management (BPM) 3
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Automation 3
Workflow Automation 3
Integration Automation 3
Low-Code/No-Code Automation 3
Advantages Of Business Process Automation 4
Increased Efficiency 4
Reduced Costs 4
Delightful Customer Experiences 4
Better Compliance 4
Better Control 4
Faster Turnaround 5
Disadvantages Of Business Process Automation 5
Initial Investment/Capital Outlay 5
Business Process Automation Platforms 6
Process Automation To The Rescue 7
Summary 8
 A Business Guide To Process Automation For CTOs

Digital transformation, largely enabled by the commoditization of massive compute resources by

cloud computing vendors has changed the way applications are developed, deployed and main-
tained. It has allowed for much faster application development iterations by organisations to meet
ever changing and increasingly complex customer expectations.

The customised digital experiences pioneered by the likes of Amazon and Netflix has created a
defacto standard of customer experience that all organisations aspire to in order to acquire and
maintain customers. The COVID-19 pandemic also created a paradigm shift to more digital economic
activities across the globe. The result of all these factors is a fluid change in customer expecta-
tions, and consequently, how fast organisations can turnaround applications to meet such dynamic
expectations.

Business Process Automation has gained popularity over the past years due to its ability to help
organisations churn out faster and better applications to meet and exceed customer expectations.
This guide takes a look at the need for adoption of business process automation in organisations
that have not done so yet. We start by defining what business process automation is, the types of
process automations, the advantages and disadvantages and the available tools to help you incor-
porate process automation into a Jakarta EE application.

Business Process Automation

Business Process Automation (BPA) can be loosely defined as the use of technology to streamline
and simplify repetitive business processes. These business processes can be anything from the
simplest like data entry in a simple form to the most complex like the issuing of an insurance policy.
BPA then, is the adoption of technologies that help to simplify and improve the efficiency with which
an organisation carries out tasks that are part of its value proposition delivery.

The Problem It Solves

As an example, the issuing of an insurance policy by an insurance company can be a very complex
task, depending on the legal jurisdiction of the company. The full process of issuing a policy from
client application could entail
• validation of client data,
• the creation of the client within the system of the insurance company,
• validation of credit worthiness of the client through an external system,
• checking if the client is on some form of sanction list,
• calculate the premium payable,
• create the policy documents
• and finally notify the client through email or post with the created docs.

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The above steps in the issuance of an insurance policy can be visualised in the follow step or pro-
cess flow.

Each step in the process could have a number of conditions. For instance what happens if the client
name does not match that of some backing document they submitted as part of the application
process? What happens if there is a failure during the creation of the client within the system? Also
the insurance company needs to make a call to an external service for the validation of the client's
credit worthiness, what happens if that system is down?

Which parts of the above steps can be concluded independently and which parts should depend on
others? Also how should approval processes be handled? For instance if the insured sum exceeds a
certain amount, then a superior would need to approve the application. How should that be handled?

These are all problems that can arise from the simple task of issuing an insurance policy to a client.
Every step in the above image can have something go wrong that will require remedial action. In a
traditional setting, carrying out all these tasks in a sequential manner by clerks can be time con-
suming and error prone.

Business Process Automation allows a company to take these steps and automate them, putting
in possible remedial actions ahead of time for possible regressions. We will come back to how pro-
cess automation can help answer the above questions. For now, after defining BPA and identifying
a possible problem it can help solve, let us look at the types of process automation.

Type Of Business Process Automation

There are a myriad of different BPA options out there. And new ones keep coming up thanks to the
wide availability of artificial intelligence services and tools. However, for the purposes of this guide,
we will look at six popular types.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robot Process Automation or RPA is the process of using software bots (or robots implemented in
software only, with no hardware/physical part) to carry out a set of tasks that accomplish a given
objective. RPA is used to automate business tasks that have a clearly defined set of steps and can
be carried out fully or partially without much human intervention. Bots are well suited to carrying out
such tasks at great speed and efficiency. RPA based tasks are mostly rules based, are repeated at

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regular intervals or have specific activities that trigger them, have clearly defined inputs and outputs
and should generally be high in volume.

