Business Process as a Service (BPaaS)

BPaaS 101: All you need to know

When utilising a service, if you are not managing or are not aware of the databases, networking, or middleware, you are most probably using cloud-based Business Process as a Service offering. BPaaS improves your business processes and builds an enterprise architecture that is agile and adapts to fast-changing environments. Some of the common examples of businesses already using BPaaS include:

• eBay’s usage of BPaaS to deliver its e-auction service
• PayPal’s usage of BPaaS for its online payments, loans, and accounts
• Google’s usage of cloud-delivered BPaaS for internet and website searches

BPaaS often connects technologies such as Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and IT as a Service (ITaaS) to completely automate business processes. As an example, BPaaS could handle all credit card transactions of a business through cloud-hosted networks instead of businesses manually handling them or storing them in a central database.

By handling business automation remotely, companies could achieve even more efficiency and versatility in their operations.*

What makes a good BPaaS platform?

The BPaaS model is a service-oriented one, with well-defined interfaces to optimise service delivery and use. Broadly, BPaaS should achieve the following:

• Sit on top of other cloud services such as SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.
• Be configurable based on process requirements.
• Have the necessary APIs to connect to related services.
• Support multiple languages and deployment environments.
• Be able to handle upscaling to hundreds or even thousands of customers.
• Align with the service-level agreements (SLAs) and operations with larger business outcomes of the client.
• Proactively and continuously measure the progress of an operation rather than at the end of a period.
• Define objective measures to provide high-quality service.
• Proactively set the targets for the service provider to eliminate the watermelon effect.
• Be agile enough to leverage technology and business needs without renegotiating the terms with the client.
• Encourage and facilitate improved performance year on year.

BPaaS and watermelon effect

Watermelon effect occurs when all the SLAs are met from the service provider’s point of view, but the client is still dissatisfied with the outcomes. It means that the service levels are not adhering to the client’s needs. The watermelon effect is an analogy implying that SLAs are ‘green’ (all requirements met) to the service provider, but ‘red’ (dissatisfactory) to the client at the time of delivery. BPaaS offers a compelling solution to this problem.

An effective SLA should align the service provider’s operational decisions with the client’s business requirements. It should also provide a quantitative analysis of the outcomes. Outcome-based proactive end-to-end services have become fundamental and have replaced individual parameters such as mean time to respond. With a BPaaS solution, the gap between the interpretation of SLAs can be bridged owing to its real-time reporting to the client.

What is the difference between BPaaS and SaaS?

While SaaS delivers software over the internet, BPaaS provides a layer above that, including complete process lifecycle management. This includes design, implementation, delivery, optimisation, and transformation. BPaaS offers several advantages over SaaS such as:

• Pay-per-use model: Pay for the process only when you use it, not as a fixed monthly subscription.
• Focuses on core competencies: Every business has unique core competencies based on which it produces and delivers the service.
• Enhanced expertise: BPaaS upscales the quality and speed of delivery.
• Global versus local maximisation: BPaaS optimises the process as a whole where the outcome matters.

Voice-enabled intelligent devices that interact with humans need to use natural language training that is well annotated. Read this case study to know how an American technology company used the services provided by Infosys BPM to enhance its voice annotations with an efficiency of 120% for their devices.

How can Infosys BPM help?

Infosys BPM approaches your solutions with a highly credible experience, innovation, and deep automation insights. To unlock immense value for your organisation, Infosys BPM offers the following services:

• Accounts Payable on Cloud (APoC)
• AI-enabled Annotation Services
• Spend Analytics
• Digital Analytics
• Fraud Analytics
• Carbon Footprint Analytics

Infosys BPM provides an AI-based portfolio of BPaaS solutions for a fully managed business outcome–based model and delivers hyper-productivity and immersive experience.
*For organisations on the digital transformation journey, agility is key in responding to a rapidly changing technology and business landscape. Now more than ever, it is crucial to deliver and exceed organizational expectations with a robust digital mindset backed by innovation. Enabling businesses to sense, learn, respond, and evolve like a living organism, will be imperative for business excellence going forward. A comprehensive yet modular suite of services is doing exactly that. Equipping organizations with intuitive decision-making automatically at scale, actionable insights based on real-time solutions, anytime/anywhere experience, and in-depth data visibility across functions leading to hyper-productivity, Live Enterprise is building connected organisations that are innovating collaboratively for the future.