RPA and BPMN: A brief study case

Showing the power of this combination to boost business processes

Hello fellows! It's been some time since our first article, where we talked about what is "Nice to know, before start with RPA…", some tips to know what is good to do with RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and what is not, and where RPA technology is going forward.

This time we're here to talk a little about the relationship between RPA and BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation). It may seem obvious, but not at all. Some projects use another standard for process modeling; there even are some cases when the processes are not documented. BPMN and RPA together make a powerful strategy to increase the success of your RPAs and keep moving forward in the business process transformation through automation. This article will show the advantages of combining RPA and BPMN in practice.

About RPA and BPMN

To make an introduction, we would like to remember a little about what are the official definitions for the two topics that we will be discussing today:

RPA is a powerful technology that simulates almost any kind of human action over a software user interface, but almost deleting two of the most common human weaknesses: the reduced operative capacity and the high error risk; and is specially useful when there’s not an API resource available (commonly in legacy software). Born from the well known BPM (Business Process Management) and the need to manage all the business processes. Once the companies achieve the big milestone of managing them, the next step is to optimize.

On the other side,

BPMN is a well known modeling process diagram developed by OMG group which provides a standard for modeling process flows, easy to understand to different stakeholders: developers, customers, CEOs and Business Analysts. BPMN provides the organizations with the ability to communicate these procedures in a standard manner. Furthermore, the graphical notation will facilitate the understanding of the performance collaborations and business transactions between the organizations.

Why combine RPA technology with the BPMN standard?

In the definition phase of process automation, it is essential to know the behavior of the current process, what improvements are if we implement RPA, and the alternative paths to control how the RPA will behave in each of those. In this scenario, BPMN appears as an option for a graphical representation of how the process works and for identifying possible automation points. To summarize, the advantages of combining RPA and BPMN are:

• Using process documentation with BPMN is a great way to identify strong candidates for automation or even detect which process steps are ideal to start the automation (in this case, the process will be automated in phases).
• You have powerful technical tools such as BPMS (Business Process Management Software), which you can integrate with RPA technologies for automating repetitive and standard tasks directly from the business flow design.
• The process definition is easier to understand for any stakeholder, more than when the process is documented in plain text. In addition, it is easier to show the points where automation will improve the business process.
• The automation design lets you quickly identify alternative paths and handle possible errors.
• Additional needs (non-related to the business process), such as process notifications and log generation, might be identified and included in the automation.

Two RPA Business Cases

In the following sections, we will talk about two different business cases where RPA technology was implemented, showing how they were analyzed and assessed in terms of implementation viability and which were the final results. Each case has A/B testing proving the importance of including the BPMN standard in the analysis process.

Process #1: RPA for automating an Accounting Records Load

This business process is responsible for uploading Accounting Records over an internal ERP. A summary of the process is described here:

1. Select an SFTP Directory and download the file.
2. Open the Google Sheet and validate that the required tabs exist along with their corresponding headers.
3. Validate business rules in multiple fields to ensure the information was correctly completed and save each tab in .txt format.
4. Open the ERP, select the corresponding menu and upload the file.
5. Wait for the successful upload message, get the verification number from the ERP, and send a notification through email to the business process owner with this information. In case of failure, send an error notification email to the business process owner.

In the following table, we can see the results of the viability assessment for Process 1, which shows a priori, a high success probability in the RPA implementation:

Table 1. Quantitative analysis for process 1.

Process #2: RPA for automating an Onboarding Process

This business process is responsible for performing activities that welcome a new person, specifically for one of the company sites. A summary of the process is as follows:

1. Select a specific Google Drive link, open the Google sheet and validate two search criteria to get the new income.
2. For the resulting rows, get the information of multiple columns to perform the following steps.
3. Click over the email distribution list link and add the new incomes using the email extracted from the Google Sheet.
4. Open the Gmail account, select an email template, add the recipient, edit the name of the new income, and send the email.
5. Open Slack, select the specific channel, add the new members and write the welcoming message.
6. Send a notification through email to report the results of the process.

As well in Process 1, for Process 2 we have the table that shows the results of the implementation viability assessment:

Table 2. Quantitative analysis for process 2.

In contrast with the previous process, in this case, BPMN was implemented:

Image 1. Onboarding Process: Generic BPMN without full details to protect the business process confidentiality.

Even though it isn't a strict rule, this brief study case shows a significant advantage in the process analyzed, where BPMN implementation was included, over the process that doesn't have the activity flow design. Both processes were highly complex, with a considerable number of operational scenarios. Still, both were equally likely to succeed with RPA implementation due to their repetitive processes with no variability between their executions and with a medium-high time of stability besides having structured data inputs.

However, the addition of BPMN as part of the Process 2 analysis allowed the functional and technical design team to detect all the existent paths for it and analyze the critical points of the process where there are decision branches to control the bot's response. While in Process 2 the number of operational scenarios defined in the analysis was pretty accurate, during the automation of Process 1 we found at least ten operational scenarios that were not controlled in the RPA construction, causing a high rate of bugs, multiple control changes, more increased support workload than the expected and less benefit towards the final user.

Table 3. Results comparison table.

Recommended good practices

From the previous exercise, we have some tips that can help to have more successful RPA implementations because strengthening the analysis of business cases with the use of BPMN standard will provide a better understanding of the processes:

• Before implementing an RPA project, it is important to define a Process Management System in which all processes (or at least the ones to automate) have been documented.
• Never automate undocumented processes since it may imply reprocesses in the implementation. As you can see in the first case, there is not a clear path, it would increase the number of incidences, and it would not be easy to stabilize the process.
• The documentation of the current (AS IS) and desirable (TO BE) process is a "must" in the requirement artifacts in an RPA project. Use BPMN to model the diagram flow for both scenarios, and this will help you identify all the regular and exceptional paths in the "AS IS" and "TO BE" processes.
• Not always the complete process is a candidate for automation with RPA. Use the BPMN diagrams to color/highlight the steps candidates can implement with RPA. This will allow the team to focus on the activities to be automated and the path these activities follow.

Authors who participated in the article creation:

Check out the profile of some of the authors: Chabeli Sinisterra Pussey, Fredy Eduardo Carvajal, Ana Maria Ochoa, David Leonardo Galindo.