What are Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (BOAT)?
BOAT, short for Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies, is a class of software that automates and orchestrates end-to-end business processes and systems, ensuring smooth operations.
BOAT platforms seamlessly blend core capabilities such as data discovery and design, enterprise connectivity, orchestration, and task management. They also integrate process intelligence, embedded AI, cloud technologies, high availability, security, governance, and adaptive experience technologies.
Additionally, leading BOAT platforms support case management with decision intelligence, autonomous and intelligent orchestration of tasks powered by generative AI, and intelligent, unstructured data ingestion.
Prior to BOAT, organizations had to stitch together these process orchestration and automation solutions together. These platforms emerged to consolidate these technologies, easing IT overhead and reducing potential cost.
Let's dive into how BOAT blends various tech tools to create a cohesive and robust automation ecosystem.
Business orchestration capabilities
Successful automation isn’t just about building and buying the latest tech tools; it’s about blending them into a high-performance process automation machine. That’s where orchestration comes into play, empowering IT leaders to manage the overlap and convergence of process automation technologies across the enterprise. Here’s a checklist of critical capabilities provided by orchestration tools:
Modularity: The right orchestration platforms allow developers to build pieces of functionality using modular, low-code components. This enables businesses to design and deploy workflows with flexible, interchangeable components. Like Lego blocks, each module can be easily added, removed, or rearranged without affecting the entire system. This modularity allows for quick adaptation to changes, streamlined processes, and seamless updates, ensuring efficient and scalable operations.
Discovery and insight: Advanced orchestration tools provide comprehensive analytics and monitoring capabilities. For example, process mining and process intelligence technologies dig deep into business operations, uncovering hidden patterns and inefficiencies. These tools offer insights into process performance and bottlenecks, enabling you to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven process optimization decisions.
Enterprise connectivity: Orchestration tools integrate disparate systems, applications, and data sources to ensure smooth communication and data flow across the enterprise. This can be accomplished using integrated APIs, robotic process automation (RPA), and data fabric for underlying data sources. By unifying various technologies and data points, orchestration tools eliminate silos, enhance collaboration, and provide a holistic view of the business.
Embedded AI: Incorporating AI into a BOAT platform helps organizations make smarter decisions and automate complex processes. AI enhances operational responsiveness and bolsters business resilience.
In the next section, we’ll explore the essential tools that make business orchestration a game-changing capability for IT leaders.
The essential capabilities of BOAT platforms
Business process orchestration is a management approach that connects workflows, technology, and people into end-to-end automated processes. It provides a 360-degree view of workflows, speeds up processes, and eliminates manual data entry through tools like robotic process automation (RPA), intelligent document processing (IDP), and artificial intelligence (AI).
Essential business orchestration technologies:
RPA: RPA automates repetitive, rule-based tasks, acting like a digital workforce that operates 24/7. These bots reduce human error, increase efficiency, and free employees to focus on more strategic activities, ensuring consistency and reliability in business processes.
Microservices: A microservices architecture breaks down applications into smaller, independent services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled individually. This approach enhances modularity, allows for faster updates, and ensures that each service can operate independently, improving business operations' overall agility and scalability.
Infrastructure: This is the backbone of effective business orchestration, providing the necessary computing power, storage, and networking capabilities. It ensures that all orchestration tools and platforms run smoothly, supporting the seamless execution of automated processes and workflows.
API management: API management solutions oversee the lifecycle of APIs, ensuring seamless integration and connectivity between software components. These tools provide the means for designing, publishing, securing, monitoring, and analyzing APIs, facilitating efficient and secure communication between different systems and services.
Task management: These orchestration tools manage human tasks, ensuring manual interventions are efficiently integrated into automated workflows. These tools assign, monitor, and track human tasks, ensuring they are seamlessly integrated with automated processes.
Data management: Effective data management is crucial for business orchestration. These tools ensure data is accurately captured, stored, and processed, providing real-time insights and supporting data-driven decision-making. A data fabric is the best data management option for organizations to build applications with a 360-degree view of their data and real-time insight into their operations. They enable data integration from various sources, ensuring consistency and availability across the enterprise. Plus, data fabric reduces the need to migrate data, simplifying overhead and data maintenance.
These digital technologies form the foundation of a robust business orchestration framework. IT leaders can ensure efficient, scalable, and adaptable processes by leveraging bots, microservices, solid infrastructure, API management, task management, and data management. Let's talk about why orchestration matters and how it drives operational excellence and competitive advantage.
Why orchestration matters
Adding an orchestration layer ensures that enterprise automation tools work together harmoniously, creating a seamless and efficient operational ecosystem.
Orchestrating the processes that build and sell your company’s products and services is crucial for optimizing efficiency and effectiveness. However, many digital transformation efforts focus on automating processes without analyzing existing inefficiencies, limiting process automation's potential.
This lack of process transparency often stems from the proliferation of data and systems that IT must manage. However, tools like Appian’s Process HQ can identify inefficient processes and bottlenecks, increase visibility, and provide insights for continuous improvement.
