Bonitasoft and UiPath are further collaborating to bring together the best elements of Business Process Management and Robotic Process Automation into a more intelligent platform for efficient and automated workflows.
Bonitasoft is a leading provider of BPM and business automation. UiPath, a top RPA software company.
The latest iteration of the partnership, in effect since last year, looks to delivers a seamless integrated platform that provides “full end-to-end business process automation,” according to both companies.
In specific, the solution uses native UiPath connectors included in the Bonita BPM-based application platform. In addition, workflow apps built on the Bonitasoft-UiPath platform can assign responsibilities of repetitive tasks to software robots and automate integration with outside systems – even those not accessible via APIs.
Using the UiPath Studio, organizations can design a sequence of tasks which would have been performed by a user and delegate that to a software robot. Such robots can now launch new business processes, and interact with existing ones, in Bonita.
Speaking at the launch of the new platform, Miguel Valdes Faura, Bonitasoft CEO said:
"In 2018 we started gaining a sense of how people and robot assistants can work together. More is coming. People need to get used to collaborating with robot automation, which is at once a new technical tool, a way to tame the tedium of bureaucracy and a whole new way of working. . . In 2019, I expect to see the world of BPM evolve to better integrate the growing robotic workforce into the coordination of humans, systems, and workflow. Our partnership with UiPath is leading the way.”
For UiPath’s part, the company’s vice president for product & technology alliance management David Marcus said in a statement. “This capability enables end-to-end process automation including robot exception management and complex decision-making by humans where the process is managed by the Bonita platform. These native UiPath activities now enable UiPath customers to easily interact with Bonitasoft workflows without the need to write code.”
The Bonitasoft / UiPath will be offered as a new open source platform, which aims to automate processes end-to-end. It will offer flexibility by supporting the delegation of repetitive task sequences to a digital workforce of software robots. While maintaining the ability to support more complex decision-making by humans. Exception management will be a powerful capability, even offering an automated technology to mitigate between the two approaches.
The Bonitasoft / UiPath integration aims to help customers tackle many IT and business-related tasks:
- Reduce operating costs though automation of complex but routine tasks allows employees to focus on innovation initiatives, to generate results – and revenue – sooner;
- Automate back-end processing with a combined approach of RPA (best for systems without APIs) and BPM (appropriate for systems that have APIs);
- Create highly personalized customer experiences by designing and connecting seamless user interfaces, processes and business data;
- Increase customer satisfaction with smoother, faster processes behind applications means customers have a better customer experience.
With an end-to-end approach, the solution looks to help companies launch smart business processes and workflow apps, as well as automate repetitive tasks – especially those that may not require worker intervention. For example:
To launch business processes users would employ UiPath’s visual and highly intuitive Studio to design the sequence of tasks, normally performed by a user that will be delegated to a robot with perfect accuracy. They can also allow UiPath robots to launch new business processes and interact with existing ones in Bonita. Users further manage exceptions, user interactions and unstructured process execution with Bonita.
To delegate sequences of repetitive tasks to UiPath robots, users can easily call UiPath robots from Bonita’s business processes and applications (using connectors and user interfaces). This allows them to automate integration with existing systems that are not accessible via APIs. To further the reach, users can also connect with UiPath’s Orchestrator server to interact with the robots in your network.
Over the years, both BPM and RPA offer different unique features and benefits to an organization.
While BPM supports the full cycle of process and decision: design, implementation, execution, monitoring, and optimization, create enterprise-grade applications that connect user interfaces and business processes for better user experiences. RPA automates repetitive rules-based tasks - typically performed by people - via the user interface, to manipulate data and applications just as a human would.
Today, at least one analyst sees merit in bringing BPM and RPA together under the BontiaSoft-UiPath alliance. Jason Bloomberg, president of digital transformation analyst firm Intellyx, said.
“By itself, robotic process automation is not enough to deal with changing applications or business requirements for processes. With the addition of a low-code BPM tool like Bonita, organizations can build really flexible, resilient automation, even when the underlying application doesn’t have an API.”
Bonitasoft and UiPath began collaboration on combining BPM and RPA for intelligent automation and workflow solutions in summer 2018.
