On the other, organizations’ ability to get things done quickly in order to support the ongoing Digital Transformation is slowed by the complexity of the technology environment and inability to swiftly implement necessary changes. Digital environment requires rapid change and deep integration into diverse ecosystems. For companies seeking to become more agile and accelerate their strategy execution, a low-code platform tends to be an effective way to speed up application delivery. This improves IT’s ability to respond to business demands, shortens time-to-value and accelerates digital transformation.

As the title denotes, low-code platforms have little in the way of hand coding, but accomplish building apps through declarative and visual tools that describe what the app should do. In traditional app development, the code for business applications is written manually (hand-coding), while designing apps with low-code platform requires little manual coding, if any. Instead, developers use an intuitive visual interfaces with drag-and-drop capabilities to design visual models of an app’s business logic. With low-code technology generation, compilation and deployment of the code are also automatic.

The inherent value of a low-code development platform is that it brings IT and business together, enabling more rapid, iterative, and collaborative development and change implementation. Today, the market offers various types of low-code platforms that feature numerous high-efficient tools:

• Visual modeling tools — these drastically simplify the application development and reduce the amount of coding needed to build apps.
• BPM capabilities — tools that enable users effectively design, execute and optimize business processes and build business logics.
• Out-of-the-box components — customizable software, templates, widgets and plugins are offered to help accelerate development.
• Full application lifecycle management — with low-code platforms businesses can not only facilitate app development but also streamline the deployment and enable easy updates and maintenance to align IT with changing business needs.
• Scalability capabilities — rapid provision from prototype to production with the ability to easily scale the development capacities with minimum expenses.
• IT approved — the support of enterprise-grade security and governance features.

The idea behind low code technology is to turn more business users into ‘citizen developers’. Introduced by Gartner, the term ‘citizen developers’ stands for users who create new business applications for consumption by others using development and runtime environments sanctioned by corporate IT. Empowered by low-code technology, citizen developers can make their work smoother and more efficient building their own customized solutions with low-code or even no-code approach.

Using low-code platforms, citizen developers can make a tremendous contribution to a more successful outcomes of organization’s digital transformation initiatives:

• Solve various types of business challenges they would previously have ‘put up’ with
• Save the time for IT department so they can work on more complex strategic projects
• Boost efficiency
• Enable transparency across various types of business operations
• Cut operational costs
• Shrink the IT-skill gap
• Design and optimize business processes
• Shorten time-to-value

On an operational level low code tools are effective and applicable to larger scale of tasks. On a tactical and strategic level it is easier to find a performer since it does not demand profound coding skills and it is easier to form the teams who would perform the tasks and track their efficiency thanks to powerful visualization capabilities.

With the low-code tools, you, as a business user, can more easily and better understand the process and tasks. A business user has a better and clearer overview of the development process including, who is doing what, and what has been done or what needs to be done. In addition, a business user can quicker provide developers with the feedback on the development process, identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Transparent development process leads to receiving better results.

Low-code tools decompose complex technical tasks and terms, making it much easier to understand and work with for average business user.

Low-сode concepts have been used extensively for app development as a more productive approach because they allow analysts without specific code knowledge to quickly get an understanding of the project workflows and, with the help of visualization tools design business processes more intuitively. Even the logic of the application, not just its visual part, can be created with this type of low-code platform.

In case of low-code BPM, there’s already a previous history of visual tools, but things have reached a more progressive level now, precisely because months of training are no longer required, which reduces execution of tasks that were previously performed over months in traditional BPM platforms or development environments to a few days. This helps organizations enable better levels of agility and innovation to support the Continuous Improvement concept, which is a core pillar of almost any ongoing Digital Transformation process.

Low-code BPM platforms do away with these limitations by leveraging modern HTML5 based UI with complex scenario and rule management capabilities. Low-code BPM also features powerful capabilities for business rules management, sophisticated Case Management for orchestrating unstructured processes, easy to use integration protocols such as Rest API, Web Services, and DB Connectors and powerful analytical capabilities.

