Definition
A broader concept than workflow automation — automating end-to-end business processes (order-to-cash, hire-to-retire) across multiple systems and teams.
Why it matters
BPA matters to an owner when the pain is no longer one task but a whole process that spans people and software — say, everything from a signed order to a paid invoice. Tackling it can remove the bottleneck where work waits on a specific person and reduce the errors that creep in when data is retyped between systems. The failure mode is scope: automating a broken or poorly understood process just makes the mess run faster, so the process usually needs to be mapped and cleaned up before it's worth automating end to end.