Business Process as a Service

What Does Business Process as a Service Mean?

Business process as a service (BPaaS) is a term for a specific kind of web-delivered or cloud hosting service that benefits an enterprise by assisting with business objectives. In the general sense, a business process is simply a task that must be completed to benefit business operations. Using the term BPaaS implies that the business process is being automated through a remote delivery model.

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Techopedia Explains Business Process as a Service

The term BPaaS folds into a number of ideas based on earlier types of web-delivered or cloud hosted services. One of the earliest was software as a service (SaaS). In providing software as a service, vendors found they could let clients access software over the internet, rather than selling it in boxes in conventional retail stores and charging licensing fees for setup. This kind of “menu option” software purchasing became popular with businesses, and vendors started to improve on what they could offer.

Now, vendors offer all sorts of services delivered through cloud technologies and the global IP network, including items like platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and IT as a service (ITaaS). Business process as a service often involves putting several of these options together to completely automate a business process. For a concrete example of BPaaS, think about certain kinds of tasks that businesses may need done on a regular basis. One example is transaction management. Credit card transactions may need to be recorded in a central database, or otherwise handled or evaluated. If a vendor can offer a company that same task performed and delivered through cloud hosted networks, that would be an example of BPaaS.

In delivering business automation remotely, vendors can help companies to plan even more efficiency and versatility into their operations. This is the kind of idea that BPaaS services address.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…