While low-code technology creates a tremendous value in terms of enabling better transparency across various business units, it also provides numerous additional benefits that together build a solid foundation for successful outcomes of Digital Transformation initiatives:

• More resources to distribute the load — by sharing the responsibility for business application development across more resources at the organization, low-code and no-code platforms help reduce the strain on understaffed IT departments. This enables them to dedicate more time to business-critical apps and projects. Low-code and no-code technology empower those closest to the business to create solutions that help employees increase productivity by getting more work done more easily.
• The freedom to experiment and innovate — the ability to swiftly test the viability of multiple solutions across business processes, data sources, operational workflows and end-users, and derive feedback on performance, features and ease-of-use allows for a more responsive analysis and optimization of processes leading to more successful outcomes and faster user adoption. For organizations actively undergoing digital transformation, this becomes a critical factor towards organizational success in the immediate future.
• More targeted outcomes — developers and/or citizen developers have the power to quickly design their own solutions in accordance with their exact specifications and requirements, and update them on-the-fly, for a more competitive and agile business. Rapid, cost-efficient delivery — low-code and no-code platforms can be used by both business and IT to deliver solutions faster for immediate impact. This is especially true of those that feature built-in integration functionality, out-of-the-box capabilities, and capabilities for business process management.
• Helps to fight shadow IT — when IT doesn’t provide business users with the solutions they need, they start seeking their own solutions. With the rise of a tremendous SaaS availability, these solutions aren’t hard to find. Low code platforms help businesses eliminate this problem as they give users the ability to design their own solutions for their specific business needs, while enabling IT to control the data and user accesses.
• A consistent experience across platforms and devices — adaptive development and design inherent in many low-code platforms allow organizations to more effectively track the effectiveness of built solutions across different devices.

To be armed to meet the challenges posed by the digital transformation era and remain competitive, organizations have to create an environment that enables agility and flexibility of the internal workflows and customer-facing operations. Powered by intelligent low-code technology, organizations can gain the needed tools to transform and innovate faster which generates new growth opportunities and provides a significant competitive advantage.

Tip!  To learn more about Digital Transformation, download our free e-book about “5 trends for Digital Transformation“.

This article was originally published on bpmonline.com

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1. Paper-based
2. Email + Spreadsheet
3. Multiple Systems
4. BPM Software

Organizations have invested a lot of time and money in processes that fall into category 3. Bringing all those processes into a BPMS is not an easy or quick job. I have seen a single process that goes through 20+ systems from start to end.

Let’s take an example of order fulfillment, a fairly common process. The diagram below shows the lifecycle of an order as it moves through various systems. Most of the times you will find the core business of an organization distributed into multiple systems in a similar manner. Work, of course, gets done, but at any given time you cannot find exactly what is the current status of the process. And to generate even simple reports, data first needs to be consolidated from all the systems manually or through some sort of batch job.

So, how do you monitor a process that resides in multiple systems and ensure that it is running optimally considering it does not provide a single view? You build a shadow process.

The idea of a shadow process is simple; you design the end-to-end process with all major milestones without actually implementing all the functionality in a BPMS.

Implementation Steps

Here are high-level steps for implementing a monitoring system using shadow processes.

• Define process with major milestones
  • Level of milestone granularity is directly proportional to effort required
  • Use milestones that make sense for reporting

• Find a common id that will allow you to uniquely identify an instance of the process in all systems
• Build services that either receives events from external systems or fetch data from external systems
• Build services that advance the process instance based on event data

• Log key event data e.g. instance id, business data, start time and end time etc. These can then be used by any reporting tool to generate meaningful insights

Compared to implementing all the processes in a BPMS, this type of monitoring solutions is much quicker to implement, provide end to end process view and helpful insights for future optimization.

This article was originally published on AdeelJaved.com.

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The challenge of managing process variations is becoming more complicated. In today’s global economy, even small companies do business across state and national borders. They operate in multiple regulatory environments. As such, they have little choice but to customize the customer experience they deliver.