Business Process Management (BPM)

Business Process Management or BPM according to Gartner “is a discipline that uses various meth-
ods to discover, model, analyse, measure, improve and optimise business processes.” BPM is a kind
of meta automation where an organisation analyses its processes to identify which of them can be
automated to deliver better efficiency and reduce costs.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Automation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Automation involves using machine learning algorithms to automate deci-
sion-making processes, such as customer service chatbots or fraud detection. AI automation most
of the time encompasses RPA and BPM as well.

Workflow Automation
Workflow Automation involves the use of software to complete tasks without much human interven-
tion. Workflow automation helps reduce costs and errors by automating as many tasks as possible.

Integration Automation
This type of automation involves integrating different software systems and applications to stream-
line processes and eliminate data silos.

Low-Code/No-Code Automation
Low-code is a rapid application development (RAD) methodology that uses code generation through
visual design tools. The user specifies what they want by dragging and dropping predefined building
blocks on a form of canvas and having the development tool write the code. An example of a low
code tool is an application for developing business process workflows. No-code is an automation
that is completely hands off for the users. An example of no-code application would be a content
management system for creating a website.

These are the most common forms of business process automation that are available to an organ-
isation. Of course these are not mutually exclusive you can tell from the descriptions of some of
them. In practice, an organisation will adopt a combination of two or more automation types to suit
its needs. With the discussion of automation types out of the way, let us look at some advantages
an organisation can derive from automating its business processes.

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Advantages Of Business Process Automation

Business process automation is an important part of attaining greater profitability through the deliv-
ery of better customer experiences. The following are some key advantages of process automation.

Increased Efficiency
Automating mundane repetitive tasks makes the execution of them very efficient and time saving.
Automation brings about efficiency that helps free up the time of employees to better focus on parts
of the customer experience delivery activities that require human effort.

Reduced Costs
Automation can help reduce costs by delegating tasks that computers are well suited to carrying out
to computers. This can significantly reduce the cost of carrying out those tasks. The less humans
needed to carry out a task, the more economically efficient the organisation can carry out those
tasks at scale.

Delightful Customer Experiences

Automating business processes can help deliver delightful customer experiences through faster
turnaround, instant response to queries through automated bots and other automated customer
contact points. Process automation also helps an organisation deliver better products with less
defects because the process of product or service delivery is automated.

Better Compliance
All organisations operate within legal environments that all have some rules that must be complied
with. Process automation can help an organisation streamline and automate all the tasks needed
to be in compliance with the regulatory requirements. This can significantly protect an organisation
from hefty fines for falling afoul of laid down regulations.

Better Control
Process automation allows an organisation to have better control over core processes that deliver
value to customers. The better control and overview an organisation has over the tasks that deliver
its value proposition to customers, the better it can react and correct any deviations that arise in the
delivery of that value proposition.

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 A Business Guide To Process Automation For CTOs

Faster Turnaround
Business process automation generally allows an organisation to turnaround faster. The turnaround
could be the time it takes to deliver products, respond to customer requests, fix bugs or anything
that contributes to enhancing customer experiences. The more tasks automated, the better it can
deliver faster to customers.

Disadvantages Of Business Process

Automation
These are some of the advantages an organisation can attain by adopting business process automa-
tion. As with all things, process automation does come with its own challenges that should equally
be considered before adoption. Some of these challenges are.

Initial Investment/Capital Outlay

Depending on organisation size and age, the initial investment (in cash and non-cash) needed to
automate existing business processes can be very high. This means a lot of care, thought and planning
must go into the assessment and adoption of business process automation. This is to help mitigate
the risk of a failed process automation adoption exercise that can end up costing a significant amount
of money, time and human resources.

Business process automation, as discussed earlier in this guide, comes in different types. Some can
be carried out through existing resources. But most of the time, you will need a platform specifically
designed for creating, managing and running business processes. Next up, let us explore some
business process platform options in the Java ecosystem.

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Business Process Automation Platforms

As a Java developer, there are a number of business process automation platforms you can consider
in your adoption of process automation. In particular order or preference, these are
• Camunda
Camunda is an open source BPM platform that is standards based with a developer friendly
focus. Camunda allows you to build business processes that can be run by the Camunda
BPM engine either on-premise or on their cloud offering. The company also offers the freely
available Camunda modeller for modelling BPM processes.
• jBPM

jBPM is a free and open source BPM platform that can be run standalone or embedded into
Java applications. jBPM is typically used to build business applications. A business application
could be defined as a domain-specific solution (built with selected frameworks and capabil-
ities) that solves a particular business problem. To implement the business logic it leverages
capabilities from various frameworks like business processes, business rules and planning
constraints, but also persistence, messaging, transactions, etc.

