CBPA
Communications-Based Process Automation (CBPA) solutions automate processes using communications technology to drive them. CBPA improves business processes by reducing delays and latency. The result is a more efficient, more automated closed-loop process, translating into significant ROI.
For example, a loan approval process may be delayed because the person assigned to providing an approval is away from the office. If the loan process were integrated into the organization's communications system, then the loan officer could review and approve from a PDA or email box.
If the person does not provide the necessary approval within a designated period of time then the business process could invoke aservice that would ‘notify’ the person that they need to do something. If the person does not ‘respond’ to the notification then it can be escalated to a manager in the same manner.
Key Technologies
The foundation for process automation in CBPA solutions are the communications technologies and practices that have been proven over decades in contact centers:
- Intelligent queuing and routing—The technology used to queue calls for delivery to the right agent with the right skills in the contact center provides the orderly prioritization and delivery of work to the right people in the organization.
- Presence—Work is delivered based on presence information that indiciates a person's availability.
- WFM—Demand forecasting and agent scheduling techniques ensure that sufficient personnel to handle the expected load.
- Recording—Capturing the communication method (calls, chats, emails, faxes) is extremely valuable when recording and reviewing communications between parties within a business process, especially for guideline adherence and compliance.
- Real-time monitoring—These capabilities provide managers and executives real-time visibility into every step of the work process, including statistics and alerts to errors and delays, and the ability to “coach” employees through processes as needed.
- VoIP—Voice over IP provides complete location-independence, enabling employees to participate in businesses processes from anywhere in the world.
CBPA can be applied horizontally across different lines of business and different industries. Virtually every business process is hampered by human latency due to delays in communication and collaboration. Some other use cases that CBPA can be applied to include: roadside assistance, stock portfolio alerts, personal information loss, claims processing, and inventory management.
Interaction Process Automation™ (IPA)
The first all-in-one process automation solution comes from the communications industry. That might seem strange at first, but when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. After all, processes are about people – even automated processes. People are required to communicate with customers, collect information, make decisions, and analyze results. What’s needed is a structured way to help those people work together efficiently in the fulfillment of various processes. You see, process automation doesn’t necessarily mean removing people from processes, but rather providing an automated means of moving work among them and making sure it gets done.
The pinnacle of automation in the communications realm is the corporate contact center. Such centers involve hundreds or even thousands of people handling phone calls, e-mails, faxes, text chats, and other interactions from a wide range of customers and covering a dizzying array of topics. Over the years, contact center technology has evolved sophisticated notions of queuing, skills-based routing, quality monitoring, and real-time supervision that allow contact centers to operate with incredible precision. And the most innovative company in that demanding world, Interactive Intelligence, has built on hundreds of man-years worth of research and development to revolutionize business process automation. Interaction Process Automation is a single software solution that gives you everything you need to automate your business processes.
The Hard ROI Benefits of CBPA
CBPA provides real and measurable benefits:
- Reduced Cost—Organizations can cut costs by reducing the time and resources involved in a given business process while eliminating latency and human error.
- Faster Process Completion—Process automation built upon a communications platform automatically keeps processes moving, participants communicating and work completing faster.
- Process automation enterprise wide—Unlike traditional business process automation and management solutions that only tackle one portion of your company’s overall process automation needs, CBPA solutions can be deployed enterprise wide for simple processes (time off requests, approvals, information gathering, etc.) or more complex processes (claims processing, order fulfillment, patient scheduling, etc.).