There are a lot of great ways that you can use analytics technology to create a more successful business. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising that companies around the world are expected to spend over $107 billion on big data by 2027.
There are a lot of tools that can help you execute your big data strategy. BPA software applications can be especially helpful for data-driven businesses.
Are you pondering whether to implement a bpa software or a business process management (BPM) platform for transforming your current business processes and operational workflows? This guide will come in handy. Below, we highlight the key differences between BPA and BPM solutions, point out their specific use cases, and provide a list of particular considerations to pay attention to when selecting the right software.
Key differences between BPA and BPM
Although closely interconnected, BPA tools and BPM software serve distinct purposes. BPA solutions are designed to mechanize manual, high-volume tasks and minimize human labor while bpm platform is employed to comprehensively assess and manage various aspects of business processes. Typically, these aspects include process analysis and design, process implementation and execution, monitoring, key performance indicator (KPI) measurement, continuous improvement, and more.
When it comes to revealing the ultimate goals of these contending yet complementary tools, BPA strives to improve efficiency, bolster overall productivity, and curtail operational expenses by fulfilling time-intensive tasks. Unlike BPA software, BPM platforms comprise more all-encompassing purposes, ensuring the alignment of organizational processes with the most forward-looking goals. These goals can include optimized and error-free processes across all organizational departments, increased profitability, elevated employee and customer satisfaction, improved agility and compliance, and others. You can achieve these goals a lot more easily when you use BPA along with other data analytics tools.
BPA and BPM: use case scenarios for Data-Driven Businesses
There are a lot of great ways to integrate BPA software into a data strategy. We talked about some great data analytics platforms worth looking into, but BPA programs offer some other unique benefits.
To enable maximum performance of BPA or BPM tools in existing business workflows, each of the solutions must be leveraged in specific use cases. Even though these applications often overlap in practice, the most effective uses of BPA and BPM are as follows:
| BPA use cases | BPM use cases |
| HR processes: employee onboarding and offboarding, time-off requests, payroll calculations, time management, etc. | Healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, retail and e-commerce processes: clinical processes, predictive maintenance, automated warehousing, personalized recommendations, administrative tasks, financial operations, regulatory compliance, and more. |
| Procurement and supply chain management procedures: supplier and customer onboarding and offboarding, order processing, inventory management, contract management, and more. | Educational processes: workflow automation, administrative activities, student enrollment, personalized communication, etc. |
| Finance and accounting operations: invoice and payroll processing, compliance management, financial reporting, budgeting, forecasting, etc. | IT departments: case management, project management, helpdesk support, data analytics, network access requests, and the like. |
| Financial planning and analysis processes: automating price quotes and budget approvals. | Customer service: customer request processing, case management, application processing, follow-up activities, gathering customer feedback, and more. |
| Sales and marketing processes: lead generation and nurturing, customer segmentation, personalization, customer relationship management, reporting and analytics, etc. | Legal and compliance processes: legal review, contract negotiation and approval, etc. |
You need to take all of these factors into consideration if you are planning on using BPA to make improvements to your data strategy. You need to make these decisions carefully.
Considerations for choosing BPA and BPM software
Are you looking to implement a business process automation tool or BPM software? Then seek the following criteria in the preferred tool:
| Criteria | BPA | BPM |
| Alignment with current business needs | ✓ | ✓ |
| Excellent automation and integration capabilities with existing systems | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vendor support and training | ✓ | ✓ |
| Analytics and performance monitoring features | ✓ | ✓ |
| A seamless user experience (UX) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Ease of implementation and use | ✓ | ✓ |
| Impeccable process modeling and design | — | ✓ |
| Flexibility and scalability | — | ✓ |
| Compliance and security | — | ✓ |
| A focus on long-term goals | — | ✓ |
| Improved collaboration and communication | — | ✓ |
Are BPA and BPM on the same page?
It goes without saying that both BPA and business process management software are inherently intertwined to redefine the success of an organization. But, if you need to incorporate only one tool, you know how to do so with the help of our guide!