Whether the requirement is driven by different locations, regulatory environments, business units, or customer segments, the way many organizations manage process variations is unnecessarily complex and inconsistent. According to Jim Sinur, Aragon Research, “Almost every multi-national company has to deal with the challenge of managing process variants and usually the solutions are overly complex.”

Steve Stanton, FCB Partners agrees, adding “90% of organizations fail at process standardization.”

It’s the dirty little secret of process management. While process owners preach standardization, they know deep down that their standard processes do not actually meet the requirements of the teams expected to apply them.

Common Responses

There seem to be three common responses to the problem of managing process variations:

High-level standardized processes: This is the approach early maturity organizations take. They present process information at a high-level that offers little in the way of day-to-day process guidance. It also cannot be used to direct or respond to future change.

Mega-processes including every possible variation: This approach provides highly detailed standard processes in response to every possible variation. While technically correct, these processes are overly complicated. They are difficult to understand and follow. They also do little to drive engagement and adherence by business teams.

Individual processes variants: Larger, more mature businesses sometimes opt to simply look the other way. They allow process variations to be owned, managed, and changed independently. This approach does little to address process inconsistencies. As a result, processes become no more than suggestions about how to proceed.

Achieving the Benefits of Standardized Processes

Despite the poor track record many businesses have in dealing with process variants, it is possible for companies to achieve the benefits of standardized processes. It is also possible for individual operations to control process variations as needed.  To do so, an organization must agree on the standard process and establish a global process owner. An agreed standard process forms a platform against which to consider possible variations.

The business must also agree that local process variations cannot be created haphazardly. Instead, they must be established only off the base of standard processes.  Ideally, process owners should be able to easily highlight process variations. This allows them to compare variants to the standard process, evaluate the requirement, and identify the impact of each variation.

Next, when navigating to processes, users should be able to select the variant they seek. They can choose from a list or be routed automatically to their process variation if they have a “default” location. Doing so will improve process relevancy and adherence.

Organizations must also establish a global reporting capability. This allows process owners to report on the variations that exist for each process. To ensure effective change management, local variant owners must be notified of any changes by global process owners. This enables them to merge those changes into each process variant or amend them as necessary.

Finally, process variant costing and time frame tracking should be in place. This allows process owners to calculate the difference in cost and time between each variation and the standard processes. It also enables them to make informed decisions about whether to maintain or eliminate certain variations.

Although it can be challenging, effectively managing and controlling process variations is possible. Employing these steps helps businesses to understand the extent of the process variations they are managing. They can control and report on them. They can challenge them if necessary. They also empower teams to be more agile, more flexible, and more able to customize activities  because variations will exist in an environment over which they have clarity and control.

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BPM is not a one time activity where you automate certain repetitive workflows and leave it at that. It is an ongoing process of continuous improvement which is the fundamental premise on which the entire idea is based. With this being the case, where do you draw a line and conclude that a BPM program is successful?

KPIs & Process Performance Metrics

As the classic quote goes, you cannot control what you can’t measure. Measuring is an important aspect of assessing whether an initiative is successful or not. While a lot of emphasis is laid on the idea of measurement itself and why one needs to measure, it is important to lay as much emphasis on measuring things that actually matter. There is always a lurking danger of settling for feel-good metrics that would give you the notion that you are on the right track. There is also an imminent danger which is far-reaching in impact; you could amplify the damage a wrong process automation would do to your organization causing pain to multiple stakeholders even to carry out their day-to-day operational tasks by complicating it, while you are tracking the wrong KPIs.

Let us assume that you have figured out your goals for automation quite clearly and you are tracking the right metrics. A lot of BPM vendors provide some seemingly convincing dashboards with colorful graphs and metrics. Time taken to complete certain processes, Number of approvals pending with different stakeholders, Top N Process dashboards etc. are one way to measure if the process automation exercise is effective. However, is that a real measure of  success of a BPM program? It may give you operational level insight into how your processes are getting carried out and there is a certain amount of continuous improvement mechanism that automatically sets in, simple because the very fact that you figured out your goals right means that you have signed up for a journey that helps you keep making incremental improvements to the way you work & run your processes.

