In 2015, Deutsche Telekom started to apply robotic process automation (RPA), one of many tools in the whole process automation space. Over time the company developed an army of more than 2,500 RPA “bots” in a huge success story. But they also had to learn that even if RPA has “process automation” in its name, it does not really automate processes, but tasks.
This is a common misunderstanding that is rooted in the complexity of the process automation landscape, where tool categories are multidimensional and difficult to capture. In this article I will answer the question I get asked almost every day (what is process automation?) and provide an overview of the process automation space.
For the sake of brevity, I will narrow the scope of process automation to the following:
- Business processes and digital processes: These are the typical business processes you know from most companies (like customer onboarding, claim settlement, loan origination,…