IT Process Automation (ITPA) is an approach to streamline IT operations through automated workflows. An analysis conducted by McKinsey at two financial services organizations revealed that a staggering 90% of IT departments were focused on inefficient and manual tasks such as testing, code-fixing, and maintenance. ITPA automates these kinds of inefficient, repetitive, and manual IT processes to improve operational efficiency and eliminate costly human errors.

In this article…

• What is business process automation (BPA)? 
• What kind of tasks and processes should be automated?
• Business process automation use cases and examples
• Why are businesses turning to BPA? Benefits and advantages 

What is business process automation (BPA)?

Business process automation (BPA) is the process of automating complex functions (beyond traditional data collection and record-keeping activities) with the help of digital technologies.

Let’s face it, organizational change is difficult. Business leaders who can take an innovative idea and push it forward to adoption within their organizations are hard to find, and they are often rewarded when successful.

Today’s colleges and universities require comprehensive data communication to be successful in supporting the needs of students, faculty, and other stakeholders. In an ideal situation, applications connect seamlessly with one another, but in reality, different software solutions were built to solve for different needs. As a result, they weren’t necessarily designed to share data. Yet, for innovative campus IT teams, achieving harmony among all these systems can be achieved with a smart digital integration strategy.

Recently, a bipartisan team of members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill that would promote equal access to academic opportunities, services, and materials for students with disabilities. The Accessible Instructional Materials in Higher Education Act, also known as the AIM HIGH Act, would create a commission to develop voluntary accessibility criteria for instructional materials and educational technology.

Modern institutions are realizing significant advantages from low code development, an approach to building software which allows non-developers to build applications in a visual, drag-and-drop environment with components for different types of functionality. Low-code platforms have enabled the rise of a business analyst support system who can direct application priorities by abstracting the typically complex coding tasks associated with programming by using reusable components. Innovative college and university IT teams are taking advantage of low-code platforms to improve process automation and derive significant ROI from their technology investments, and it’s changing how they build for the future.

“A student who is concerned for their personal safety cannot learn.”

The democratization of technology is completely reshaping business methods and the outcomes they seek to achieve. Helping organizations take advantage of this revolutionary shift in technology and business operations is low-code development. Low-code/no-code solutions, when leveraged properly, put users in positions to create applications that solve their immediate problems. By employing low-code capabilities that enable non-developers to connect various stakeholders and implement sophisticated functionality, users and teams create greater efficiency while business goals are achieved more accurately. Essentially, those closest to the problems can now have the greatest impact at solving those problems.

In order to organize and focus an organization’s efforts, and the people involved therein, business processes are developed. While the intention is to drive efficiency, issues of complexity and scale can creep in to derail their efforts. Even structured, disciplined organizations can get off track if they don’t adhere to the requirements they’ve built for their processes. To help maintain order, business process modeling and the ability to effectively build and manage parallel processes assists those tasked with managing processes. This results in more focused efforts, and acceleration toward target goals.