Business Process Management Suites

Modelling, Analyzing, Operating and Controlling processes

In the same way that we use software for doing our daily duties, process managers also employ software for supporting their tasks around the Business Process Management BPM -Cycle.

Ms. Visio is well-known for helping to visualize processes, but it does not support on putting these processes “on live”. On the other hand, Ms Excel and data bases help on collecting and analyzing data for improving processes, but they do not help on visualizing them.

For the past years there has been an increase of software in the market worldwide, which aims to help designing, analyzing and connecting processes with other IT-systems in order to automatize tasks and centralize the whole process management in one place. These are also known as Business Process Management Suites (BPM-Suites) and can offer help on the following tasks, among others:

• Modelling: interface for modelling processes based on flowcharts and linked elements that represent documents, roles and systems.
• Documentation: generation of guidelines based on the modelled processes, for example with templates according to international standards, so these processes can be certified by externals.
• Publication: visualization of the modelled processes, so employees can access to them. This supports training and can also allow others to post comments for amending or correcting processes.
• Simulation: prior to running processes, these can be tested in several scenarios in order to choose a best alternative. For this purpose, costs and timing units can be added to the processes’ activities, in order to quantify them.
• Implementation: tasks that need to be achieved through external systems can also be linked and managed from the BPM-Suite.
• Controlling: the actual results of the running processes (costs generated, timings, etc) can be summarized and compared with the initial goals. This can be achieved through the collaboration with external platforms, like Ms. Sharepoint.

Written by: Piero Ponce