Understanding the process automation landscape

In 2015, Deutsche Telekom began to utilize robotic approach automation (RPA), 1 of many resources in the entire approach automation place. Over time the business created an army of extra than 2,five hundred RPA “bots” in a large achievements story. But they also had to understand that even if RPA has “process automation” in its identify, it does not truly automate procedures, but tasks.

This is a popular misunderstanding that is rooted in the complexity of the approach automation landscape, wherever software categories are multidimensional and difficult to capture. In this write-up I will respond to the concern I get requested pretty much each and every working day (what is approach automation?) and give an overview of the approach automation place.

For the sake of brevity, I will slim the scope of approach automation to the following:

• Business procedures and digital procedures: These are the usual organization procedures you know from most businesses (like consumer onboarding, claim settlement, financial loan origination, get success), frequently spanning a few of diverse units finish to finish. The term “digital process” seems favorable these days, since the term “business process” is frequently regarded previous faculty.
• Integration procedures: Processes that concentration on the integration of units or products and services, for case in point to orchestrate microservices or assurance consistency when undertaking distant interaction.

Other approach automation use instances are explicitly out of scope:

• Processes amongst untrusted participants (such as independent businesses): This is a opportunity setting for blockchain.
• Infrastructure provisioning or IT automation (e.g. Ansible, Terraform): This is a area on its have with specialised resources.
• Ongoing integration/steady shipping (e.g. Jenkins, GitHub Workflows): CI/CD build pipelines are conventional procedures in program engineering that are automated by conventional program.
• Web of points (e.g. Node Crimson): IoT use instances are frequently tackled with focused tooling that I would categorize as process automation. For simplicity, I will leave this discussion out of scope for this write-up.

Camunda

Now, there are two really diverse forms of digital or integration procedures:

• Regular procedures: Each time your business doesn’t want to differentiate by means of the approach you can get commercial off-the-shelf program (COTS) like ERP, CRM, or HR units. In this situation, you commonly adapt your performing methods to the program.
• Tailor-made procedures: Some procedures are one of a kind to an corporation and since of that want to be tailor-made to the organization’s wants. Even though these procedures may possibly be the identical throughout diverse organizations (e.g. consumer on-boarding, get management, claim settlement), the way the corporation types and implements them is one of a kind and that can aid differentiate them in their sector. This permits organizations to be extra competitive, carry out their organization extra proficiently, minimize prices, enhance earnings, and transform into a extra digital organization.

There is some gray place in amongst these two categories when you customize your conventional program. But businesses have come to be extra and extra careful about undertaking this since of terrible experiences in the earlier.

The decision wants to be made independently for each and every approach you have in the business. And make sure you note: There is no correct or mistaken decision, except that your selection need to replicate your organization system. This write-up will concentration on tailor-made procedures.

Computer software to automate tailor-made procedures

Tailor-made procedures entail building program for approach automation. This is “software to build software” and can be roughly categorized in terms of two proportions (the nature of the resources, and the nature of the automation), as illustrated in the determine down below:

• System automation cares about automating the management circulation of the approach. It focuses on the sequence of tasks, not a one process as such. Activity automation automates one tasks in a approach, e.g. by integrating with some method.
• Developer-welcoming resources integrate frictionlessly in usual developer software stacks and journeys, but remedy specified complications for the developer that are distinct for approach automation (e.g. giving persistence of the approach state, graphical approach types, versioning of approach types). Developer-welcoming resources have to have program development to build a alternative. Lower-code resources allow non-developers to employ automation logic by giving refined graphical user interfaces and wizards, hiding complex particulars. This enables diverse roles to build methods, but also restrictions opportunities and demands proprietary know-how.

Camunda

With these two proportions, you can kind resources into the 4 big buckets explained in the up coming sections.

Lower-code process automation

Standard illustrations of small-code process automation contain software integration resources and RPA:

• Software integration resources (e.g. Zapier, IFTTT, Tray.io, Integromat): Software integration resources can execute steps when some celebration happens, for case in point inserting new knowledge into Airtable when a Trello card is done. Some of these resources increase over and above the boundary of process automation, also giving simple approach automation capabilities (e.g. tray.io.
• Robotic approach automation (RPA) resources (e.g. UiPath): RPA resources can automate tasks within just legacy units that do not give any API. This is about monitor scraping and simulating mouse or keyboard steps — type of like the Microsoft Workplace macro recorder on steroids.

Lower-code process automation resources are great for solving very simple integration complications in isolation and aid to clear away guide integration function, such as copying knowledge over from method A to method B. The quick organization benefit is the rationale that RPA is such a large achievements.

Even so, the automation scope must be very simple plenty of. And note that resulting methods are frequently untested, naive, and tricky to preserve. Lots of methods concentration on the joyful situation and overlook exceptional circumstances, which then hit unexpectedly in output, frequently heading unnoticed. This can make the methods brittle.