Next, let's delve into the essential business automation tools that drive these orchestration efforts. Understanding these tools is crucial for leveraging the full potential of BOAT solutions.
Business automation powers the BOAT ecosystem
Process automation revolutionizes how businesses operate and compete. However, while investments in isolated task automation using robotic process automation, AI, and other technologies have led to some efficiency gains, IT leaders still need more tools to orchestrate broader, end-to-end process automation. Faced with numerous disconnected islands of automation, organizations need help managing increasingly complex automation challenges across customer and employee journeys.
That’s where BOAT platforms shine. From workflow orchestration tools that build core, end-to-end processes in a low-code visual interface to native automation capabilities like IDP, RPA, and business rules, leading platforms blend the capabilities of the following digital tools to drive effective and comprehensive end-to-end automation:
Robotic Process Automation (RPA): RPA tools support modular automation and AI integration. These tools automate repetitive, rule-based tasks, reducing human error and freeing up employees for more strategic activities. RPA is like having a digital workforce that operates 24/7 without fatigue, ensuring efficiency and consistency in processes.
Intelligent automation (IA): This technology combines RPA with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to handle more sophisticated tasks and provide advanced insights. Intelligent automation can process unstructured data, learn from it, and make decisions based on patterns and trends, elevating automation from simple task execution to complex problem-solving. It is indispensable for tasks like fraud detection and customer service.
Business process automation (BPA): BPA tools automate processes across digital channels, enhancing customer experience and operational efficiency. They streamline end-to-end workflows, ensuring flawless execution of digital processes. Integrating case management technology enables BPA solutions to handle complex tasks requiring human judgment, improving the management of customer interactions and internal cases. This capability is crucial for businesses to maintain a competitive edge in the digital era, where seamless digital interactions and efficient case management are essential.
Low-code: Platforms like Appian enable modular and adaptable workflow automation with minimal coding. These tools empower business users to create and modify workflows without extensive coding work, accelerating digital transformation and innovation.
Workflow automation tools: Specific solutions for automating workflows within applications help streamline internal processes. These tools ensure workflows are executed efficiently and consistently, integrating various business applications to provide a cohesive operational framework.
These automation tools deliver unprecedented levels of efficiency and adaptability. Yet, implementing a seamless end-to-end automation strategy has its challenges, which brings us to the key challenges and considerations involved in adopting a BOAT approach.
Challenges and considerations of adopting BOAT
Implementation complexity: Integrating and automating processes can be complicated and require upfront investments. Businesses must carefully plan and execute the implementation of automation technologies to avoid disruptions. This involves mapping out current processes, identifying areas for automation, and ensuring seamless integration with existing systems.
Change management: Train employees on new, automated workflows. Successful automation requires buy-in from employees who will be using the latest systems. Comprehensive training programs are essential to help staff understand and adapt to automated workflows, ensuring smooth transitions and minimizing resistance to change.
Security requirements: Like any new technology, automation can potentially introduce new vulnerabilities, requiring robust security measures to combat. Automation systems can become cyber attack targets as they handle critical business processes and data. Implementing robust security protocols and regularly updating systems to address vulnerabilities is crucial to protecting sensitive information and maintaining business integrity. Additionally, make sure to choose BOAT platforms with strong, defense-in-depth security practices and extensive, rigorous compliance certifications.
Maintenance: Automated systems need regular updates and maintenance to stay effective. Continuous monitoring and maintenance of automation technologies are necessary to ensure they operate efficiently and adapt to changing business needs. This involves updating software, addressing technical issues, and refining processes to maintain optimal performance and avoid downtime.
Overcoming these challenges is crucial for fully realizing the benefits of BOAT. But what’s the playbook for evaluating BOAT solutions and selecting the right platform to propel your business automation strategy forward.
Tips for evaluating BOAT platforms
Choosing the right BOAT platform is crucial for process automation and orchestration success. Business automation technologies like RPA, BPA, and other platforms often overlap. That’s why it’s essential to prioritize a general-purpose automation platform centered around orchestration, connectivity, and AI. Here’s a checklist to help you select the best BOAT solution for your organization:
Deliver on core needs: Ensure the platform can address at least 80% of your automation use cases. This guarantees the platform meets your essential requirements and provides immediate value to your organization.
Build vs. Buy vs. Blend: Evaluate whether to build, buy, or blend solutions based on your organization's capabilities and resources. Consider the cost, time, and expertise needed for each option to make an informed decision.
Composability: Prioritize platforms that offer composability to avoid vendor lock-ins and maintain flexibility. Ensure the platform can integrate with existing systems and adapt to future technological changes seamlessly.
Case Management: Ensure the platform includes robust case management capabilities. This allows for the efficient handling of complex, dynamic tasks requiring human judgment, improving management of customer interactions.
Future alignment: Align your selection with your future enterprise applications architecture to ensure seamless integration and scalability. This approach ensures the platform supports long-term growth and evolving business needs.
By following these tips and understanding the capabilities and vendor landscape of the emerging BOAT market, you can choose a platform that addresses your current requirements and supports your long-term, strategic goals.
