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Business Process Management (BPM) &
Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Partners for
Operational Excellence?
Eric Tsui Knowledge Management and Innovation Research Centre
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Example of an order delivery process
An order delivery process As soon as an order is received, the wanted item(s) are packed and delivered to the customer. At the same time, an invoice is issued and send to the customer for payment.
Order
Pack
Ship Bill Customer
Why do we need to manage BPs?
• Foster a common understanding
• Consistency
• Alignment of operations with business objectives
• Conformance / Compliance
• Compare and improve (as planned, compare with past data, industry averages, identify improvements)
• Report / Traceability
• Predictability
• Scalability
• Support change
4
Is BPM a must to implement?
An order delivery process As soon as an order is received, the wanted item(s) are packed and delivered to the customer. At the same time, an invoice is issued and send to the customer for payment.
Order
Pack
Ship Bill Customer
BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT
Process
Identification
BPM Lifecycle
Monitoring and
Measurement of
Performance
Map and
Analyze As-Is
Process
Design To-Be
Procesess
Implement
Process
&
Set metrics
Phase 1 Map, Analyse & Design
2
Phase 2 Implement & Improve
1
• Identify
• Design
• Model/Simulate
• Collaborate
• Automation
• Measurements
• Benchmarking
• Visualisation
• Continuous
improvement
Definition of BPM
BPM is an umbrella term
Business Process Management
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(Source: T. Davenport, Havard Management Update, Nov 2002.)
Types of knowledge workers
Business Context & Organisational Capabilities
(Source: R.T. Burlton)
Resource-based view
of a firm
A business process often involves
• Actors (people, systems) to perform a set of activities, manually or automatically, or a combination
• An activity can be a computation, processing/consolidation/redirection of data and/or information
• Decision(s) which can be made by human or computer
• Upon certain condition(s) being met, the state of an activity may be altered
• (If applicable) Stakeholder(s) from one or more business units, clients, partners, consumers and other external parties
• (Most likely) Involvement of IT system(s)
• The retrieval, flow & generation of new data, information & knowledge
BPM-related assets (Source: J. Boots, BPM boots on the ground, 2012)
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RPA & BPM in action - Hong Kong ID card replacement
RPA tools need to handle increasingly complex tasks
• Check
• Capture (multi-sources)
• File
• Share (Email)
• Transform
• Route
• Data Input
• Record
• Validation • Compare • Calculate • Key-fill • Analytics • Security Trace
• Learn • Analyse • Discover • Detect • Recommend • Summarise
Basic Operation
Rule-based Artificial Intelligence
Maturity Model for process tools
RPA vendors at different levels
Major benefits of RPA
• Fast deployment
• High consistency
• Accuracy
• Compliance & digital trail
• Higher productivity
• Scalability
• Lowering cost?
What to look for in RPA tools?
• Capabilities / Features (especially on functions, interaction with peripheral devices, decision making logic, import/export of deployed scripts)
• Easy to use, fast to learn and deploy
• Standards (not proprietary but industry-wide, universal)
• Dashboard to show individual/overall performance, highlight area(s) needed attention, exceptions
• Self-monitoring, benchmarking, predictive capabilities etc (via a Cloud service)
• Interface with, or integrated into a BPMS
Current status and expected adoption of RPA tools
• RPA technology is probably only at 1% of its ultimate capabilities*
• RPA frees up 40% of employees' time to work on other tasks RPA is set to grow by 60% by 2020
• 55% of executives plan to use RPA in the future**
** Cognizant Inc.
Robotic process automation is best suited to apply to clerical data handling, re-purposing, re-keying or republishing activities that:
• can be mimicked by technologies that are script based
• use if-then conditional logic or employ artificial intelligence
• (unlike BPM) tasks that involve small numbers of users that would be uneconomical to automate using traditional IT
When to consider RPA?
When to consider RPA? (cont.)
• Tasks that do not vary every time they occur
• Access to structured data and data-driven decisions
• Well-documented, agreed or followed process
• Error-prone if carried out by human
• Volume?
Examples of RPA in F&A
(Source: Ernst & Young)
Starting a RPA …
1. Start small, simple, pilot first, build a Proof of Concept prototype
2. Extend from or link up with a BPM project
• RPA or
• BPM+RPA or
• BPR+RPA
RPA Benchmarking Report 2017
Business Process Management (BPM) &
Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Partners for
Operational Excellence?
Eric Tsui Knowledge Management and Innovation Research Centre
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University