BPA and BPM: What's the Difference?

Posted by Christina James on October 26th, 2021

BPA (Business Process Automation) and BPM (Business Process Management) may come across as similar-sounding trendy acronyms, but they are not the same at all. However, they are indeed related and, in many ways, complementary to each other. Many businesses utilize BPA and BPM to eliminate bottlenecks and cut out unnecessary steps, leading to greater productivity.

In its essence, BPA and BPM are popular organizational methods that enterprises employ to streamline business operations. They are two distinctly different practices with similar goals: optimize your business processes and adding value to your workflow. However, they go about it differently. They may not be mutually exclusive, but they need to be implemented together to extract maximum benefits.

If you want to optimize your business processes and streamline your workflows to drive better efficiency, you need BPA and BPM. But what is the right way? Do we choose one over the other? Which one is better for your business? This article will demonstrate how both BPA and BPM complement each other and also at the same time, differ from each other. Let\'s begin with defining both BPA and BPM to understand them better.

What is Business Process Automation?

Simply put, BPA is an enterprise approach that employs automation to streamline and optimize work processes through technological solutions. They make repetitive and mundane daily tasks more accessible, allowing employees to attend to more pressing tasks. It reduces the number of individual tasks, which in turn leads to high productivity and efficiency.

With BPA, human errors and potential bottlenecks are substantially reduced as most tools and applications are developed with that goal in mind. Some areas of business where BPA can be implemented include operations management, file transfers, customer support, social media, and email management. Business Process Automation software automates such services easily and simplifies repetitive manual tasks to achieve gains in productivity, agility, and efficiency.

What is Business Process Management?

BPM software is also an organizational approach designed to manage multiple workflows. It may be similar to BPA on this account; however, BPM offers a systematic and comprehensive approach to achieve improved efficiency rather than automating a single process. Rather than depending on automation like BPA, BPM emphasizes designing, modeling, deploying, and monitoring processes.

The goal with BPM may be similar to BPA as it is closely connected to technology as well. However, BPM combines technology with human resources to attain maximum efficiency and evolve into a continuously improving system. It involves visualizing the steps, identifying areas to make improvements, and monitoring the success of workflows employed.

BPM vs. BPA: What\'s the Difference?

Before explaining their differences, it is essential to delve into their similarities. Both BPA and BPM are software that greatly aids business operations with the primary objective of optimizing them. It is interesting to note that BPA is an integral part and a subset of BPM. Most companies implement a BPMS (Business Process Management Suite) system that covers all the goals of a BPA and yet deal with stages of BPM such as implementation, monitoring, control, and refinement. Let\'s take a look at the differences now:

1. Objective: BPM focuses on the organization\'s operational model with the aim of continual end-to-end re-engineering that supports activities such as design, deployment, and maintenance. On the other hand, BPA uses technology to raise the level of productivity. With BPA, it is less about core processes and more about streamlining workflows through technology.

2. Scope: The scope of BPM is to alleviate the process with improved efficiency and optimization. At the same time, BPA works to enhance efficiency by technical means.

3. Time: The time needed for the execution of both software is drastically different. BPA does not require long hours to configure automation; however, BPM demands many hours to process the whole methodology.

4.  Implementation: The implementation process of BPA is much easier when compared to BPM. With BPM, it becomes more complex as you have to readjust your enterprise ideology. BPA adoption is more accessible as it often comes as software that you need to customize to suit your requirements.

5. Technology: This is one of the main differences between BPA and BPM: the importance of technology. BPM is not ruled by technology as it is only one of many elements that constitute it. On the other hand, BPA relies highly on technology as it uses technical solutions to automate manual tasks into automated tasks.

6. Impact: The impact of both practices on specific situations can be significantly varied. BPA always appears to have a seemingly lesser impact as it is less complex. However, even by doing so, BPA showcases more outstanding capabilities by massively improving the outcome by automating mundane operations.

These are the crucial differences between BPA and BPM. Now the question remains which is better and what to choose for your organization? Can they both work together? To get the maximum benefit from both, these practices need to be incorporated together. BPA tools cannot be used exclusively without BPM practices, and implementing BPM without automation tools is also short-sighted. Integrating both practices provides you with the best results, and both should be a priority for every enterprise.