However, there is a stark gap between the real objective or purpose of BPM and having some numbers that you can be proud of on your tool’s dashboard.

The Real Measure of Success

In order to understand the real success of a BPM program, it is important to get back to some fundamental questions that made us choose BPM as an option. Automation is an inevitable step and that is mainly done to free up resources from doing repetitive, manual jobs that are time & resource intensive.

But, what after that?

Has that helped us become a more employee-centric organization that channelizes the employee potential into activities are are more productive? Has it helped us become more customer-centric?

It may not be the best thing to tie it to a revenue goal and that correlation may skew the perspective of implementing a BPM program. On the other hand, cost savings is just an indicative measure and not a true measure of a BPM program’s success.

In today’s time and age every initiative should help in making organizations quickly adapt to change and result in delivering more value to the end-customer. With that idea in mind, your BPM goals should also be aligned the same way in order to achieve that. An organization can achieve customer goodwill only when there is promptness in service and value in delivery. The product/service accounts for one part of it but it is the experience at different interaction they have with the frontline employees in your organization. Hence, it becomes equally important for them to realise how important their role in providing that experience to their customers.

There is also a popular school of thought that believes that employees are the internal customers. Hence, a BPM program should have the complete buy-in of your internal customers(your employees that includes technical and non-technical users). It is hence essential that the program makes life easier & things simpler for the stakeholders of the processes you have chosen to automate & improve. In order to achieve real success of a BPM program, it is important to not lose sight of this goal at every step involved in embarking on a BPM program. Building a more employee-efficient & a customer-centric company through proper structuring and managing of business processes is the pinnacle of success in executing a BPM initiative.

The post What is the real indicator of success of a BPM program? appeared first on BPM Leader.

RPA Defined

The term RPA* stands for Robotic Process Automation, here are a couple of definitions.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is the application of technology that allows employees in a company to configure computer software or a “robot” to capture and interpret existing applications for processing a transaction, manipulating data, triggering responses and communicating with other digital systems.

Source: IRPA

Robotic process automation (or RPA) is an emerging form of clerical process automation technology based on the notion of software robots or artificial intelligence (AI) workers.

Source: Wikipedia

Robotic Process Automation in a Nutshell

In a nutshell, using RPA software, you can visually create a flow of how workers accomplish a task, for example.

• Open browser
• Login to a website
• Copy data
• Open another system
• Search record
• Paste copied data
• Save the record

These clearly defined instructions (“robot”) are then deployed on a machine, where they perform these defined tasks over and over again just like a human would do.

Prefixing “Process Automation” with the word “Robotic” makes it sound very fancy and cutting edge, but as of now if you explore features that various RPA software provide, it would be more appropriate to call it “Repeatable Process Automation“.

RPA is great for repeatable tasks that you can clearly define as a flow along with all the rules. You can quickly automate various swivel chair activities that take useful time from a worker’s day. So instead of workers spending time on doing these mundane tasks, they can focus on real value-add work.

I personally prefer the following definition.

Robotic Process Automation enables organizations to use software robots to complete repetitive, time-consuming work to significantly increase productivity, improve quality and decrease the need for re-work—also usually resulting in improved customer satisfaction.

Source: Verint

Use Cases for RPA

You can find a list of use cases for RPA from the following sources.

• 25 Examples of Processes for Robotic Process Automation
• 20 More Examples of Processes for Robotic Process Automation

Example

This video from UiPath (an RPA software vendor) will give you an idea of how RPA software work.

*Note: I am not associated with any RPA vendor. All information shared in this article is based on my experience and research. This article was originally published on AdeelJaved.com.

The post What Is Robotic Process Automation or RPA ? appeared first on BPM Leader.

Designed with pre-built features and functionalities, this development platform has completely changed the way in software platforms and applications are built and executed. Gone are the traditional methods of software development, which took months or years to produce the desired results.

