Every year, businesses waste billions on automating business processes that fail to deliver. They buy sophisticated Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools, implement AI agents, and deploy process orchestrators – only to discover they’ve automated broken processes or chosen the wrong technologies. The real problem isn’t the technology; it’s starting with technology instead of process design.
Where do you start? Start by defining the business goal you want to achieve with process automation. Once you have done this, identify and design the business process that will help you achieve your goal. The success of the automation project will depend on how well you and your team have designed the critical process and applied the right technology to enable your design. You will then be on the road to achieving breakthrough business performance.
Fortunately, there is a common process design standard that can help you develop a business-friendly specification of the process you want to automate, providing a bridge to the technical development of the automated process. This standard is Business Process Model and Notation 2.0 (BPMN 2.0). Once you have designed the process in BPMN 2.0, you will have a definition of the process that demystifies process automation. The BPMN 2.0 design will make your choice of application to automate obvious.
The benefits of using BPMN 2.0 for designing are:
- BPMN provides a standard business process modelling language that is readily understandable by all business stakeholders – the business process analysts who create the process diagram, the technical developers responsible for implementing business processes, and the business users who monitor and manage them.
- BPMN presents business processes in a business-friendly graphical form, allowing organisations to communicate workflows in a standard manner.
- BPMN models facilitate the analysis, improvement and simulation of processes essential for the design of automated processes.
- Automation platforms can directly execute business processes designed using BPMN.
Our Advanced Business Process Design for Automation course will help you develop the knowledge and skills to develop process designs that will help you achieve your business goals. We take a vendor-independent approach, enabling you to own your process automation projects by designing business processes that are essential to your success.
I am a senior consultant at Viewpoint, and I specialize in Business Analysis, Business Process Management; Business Process Modelling and Redesign, and Operations Management. I have also written multiple courses in my areas of specialisation.