• RunaWFE

RunaWFE is another business process management system which includes Workflow Engine,
Process Designer (Developer Studio) with Form Builder to work with data (input / display / out-
put) in tasks, Task Notification Client, and other components that provide end-user convenience.

• Modelio

Modelio is a modelling solution offering a wide range of functionality based on commonly used
standards for enterprise architecture, software development and systems engineering.

• Joget

Joget is an open source low-code/no-code application development, business process auto-

mation and workflow management platform. It has drag and drop builders for creating various
workflows.

The above is by no means an exhaustive list of business process automation tools out there. There
are a lot of them and I encourage you to explore them for yourself. For now, let us see how business
process automation can help us answer some of the questions in the insurance policy issue example
earlier.

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 A Business Guide To Process Automation For CTOs

Process Automation To The Rescue

In the steps to issue policy to a client, we saw in the initial workflow that a number of things could
go wrong in each step. How can process automation help answer or automatically remedy some of
the possible problems? First let us take a look at an updated version of the process workflow and
then discuss how process automation helps.

In this updated version of the workflow, a clerk starts the process of issuing an insurance policy.
The first logical step is to validate that all client data is correct. If not, the process engine truncates
the process. If all data is valid, the process then checks if the client already exists in the system. Of
course an insurance company can have a given client buy multiple policies. In that case after the
first policy, the client would exist in the database.

So the process checks as part of the validation if the client exists in the database, and then updates
process variables accordingly. The process engine uses this updated variable to decide if the client
needs to be created in the database or not. If the client does not exist, the process proceeds to create
them. However if the client is already in the database, then the whole client creation step is skipped.

In the next step, the process checks the credit worthiness of the client by making a call to an exter-
nal system and waiting for a response. If the client is not credit worthy according to some business
specific rules, then the process skips the remaining steps and goes straight to informing the client
about it. If the client is credit worthy, the process proceeds to check the sanctions list.

If the sanctions list returns a response that says the client is on a given sanctions list, then the pro-
cess again skips remaining steps and goes straight to notify the client. Again this is business and
regulatory environment specific. If the client is not on any sanctions list, then the process proceeds
to calculate the insurance premium.

If the calculated premium exceeds a predefined, business domain specific amount, then the pro-
cess process will create an approval task for a person with higher authority to approve. Only upon
approval will the process continue to create the policy documents which will then be emailed to the
client. If the premium amount does not need approval, the process skips the task and proceeds to
create policy docs to be sent to the client.

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The task to notify the client will have a number of input variables with which it will decide what to
send to the client. Input and out variables are at the heart of process automation because they allow
for dynamic behaviour at runtime with little to no human intervention. As you can see, the process
automatically “makes decisions” based on different input variables from each step. There is little
to no human interaction except for when an approval task is created. Which also serves to buttress
the point of automation helping to safeguard business interests.

Though a very watered down and simplified example, the above process diagram shows how pow-
erful process automation is and how much efficiency it can bring to an organisation. The insurance
policy example, in the real world, can be very complex. For example the process can be modelled to
have business rules or decision tables that it uses to decide if a policy application should be given a
discount. For example a rule can be set to give a certain premium discount amount to life insurance
policy applicants below a certain age.

Also a rule can be set for the process to automatically reject an application based on some business
specific criteria. Process automation is a very powerful way to automate many mundane, repetitive
and error prone business functions for better efficiency and delightful customer experiences. So if
you have not yet considered it, I encourage you to explore process automation if your business has
functions that can be automated.

Summary
In this guide, we explored business process automation and how it can help organisations deliver
better customer experiences in a digitally transformed business environment where customer expec-
tations are very fluid and sometimes unpredictable. We started by defining what business process
automation is, looked at some broad types of BPA, explored the advantages and challenges and
finally answered questions that we explored in the example for this guide using business process
automation. I hope this guide has given you a quick perspective on BPA and gotten you interested
in exploring the topic for your organisation!

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