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3 min read

What it is

See chapter 2 for specific use cases and client examples.

What makes it worth consideration

There are a lot of automation technologies out there. Here’s what makes our solution valuable:

• Get a full set of modular, integrated capabilities to help you start and scale your automation projects quickly. Our solution uses a complete set of enabling technologies to help you digitize and automate all types of work at speed and scale. Technologies include process mining and modeling, workflow orchestration, decision management, content services, document processing, RPA and digital labor and operational intelligence.
• Stop shopping around. The automation capabilities that make up the solution are considered industry-leading by analyst groups such as Forrester and Gartner. See chapter 5 for more details.
• Don't get locked into capabilities you don’t need. With our flexible purchasing model, you can start with one of the capabilities, such as task automation, and evolve from there.
• Deploy automation apps and services anywhere: your cloud, an IBM-managed cloud or on premises. IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation is a containerized, cloud-native solution certified on the market-leading Red Hat® OpenShift® platform. This provides workload portability across cloud environments. The IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation is also available as software as a service (SaaS), managed by IBM.
• Monitor and measure whether processes are improving across your operations because there is built on a common analytics layer.
• Get support from the global IBM Business Partner and services ecosystem. You can also engage with the IBM Garage™ teams to help define and quickly start your automation journey.
• Build a business case with proven ROI. IBM commissioned Forrester to examine the total economic impact enterprises may realize by implementing the IBM intelligent business automation software solution. The financial analysis found an ROI of 675% over a three-year benefit period and a payback on upfront costs of less than six months. You can use the report (PDF, 990 KB) as a framework to help you evaluate the potential financial impact of using the solution in your organization.

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5 min read

What you can do with it

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7 min read

How it works

Use these tiles to quickly navigate through the three subtopics of this chapter.

The IBM intelligent business automation solution is designed to help you digitize and automate different types of work at scale, as well as build and deploy digital employees to increase the efficiency of knowledge workers. This is done using one of the most comprehensive sets of automation capabilities in the market, supported by an analytics layer to collect, prepare and visualize operational data from across the solution. These capabilities work together to help you discover processes, apply AI insights and augment your workforce.

IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation

You can use the following core automation capabilities as you need them. Start with one, then expand to others. Learn more about each core capability:

In addition to automating with each of these capabilities individually, it’s possible to combine capabilities within a single use case. For example:

• Invoice entry: An RPA bot opens an email from a vendor, along with an attached PDF invoice. Data capture interprets the invoice and passes relevant fields back to the bot. Then, the bot logs into the invoice system and inputs the invoice data.
• Client onboarding: A client rep collects and documents client information. Capture and content capabilities read, process and manage the client documentation. A workflow is initiated to orchestrate new client approval steps involving both human and system tasks.
• Billing dispute: A customer service rep collects client dispute information. Decision automation auto-approves the billing dispute based on specific criteria. A workflow orchestrates the billing dispute resolution steps.

How you can apply operational intelligence

Derive AI insights from the embedded intelligence to improve operations across three areas:

1. Machine understanding:

• Extract unstructured data with greater reliability and accuracy, and without any coding or data science required.
• Visualize and measure KPIs with business-friendly dashboards.
• Speed the document classification process using deep-learning document vision skill.

2. Digital decisioning:

• Generate better recommendations and outcomes for rule-based decision automation by applying machine learning to historical results.
• Prioritize tasks to enable greater workflow efficiency.

3. Intelligent data gathering and analysis:

• Monitor automated operations in real time.
• Gather and normalize event data from automation applications or services for building machine learning models.
• Access insights, create KPIs and set up alerts using natural language query and conversational interfaces.

Revisit the use cases featured in chapter 2 here to learn how the built-in operational intelligence can help reduce the amount of work people need to do.

How to apply process mining

To unlock the true value of intelligent automation, you have to understand how your critical processes work — how they really flow, where time is spent and where your bottlenecks lie. Once you have a clear understanding of this, you can determine the ROI of automating key areas of your operations.

With IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation, you use historical data to apply process mining and dive deep into your business.

• Discover end-to-end processes using existing and historical data from event logs in information systems to capture a clear picture of your as-is state
• Identify opportunities for automation that will lead to the biggest overall process time and business efficiency improvements by applying data algorithms to event logs
• Calculate projected ROI of to-be processes with simulated initiatives and decide what to automate using our core automation capabilities
• Monitor and measure the true impact of changes, activities and performance against business goals and reanalyze for continuous improvement

You can generate and apply insights from process mining to address key areas of improvement such as KPIs, inefficiencies and errors.

To learn more about the process mining capability in IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation:

04

5 min read

Comparing it to
other solutions

Use these tiles to quickly navigate through the four subtopics of this chapter.

Top benefits of the IBM intelligent business automation software solution

• You have power. With the solution's full set of core, market-leading automation capabilities, you can manage more sophisticated processes, decisions, content and RPA bots. For instance, integrated content and predictive analytics capabilities mean you can support complex processes, such as fraud detection and patient care, and insights-gathering that spans your enterprise and information sources.
• You have flexibility. The IBM licensing model means you can start with a modest investment and grow — aligning your spending with your return. You pay for what you need, and have the flexibility to reallocate licenses to other capabilities in the future.
• You can apply AI to work. The solution embeds machine understanding, digital decisioning, and intelligent data gathering and analysis to reduce the amount of work that people need to do. For example, the deep-learning document vision skill enables you to significantly speed document classification compared with manual efforts.
• You're not locked in. Our industry-leading software is designed to be a modular, integrated solution using standards like BPMN — not just in process models but also in scripting and application composition. With our solution, you're not required to go all in. You're not locked into a proprietary solution that has a closed, restricted talent market and tools ecosystem, making it easier to use your existing hired talent.
• You have freedom. Deploy and run the solution in the environment of your choice. Run on any Kubernetes management system or run on one or more private or public clouds.
• You have independence. Maintain control over your strategy. Solution tools enable business and technology specialists, together with external partners, to implement agile approaches and collaborate on developing and managing solutions. Take initiative, make decisions and drive change instead of, say, a systems integrator.

Features Comparison

Use this table to identify the features and benefits of our intelligent business automation software solution that match your requirements. Compare the features and benefits of the IBM solution against other solutions you may be considering.

Value category	Compare these solution features and benefits	IBM intelligent business automation solution	Other solution under consideration
Completeness	Full set of integrated software capabilities to digitize and automate different types of work, from the simple to the complex. This includes process mining and modeling, workflow, decision management, content services, document processing and RPA.
	Tools for business users, IT developers and business analysts to rapidly develop apps.
Intelligence	Machine understanding for more reliable and accurate unstructured data extraction and faster document auto-classification.
	Digital decisioning for better rule-based decision automation and task prioritization.
	Intelligent data gathering and analysis that captures all events generated by the solution and aggregates them under key performance indicators for a real-time view of business operations.
Simplicity and speed	Low-code design tools to enable teams to build and change applications quicker. Business owners and subject matter experts can have a direct role in digitizing their business.
	Unified "operate experience” to govern, administer, monitor, scale and ensure reliability and compliance of platform componentry.
Visibility	Built-in operational analytics with business-friendly dashboards for a 360-degree view of operational performance and governance.
Quality	Core business automation capabilities considered "leading" or "strong" by top analyst groups such as Forrester and Gartner.
Flexibility	Simple, consistent licensing. Pay for what you need with flexibility to reallocate licenses to other capabilities. Buy new, exchange or trade-up from eligible standalone entitlements.
	No cloud vendor lock-in. Deploy and run anywhere—your cloud, IBM cloud, on-premises—to reduce IT ecosystem complexity and resources for implementation and maintenance.
	Migrate to existing runtimes without application changes or data migration.
Scalability	Deployment options that align with IT cloud strategy — SaaS, public cloud, private cloud, on-premises — and enable quick scaling from proof of concept to an enterprise roll-out.
	Rich, agile management and governance features to help manage change at scale over time.
Compliance	Apply built-in tools, customized reporting and audit trials to your automations.
Security	Full software stack support and ongoing security, compliance and version compatibility.
Services and support	Global services and partner communities to help build and manage automations on your chosen environment, wherever you are.
	Expert resources, such as IBM Garage, to help bring the best of automation innovation to your projects without disruptive change in products.
	Around-the-clock worldwide support.
Openness	Built on containers. Managed through leading Kubernetes management solutions, such as Red Hat OpenShift, for easier software deployment on any public or private cloud.
	Works wells with other solutions, products and systems. Extensible to support third-party toolkits. The capabilities provide REST APIs for interoperability.