If you still want to know why you need to update to the low code application development platform, here are 4 more reasons for you:

Reason # 1 – Say goodbye to outsourcing

When you have this development platform, you don’t have to depend on external agencies for technical support anymore. One of the main reasons businesses outsource software development projects is because they don’t have the necessary expertise, time, or finance. IT teams can easily use low code development platforms to set up and operate various applications. Even business users and citizen developers can build applications using this platform, as it requires minimal technical knowledge. The latest versions of low code platforms have drag and drop interface that beginners will find very easy to use.

Reason # 2 – Rapid Delivery

One of the biggest advantages of using low-code development platform is fast and efficient production. In less than 2 weeks, you will be able to complete an application and even integrate it with your current system.

Reason # 3 – Change Management

Business goals and requirements keep changing over the course of a project. So, only if your business application is scalable, it can keep pace with the rapid changes and developments in the industry. As the low-code application development platform is scalable, you can easily modify the application or enhance certain functionalities without disrupting normal business operations.

Reason # 4 – Lower TCO

The low-code app development platform reduces the total cost of ownership. It helps cut down on money spent on outsourcing and reduces production time. If you put all this together, you will see that there is a significant reduction in the overall expenses, maintenance, and infrastructure requirements.

The post 4 Reasons to choose a Low Code Application Development Platform appeared first on BPM Leader.

A business process is a series of steps performed by a group of stakeholders to achieve a concrete goal.

Ok, if the series of steps are repeatable and standardized (sort of), then it sounds possible to reuse those steps depending on the goal in a process-oriented view.

A traditional BPM suite offers this view but in practice is difficult to design those steps from the beginning, considering all the possible reusable scenarios, because you also need to consider the state of the process and the alternative paths besides compensation. So in my case, we finished copying those steps and adapting them to the new process.

It is difficult to create purely black boxes in process automation, so one of the ideas that I have experienced is to use a ”Process of Processes” where you can isolate functionality in order to truly reuse it.

I know that for the purist guys out there this is not really BPM – and I agree

There’s another way to do it and this idea came from some crazy CIOs that needed that flexibility in their businesses, and I would like to share this solution.

Building a ‘Process of Processes’

First you need a process orchestrator, this can be done with BPEL – or in our case we used a BPMN engine. The following image represents the process orchestrator:

The process orchestrator needs an input that contains:

List 1 = # of cycles (sequential)
List 2 = id’s of sub processes per cycle (parallel)

Each cycle can have (n) sub processes, which practically is a list of lists. This configuration can be passed as payload directly to the process orchestrator, or you can save this configuration in a database in order just to pass the name or the id of the process. Also you would need a user interface for create, retrieve, update or delete this process configuration.

For instance, in the next image you can appreciate an example of a typical credit process where activities are performed in parallel. If all of them finish correctly, the next cycle begins.

Using this process orchestration, you can trigger any subprocess, task or service call that are part of a cycle and can be completed in a parallel way. E.g. blacklist review or fraud review are common subprocesses that can be reused in other processes.

Benefits

Of course, reaching this level of maturity in your business processes takes time and effort, but once you are there the benefits are:

• Immediate reaction to market changes
• Real reusability of common activities
• Governance through the whole business

I think the benefits are clear. If you don’t share this vision, you are going to continue handling the returns and reprocesses with a kind of “goto” (state machine) between activities or tasks, and you need to know from where the process token came from, apart from considering reusability between processes.

Apple’s Workflow app

An important note that supports this concept is that Apple recently acquired Workflow app. This is an automation tool that let´s you connect a sequence of steps (or they call them actions) seamlessly for a specific target. Just imagine this power under the hand of a CIO…

Is it fail-proof?

I know the most experienced colleagues are thinking about how to manage a business exception, how to handle SLA violation or KPIs, how to reprocess specific subprocess etc. Well, yes! You are right: this “process of processes” should be fail-proof, so if you are interested in a second part of this article, then please leave a comment. And even if you’re not, then still your feedback is highly appreciated!

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What is Low-Code BPM ?

As the name suggests, Low-Code BPM refers to the capabilities provided by BPM Platforms to be able to develop process applications with minimum hand-coding. The idea is to provide development capabilities to non-developers or citizen developers. But wait, wasn’t this the very purpose of BPM Software Platforms?

