Business Process Management Suites and Software
Business process management is an extensive business practice that sets the stage for the key business process automation that will maximize the efficiency of your business. There are a lot of different technology-based tools that are used in business process management, and that is what you will learn about in this section.
What Is A Business Process Management Suite?
According to Heflo, a Business Process Management Suite is “a set of automated tools that allows the business to be modeled, showing flow, rule use, data use, and more.”
This is a fully-integrated software suite that will define the infrastructure and overall architecture that will help define how all of your business automation and business process software will function. It is essentially the tool that houses all of the software that your business uses in business process management, as well as the software that will be used to ultimately automate the key business processes that can be automated. This software helps manage the BPM lifecycle in an accessible, observable, and measurable way to make sure that you are getting results. It comprises old tools that have been relied on for decades as well as new technology to help support your business in reaching its goals.
When you are looking for an ideal BPM suite for your business, you should make sure that it is going to be able to perform at the level that your business will need for it to and include the tools that are going to help propel your strategy. You want software that is actively being developed and serviced, and you want to focus on software suites that want to drive industries forward instead of just remain competitive among other products.
What Is Business Process Management Used For?
BPM Suites are sometimes referred to as BPM software, and they can carry out a lot of different functions. Several different software fields have come together over the years to become one packaged set of software that is used to enhance and implement business process management strategies. These include Business Rules Engines, Business Process Model and Notation, Business Activity Monitoring, and software that supports human workflow.
The software is used in a variety of ways to support your business, which you can read about below.
- Allow for stronger collaboration through in-application messaging and having a dedicated space for event details.
- Allow you to tailor the dashboard and end-user environment within the software based on the needs of your employees and business as a whole.
- Capture key performance indicators and communicate that information across your entire organization as needed, as well as create analytics based on the metrics that it collects.
- Allows you to automate the rules it will follow as it runs and integrate all of your content into one place for easy access and transparency.
- Create different forms and applications that your employees may need to support them in their roles.
- Allow you to discover processes and determine the overall scope of projects so that the processes needed to execute those projects can be clearly defined.
- Allow you to look at different models of processes to determine the best way to optimize them through automation or other means.
These are just some of the ways that BPM software can be used to help support your business. You may see other features when you are looking for types of software. There are on-premises and cloud-based BPM suites offered, and there are different sets of tools that may be unique to a particular software suite as well. Just like with any business software, there are hundreds of options that offer thousands of different tools across them all. The way that your business intends to use your BPM Suite will determine how you choose your suite and how you will make use of each of the tools that it encompasses.
There are also newer BPM Suites that are known as Intelligent Business Process Management Suites or iBPMS. This type of BPM software includes all of the typical tools but also integrates newer technology, such as social media, artificial intelligence, big data and analytics, and more. The benefit of this type of BPM is that they are typically offered in the Software as a Service (SaaS) model and are based in the cloud.
Top BPM/BPA Products in 2020
There are plenty of BPM Suites on the market and narrowing down which one will be best for your business can be complex. In light of that, here are some of the top-rated BPM products that are currently on the market.
- Nintex Process Platform: This platform is designed to help businesses manage, automate, and optimize their processes through a variety of tools. One of the things that makes this platform stand out is that it is designed to be easy to integrate with the tools you are already using.
- Appian: Appian is a cloud-based Robotic Process Automation tool that allows businesses to create unified automation across all of their processes. The things that make this platform stand out is that it is completely cloud-based and offers businesses unlimited bots at a fixed price. You can also take it for a test drive using the free trial.
- Pega Platform: Pega Platform is similar to Appian; it is a cloud-based platform that allows businesses to automate and manage processes through simple and individual application design. It offers a 30-day free trial. The main thing that makes this platform stand out is that all of the necessary resources are embedded, so you do not need any external training to get started.
- Comindware Tracker: Comindware Tracker is a workflow management software that allows businesses to manage workflows and processes and automate wherever possible. It has a very simple interface and, similar to the last two, offers a trial. The reason that this platform stands out is that it has won multiple awards, including accolades for fastest implementation, best support, and high performance.
- Winshuttle: Winshuttle is a process automation platform that is SAP-certified and allows businesses to manage data and automate the use of SAP data to improve business operations. What sets Winshuttle apart is its overall scalability and the impressive metrics it reports on how much time and money it has saved its users (up to 90%!)