Third-party evaluations of our software solution and capabilities

Solutions

• IBM was recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Software For Digital Process Automation For Deep Deployments, Q2 2019.
• An IBM automation software customer experiences ROI of 675% and a payback on upfront costs of less than six months from going live. Read this IBM commissioned Forrester study (PDF, 990 KB) to understand the total economic impact of the IBM automation software solution.

Individual capabilities of the business automation solution

Five FAQs

1. Why a comprehensive intelligent business automation solution over a point solution?

Generally speaking, with a point solution, you can select from a wide variety of vendors. But you act as integrator when you buy different automation applications from different companies. The products don’t always work well with each other, and there’s often no underlying foundation for things like analytics.

With a comprehensive solution, you get an integrated set of core capabilities with which you can build virtually any automation solution, depending on the completeness of the capabilities. However, you depend on a single vendor for support across the solution.

So, it depends on what works for you.

With IBM intelligent business automation you get a full set of core automation capabilities with the ability to optimize any unused capacity. When you have a variety of point solutions, you can only optimize the capacity within each point solution. Also, as capabilities are added to our solution, it’s easier to expand — compared to a point solution.

Finally, if you’re a new customer of our solution, you get flexibility without much difference in cost. You don’t need to buy something new to try something new. And if you already have entitlements, you can easily extend them with complementary capabilities within the solution. For example, if you have workflow, you can add sophisticated digital decisioning capabilities.

Read more about how a comprehensive solution helps avoid the hidden costs of point solutions.

2. Is the IBM solution too heavyweight?

It might seem that way, since this solution includes a full set of core automation capabilities under a single license. But you only deploy what you need, when you need it.

Designed to be built on standards like BPMN with service guarantees, the IBM solution is well suited for high-scale enterprise production use and for clients looking for a scalable IT automation solution.

Additionally, if you need automation that requires lower upfront investment and IT management, you can deploy the modular capabilities.

Whatever deployment method you choose, the IBM flexible licensing model means you can start with a modest investment and grow. You can use license credit on one capability, then expand or shift license usage as your needs change.

Note: Watch out for companies selling “simple” apps as they can be more complex, proprietary and costly if you need to create custom apps.

3. How easily can I integrate my current applications with the IBM intelligent business automation solution?

Our commitment to open standards ensures well-defined interfaces so your existing systems can call into our core capabilities and our core capabilities can call out to other external systems through existing APIs.

4. How long does it take to deploy?

Since deployment typically involves the installation of software and the building and deployment of applications, we address both here:

• Installing: If using the SaaS version of the solution, software can be provisioned and accessed in a matter of hours or days depending on the capabilities needed.
• Building and deploying applications: Every deployment is unique but, generally speaking, it takes about 10 – 12 weeks in an iterative development cycle to have a functional application deployed. With reusable templates for use cases, low-code and no-code tools, it is possible to reduce this time and shift ownership to business users.

5. Does the IBM solution provide any applications?

Applications are not provided with the IBM offering. The IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation provides a full set of software in one single solution. This includes the operating system (RHEL) and operation and governance layer with Red Hat OpenShift, to the automation capability layer. It's intended to help you design, build and run automation applications and services on any cloud.

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10 min read

Trying and buying it

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5 min read

Confirming fitness