The impact of hyperautomation on business processes in SMEs

An in-depth understanding of the nature of business processes becomes ever more critical as organisations worldwide enter the Industry 4.0 and may achieve a new level of competitiveness and efficiency through hyperautomation. The aim of the article is to present a theoretical reflection on this topic and case studies to eliminate the cognitive gap observed in this area. The authors present the current knowledge on the challenges faced by business process management in the era of hyperautomation, especially from the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). They discuss theoretical aspects and, in the form of two case studies, present how hyperautomation reduces traditional business processes to tasks performed mainly automatically and increases the importance of dynamic business processes (BPs), which are difficult to copy as a source of competitive advantages. This is especially important in the case of SMEs, which usually do not use their size (effect of scale) as a competitive advantage, but rather, their knowledge, speed of adaptation, or flexibility of action.