What is BPA? Business Process Analytics, Explained

Operational inefficiencies quietly drain time and money from organizations every day.

The real problem is identifying where those leaks are actually happening – across systems and teams that are difficult to see end-to-end.

That’s where business process analytics (BPA) comes in. By applying data analysis to workflows, BPA helps leaders identify bottlenecks, eliminate waste, and optimize operations without compromising service quality. This article explains what business process analytics is, how it improves business performance, and the technology that supports it.

Understanding business process analytics

Business processes are repeatable workflows that structure a sequence of tasks to deliver a consistent outcome.

For example, when a customer places an order with an e-commerce business, it triggers a series of steps that culminate in the correct product being delivered on time: order receipt, payment processing, inventory allocation, fulfillment, shipping, and follow-up. Each step ensures the right item gets to the right customer.

To eliminate waste, improve efficiency, and boost the customer experience, you need to understand how each step of the process actually works. Business process analytics uses data and analytical tools to show where work slows down, breaks, or costs more than it should – it doesn’t fix the process itself.

(BPA is not the same as data analytics. Understand the 4 types of data analytics every business needs.)

BPA in Practice

A clear example of business process analytics in practice comes from TK Elevator (TKE), a global manufacturer of elevators and escalators. TKE used BPA to examine its credit and rebill processes, to understand how work actually flowed through the system.

The analysis identified 232 distinct workflow paths, with 60% of instances falling into just two of them. This showed that, although the process was well established, it had accumulated unnecessary bloat over time, significantly slowing execution.

BPA also surfaced an approval step that added 2 to 3.5 days to each transaction without materially reducing risk and revealed that around 10% of requests were missing required information and had to be abandoned partway through the process.

These insights enabled TKE to streamline the workflow, reduce cycle time, and eliminate unnecessary effort – with an estimated savings of more than 2,000 manager hours per year.

(BPA is not the same as data analytics. Understand the 4 types of data analytics every business needs.)

Business process analytics vs. business process analysis: what’s the difference?

Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, business process analysis and business process analytics serve different purposes:

• Business process analytics uses data, statistical methods, and software tools to track, measure, and optimize processes. The goal is to generate actionable insights that improve business performance.
• Business process analysis focuses on understanding and reviewing a specific process to identify potential improvements.

Think of it this way: business process analysis is typically a manual, investigative exercise performed once or periodically. Business process analytics, on the other hand, is continuous, data-driven, and relies on automated data collection and statistical methods to support ongoing optimization.

(Related reading: business process automation.)

Why business process analytics matters

Business process analytics isn’t just for large enterprises with huge budgets. It’s increasingly essential for organizations of all sizes that want to remain competitive as processes become more automated and interconnected.

By understanding how processes perform, organizations can reduce costs, improve customer experience, and make better strategic decisions. Key benefits include:

Improves efficiency

Analyzing processes helps uncover bottlenecks and inefficiencies that slow operations. With this insight, teams can make targeted changes that shorten turnaround times and increase productivity.

Informs decision-making

Business process analytics provides evidence-based insights that support strategic decisions. By understanding how processes perform in practice, leaders can make decisions that better align with business goals.

Reduces costs

Inefficiencies such as redundant approvals, manual handoffs, and delays directly affect your bottom line. BPA helps pinpoint how long each step takes and assign relevant costs to it, making it easier to identify where savings are possible.

Enhances customer satisfaction

Streamlined processes lead to faster delivery, more consistent quality, and better service. Together, these improvements improve overall customer satisfaction.

Offers a competitive advantage

Organizations that continuously understand and improve their processes can adapt more quickly to change, respond more quickly to issues, and deliver better overall service than competitors who rely on static or manual reviews.

Taken together, these benefits compound over time as processes improve and data becomes more reliable.

The role of technology in business process analytics

Technology plays a central role in enabling real-time insights into business processes. Several types of tools are particularly important.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are increasingly used to support BPA by automating analysis and identifying patterns at scale. As AI spend ramps up dramatically – Menlo reports a 3.2x increase between 2024 and 2025, from $11.5bn to $37bn – AI’s capabilities will become even more ingrained in process optimization:

• Predictive analysis forecasts future outcomes based on historical data.
• Anomaly detection flags unusual behavior that may indicate bottlenecks, failures, or fraud.
• Process automation and process mining can analyze millions of event logs generated by each workflow to flag inefficiencies and inconsistent execution.
• Real-time monitoring identifies issues the moment they occur.

Additionally, with these tools, AI can help your business customize its processes based on individual customer behavior and interaction, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Cloud computing

Cloud computing enables processing and analyzing large volumes of data without investing in on-premises infrastructure. By accessing computing resources on demand, BPA can scale with an organization’s needs, regardless of size or budget.

Business intelligence and analytics platforms

Business intelligence and analytics platforms turn raw process data into dashboards, visualizations, and reports. By consolidating data from logs, databases, APIs, and system metrics, these tools provide one centralized view of process performance.

Implementing business process analytics: a step-by-step approach

Step 1. Identify and define the business process

Start by selecting a single process to optimize – tackling everything at once is overwhelming.

Strong candidates typically have high business impact, known pain points, are resource-intensive, or areas where you know you lag behind competitors. Processes such as order fulfillment, customer onboarding, or invoice approval are often ideal starting points, as they are reasonably straightforward but have a big impact.

BPA is less effective for infrequent, highly variable work where outcomes depend more on judgment than repeatable steps – work that looks different each time it’s performed. These processes are harder to measure or capture data for, so they offer fewer opportunities for data-backed optimization.

At the same time, it’s usually best to avoid highly complex, dependency-heavy processes early on, as issues can cascade through the workflow, making root causes harder to isolate.

Once a process is selected, define what success looks like – such as faster turnaround times, lower costs, fewer errors, or improved customer satisfaction. Clear goals make it easier to measure impact.

Step 2. Collect and prepare data

Gather relevant data for each step of the process, including timing, costs, error rates, and outcomes.

The quality of BPA depends on the quality of the data more than anything else. Inconsistent records, disconnected systems, or incomplete data will lead to unreliable insights. Investing time in data preparation – such as cleaning, normalization, and handling missing values – is critical.

(**Read about ETL& data normalization.)

Step 3: Analyze and visualize

Apply analytical methods that match your objectives. This can range from understanding how long work typically takes and where delays occur, to anticipating where bottlenecks or failures are likely to emerge as volumes or conditions change.

Generate reports to highlight performance trends and identify where improvements are most needed. The goal is not analysis for its own sake, but clarity about which parts of the process are limiting performance and why.

Step 4: Implement changes and monitor

Use insights from the analysis to make targeted improvements.

BPA isn’t a once-and-done process. Monitoring results over time shows whether changes are working and where additional fixes are needed.

Improving operations with business process analytics

Business process analytics makes it easier for organizations to spot and react to inefficiencies. By focusing on simplification and incremental improvement, teams can streamline operations and address the issues that hurt productivity the most.

FAQs about Business Process Analytics