Digital process automation

Digital process automation (DPA) is the name the process automation market carried through the late 2010s, popularised chiefly by Forrester as the successor to business process management suites: the same discipline — executable processes, human tasks, integration, low-code change — repositioned around digital experience rather than back-office efficiency. Many requirement documents and much of the market's institutional memory still use it.

The category has largely been superseded by the current generation of names: Gartner folded the space into business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT), Everest Group evaluates process orchestration products, QKS Group retains iBPMS. If you are carrying DPA requirements into an evaluation today, they translate almost one-to-one into those categories — the platforms on the shortlists are largely the same. What changed is the frontier the new names emphasise: end-to-end orchestration across systems and, increasingly, the governance of AI agents inside the process.