Developer-welcoming process automation

Automating one tasks in a developer-welcoming way commonly usually means leveraging not only program development but also the following:

• Integration frameworks (e.g. Apache Camel): Integration frameworks ease the career of a developer for specified tasks like interaction with the file method, messaging middleware, and other interface systems.
• Batch processing: The classical way to automate one tasks is with batch positions that utilize this process to each and every row in a specified dataset.
• Event-pushed architecture (EDA): A part can react to knowledge in a stream, without the need of being aware of wherever this knowledge is coming from. Popular tooling contains celebration brokers like Apache Kafka.

In distinction to small-code methods, developer-welcoming methods have to have program developers to be included. On the other hand, these developers are frequently really effective, as they can function in the stack recognised to them. Also, the resulting alternative is commonly extra secure and can remedy extra complicated complications.

Chaining process automations

Activity automation resources do not employ organization approach flows. Even so, a series of RPA bots, integration tasks, or celebration subscriptions may possibly sort a reasonable chain that implements a organization approach. This arrives with two difficulties. Very first, the approach circulation does not have its have persistence, building it tricky to ascertain the latest state of any occasion. Second, the management circulation logic is nowhere visible, building these architectures tricky to realize and preserve. (This is further explained in my converse, “Complex celebration flows in dispersed units.”)

There are two categories of resources that concentration on giving visibility into these chains of tasks:

• System mining resources: These solutions can aid you realize how procedures are actually automated working with a bunch of legacy resources. Ordinarily, this requires loading and examining a bunch of log documents from these units, getting correlations, and mapping the approach flows.
• System events monitoring resources: These resources allow people to map events to a approach model that is both delivered or uncovered on the fly. In distinction to approach mining, which is commonly based on log file analysis, approach events monitoring focuses on ingesting are living celebration streams, almost certainly produced by your celebration-pushed architecture.

Lower-code approach automation

System automation resources automate the management circulation of multi-stage procedures. Their concentration is significantly less on the one process and extra on the interaction amongst tasks. Processes are commonly very long-functioning in nature, which potential customers to their have demands for the software (persistence, operations tooling, and so on).

Lower-code resources goal to allow non-developers to employ these procedures. Standard software categories contain the following:

• Standard organization approach management suites (BPMS): Now called “intelligent” BPMS (iBPMS) by Gartner, resources in this place contain Pega and Appian.
• Integration system as a service (iPaaS) resources: iPaaS choices give simple opportunities to employ approach circulation logic. Illustrations contain Tray.io and System Avenue.
• Robotic approach automation (RPA) resources: RPA resources are from time to time abused to automate procedures. I strongly suggest in opposition to undertaking this, but I required to contain this alternative below for completeness.

Some of these resources can truly aid to automate very simple procedures. If you are a startup, you may possibly get alongside with a usual established of SaaS applications and then link them working with iPaaS methods adequately. But these methods drop small on complicated organization procedures or integration scenarios.

What I have frequently uncovered is that small-code solutions do not deliver on their assure and significantly less tech-savvy citizen developers are not able to employ main procedures on their own. As a outcome, businesses have to revert back again to their IT departments and request them to assign experienced program developers to end the career, which in transform are not effective with proprietary small-code stacks.

Developer-welcoming approach automation

There are resources that allow program developers to productively function on approach automation tasks:

• Developer-welcoming workflow engines, approach orchestrators, or microservice orchestrators, which occur in three sorts:
  • Open up resource item: Lightweight resources with enterprise editions becoming obtainable from a seller, such as Camunda, JBoss jBPM, or Flowable. Owning a lively open resource venture and local community in addition the ensures from a seller that is dependent on the earnings stream are a great blend.
  • SaaS: Lots of resources are delivered as a managed service, both SaaS-only, such as AWS Stage Functions or Google Workflow, or as a managed version of an present open resource item, like Camunda Cloud. Be aware that most of the cloud suppliers at this time concentration extra on integration and significantly less on organization procedures.
  • Open up resource venture: Even bigger organizations frequently build their have homegrown stack of resources, such as a workflow motor. Some of these resources are made obtainable underneath an open resource license, but without the need of any opportunities for assistance, ensures, or opportunities to affect the roadmap. These resources are opinionated about the natural environment, as they are constructed for 1 distinct corporation somewhat than the total sector. Nicely-recognised illustrations are Netflix Conductor and Uber Cadence, the latter becoming the foundation of the relatively new startup Temporal.
• Digital approach automation (DPA): A classification that generally extends the BPMS classification to concentrate on digital finish-to-finish procedures in the context of digital transformation. The boundaries of this wide classification are not sharp at all. Lots of sellers from all categories sketched below claim DPA for marketing explanations. Provided that digitalization and finish-to-finish approach automation are complicated in nature, I place this classification into developer-welcoming approach automation.