Business Process Management Solutions

Business processes automated by a BPMS require human interaction at points in the process, like exception handling and knowledge working. In this post I want to share my opinions on how these human steps could benefit from the new generation of online wordprocessing and spreadsheet tools by embedding them directly into the user’s processing application. Tools like Google Spreadsheet, Zoho Writer and Office Suite represent the available capabilities. The ITRedux blog provides a good listing of online office tools.Use desktop tools for collaborative processesIn scenarios like this, collaboration enables a set of users to work together using the tools that are most convenient to them. Typically they will produce documents using MS Office products, research tools and business specific application. The users record their working and final decisions as text documents and spreadsheets, stored within a specific collaborative workplace. Due to the lengthy and varied work that the users are performing this is probably the best approach to improving their effectiveness.Knowledge workers and other human interaction More commonly occurring than full collaborative requirements are the steps in a business process that require input from a single knowledge worker, to process a case and make decisions based on information presented to them. An example is an insurance new business process, where at certain steps an underwriter is required to assess policy terms. The underwriter is delivered the work, being presented the customer details and full application form to assist in the assessment. At this point, typical systems will leave the user to utilize external workbench tools to make their decisions. More often than not this requires that the underwriter rekey information from the original application form into a spreadsheet that enables him to determine risk and policy value. At the end of his manual processing he saves any documents that assisted in the decision to his desktop and attaches them manually to the customer case file or a shared file system.

Business Process Management Tools

Business Process Management BPM is an approach for managing processes from Your processmodeling tool most likely will be used by the same business PMC Solutions inProcess software is a robust business process management tool that will allow you to create your map and share it with everyone in the organization quickly and affordably. That is because inProcess is a Webbased tool. As such, you can share your information instantly, regardless of whether your members are next door or around the world, and without the expense of printing and shipping.With BPM, you can get to the point where you can see, on a secondbysecond basis, whats happening in your business and where in the business are the holdups and where process improvement says Dean Pipes, an integration architect at The Toro Co. in Bloomington, Minn. The yard equipment manufacturer uses a BPM system based on Vitria Technology Inc.s BusinessWare to pool its purchases from vendors to negotiate volume discounts.In fact, some of the BPM vendors utilize existing BI software packages to provide this capability. For example, Metastorm and Hyperion have developed a product called eWork Insight that is an addon solution to Metastorms eWork BPM suite.Process efficiency refers to how long processes are taking to complete and how many resources the process is consuming. In general, we want processes that move as quickly as possible and at the lowest cost. A standard BPM suite should be able to provide detailed time and cost information about each process that has been handled. The user can then export that data and perform analysis on the information to determine where improvements can be made. More advanced BPM suites provide the ability to take the data, make modifications to the process maps, and run simulations on the changes to determine if the effects are meaningful. If so, they can then move those updated process changes into production right from the BPMs modeling tool. This capability is sometimes referred to as roundtrip business process management.