Business process automation (BPA) may be a second-tier IT topic behind trends like cloud computing, mobility and Big Data, but that may be set to change, as this comprehensive discipline combines those popular trends to produce tangible business value. CompTIA’s study on the state of business process automation sheds some light on practices and outlook for this area.
Automation begins with technology-enabled business processes. While large firms (500 or more employees) are the most likely to rely on technology, a healthy percentage of SMBs also use technology for processes such as expense reports, invoices or employee reviews.
Although technology use is fairly high, actual BPA strategies may be limited to a small set of tools. Over half of companies surveyed had familiarity with Sharepoint, Salesforce and eFax, but less than one-third of companies said they were familiar with tools that were more business-function specific, such as DocLink, Workday or Concur.
In addition, those tools that are in place appear to be offering some amount of business value, but not yet the optimal value. Across a range of business functions — including customer relationship management, content management and expense management — 30 to 40 percent of companies said BPA components were in place but needed improvement.
Some of the simplicity in BPA implementation may be tied to the fact that these efforts have been recent activity for many companies. Eighty-five percent of companies say that they have seen a significant or moderate increase in use of BPA technologies in the past two years. Moving forward, that momentum will continue; 88 percent of companies expect to see significant to moderate increases in the use of BPA technologies over the next two years.
The combination of familiarity with concepts, desire for improvement and intent to build out solutions makes business process automation an area with interesting potential. Solution providers with expertise in installing automation tools and linking tools together to enable an automated workflow should find success with clients aiming to increase their efficiency.
CompTIA’s “Trends in Workflow Automation and Communications” study is based on an online survey conducted in October 2013 of 500 technology or business professionals (end-users) in the U.S. The channel component was conducted in April 2013 among 500 IT channel companies. The complete report is available at no cost to CompTIA members who can access the file at www.comptia.org or by contacting research@comptia.org.
