Business process automation, or BPA is the use of technology components to substitute and/or support manual processes to manage information flow within an organization to lower costs, reduce risk, and increase client satisfaction.

Opposite to BPM, BPA states that until a process is automated, there is no real value in analysing and defining it, and that the cycle of business change is so rapid that there simply isn't time to define every process before choosing which ones to address with automation, and that delivering immediate benefits creates more value.