Business Process Management is a systemic approach to conducting business.
It is aimed at improving the process from end to end by analyzing it, modelling
how it works in different scenarios, implementing improvements devised,
monitoring the improved process and optimizing it on a consistent basis. The
need for Business Process Management and
its growing acceptance stems from the fact that business have become increasing
competitive, extensive in size, which together make cost-reduction necessary.
Businesses are finding it profitable to automate some of its functions,
especially manufacturing, and streamline and prune the various other processes.
All this is done with the aim of better organising business activity flows to
support the enterprise goals.
Business Process Management is used on an ongoing basis for business
process improvement, and while it quite often involves automating tasks within
a business process, process improvements can happen outside of automation.
The benefits
BPM suites are usually designed to help improve business
processes. Some of the potential benefits include simplifying operations,
improving business agility, cutting costs, driving competitive advantages,
increasing accountability, improving engagement with customers or customer
satisfaction, reducing inefficiencies and ensuring regulatory compliance.
BPM tools
Business process management tools facilitate designing,
modeling, implementing, and measuring workflows and business rules, thus
helping companies to refine and optimize processes that involve human
interaction or multiple business applications. They provide a systematic
approach to managing and optimizing a company’s business processes with the
goal to reduce inefficiencies, human error, or miscommunications.
How BPM software works
BPM software includes a visual process design tool that
allows relatively non-technical users to design and test processes and
workflows. The processes can usually be designed using the standard BPMN
(Business Process Model and Notation) and SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture)
methodologies, and exported in an executable language format (such as XPDL or
BPEL). A well-executed BPM continually delivers improvements.
A BPM suite (BPMS) on the other hand helps organizations in
their BPM activities by offering a suite of tools and functions for mapping,
modelling, automating, managing and optimizing. BPMS generally supports
activities ranging from business rule management to user communication to
analytics. Intelligent BPMS, or iBPMS, offers next-generation capabilities such
as adaptive analytics and advanced collaboration tools.
Popular BPM Tools are
– Appian
– Kissflow
– Camunda
– Activiti
– Flowable
– Tibco
– PEGA
– Bonita