The promise of BPM was always to provide power in the hands of Business and IT Users, so they don’t need to depend on professional developers to build process based applications. Unfortunately, the technology available then didn’t live up to that promise.

That’s not the case anymore, advancement in technology has finally overcome that limitation. Modern BPM Platforms a.k.a Low-Code BPM Platforms have not only simplified application development but also reduced development efforts manifold.

Let us look at few scenarios where Coding was an absolute must, earlier:

1. User Experience Capabilities

BPM Platforms have always provided capabilities to develop form-based user interfaces. The problem was, every now and then business required certain unique capabilities in terms of data validation, extraction, data manipulation, conditional rendering across devices, etc. Such scenarios were not covered out of the box, thus coding was the absolute must unless you were happy to compromise on the capabilities.

Low-Code BPM platforms do away with these limitations by leveraging modern HTML5 based UI with complex scenario and rule management capabilities.

2. Custom Business Rules

Traditional BPM Platforms heavily depended on external rules engine for business rules management. In the absence of advanced BRM systems, came the all too familiar situation of hand-coding and to get the job done. But that didn’t help matters in the long run.

Modern Low-Code BPM platforms have an integrated Rules Engine which enables Rule Management, Rule Standardization, and Reusability.

3. Unique Case Management Capabilities

Though Case Management was a late entrant in terms of capabilities added to BPM Suites, the features were basic at best. Time and again businesses came up with requirements such as reopening of completed cases, case linking, case hierarchy management, etc. As these scenarios were not captured by the Case Management engine it required substantial development efforts.

Again, Modern Low-Code BPM Platforms have sophisticated Case Management engine which does away with customization needs whatsoever.

4. Integration Capabilities

No matter how simple your process application is, it will need to communicate with external applications for information exchange. In the absence of necessary connectors, businesses had to depend on System Integrators or Product Vendors to develop those connectors.

Again, Low-Code Platforms have ready to use connectors to most enterprises systems and in cases where no connector exists, they provide extremely easy to use GUI based integration protocols such as Rest API, Web Services, and DB Connectors.

5. Custom Reports

Management Reporting was another challenge which required substantial development efforts. As the data in question existed in separate systems.

Most Low-Code BPM platforms come with an integrated Reporting Module which can extract data from the BPM and external systems to provide a consolidated view for better decision making.

The above list covers just a few use-cases which warrant hand-coding in absence of a Low-Code BPM Platform. Do you have a list of your own, which can benefit by using Low-Code BPM Platforms? Do let me know.

The post Low-Code BPM: Fact or Myth? appeared first on BPM Leader.

Automation definitely increases the reliability and efficiency and thereby the productivity. At the same time it does cause a reduction in the employee workforce. Yet there are certain advantages to the employees due to automation which might outweigh the disadvantages. Here I have listed some of the compensating advantages of business process automation and listed a few yet noteworthy bane of automation also.

Process Automation Benefits

• Automation of the business process – be it a small, medium or a huge business –  influences both efficiency and effectiveness.
• Increased efficiency is achieved by reducing the time involved in meting out paper work.
• Effectiveness is accomplished by increasing data precision and reducing excess manual work.
• Competence of both the managers and employees improves and leads to better and quicker decisions.
• Administrative burden reduces considerably.
• Business process automation can be achieved across various industries and different departments within companies. HR process automation is a common use case and companies may choose to either use workflow software for automating some typical processes like leave approvals and expense approvals, or use a dedicated HR management system for automating all HR-related processes within the organization. A fully featured HRMS goes beyond approvals and provides self-service features to empower employees.
• Report generation across all types of industries is made easy through automation. People do not work on reports for days now. It can be generated in a jiffy and you do not months of training to enjoy these exceptional benefits of automation.
• One of the major roles of automation in industries both technical and manufacturing is ‘Cost Saving’. Resource management and Time management has been made easy. Chances of repetitions, errors and rectifications are also reduced considerably.

Shortcomings of Process Automation

• Automation is all about data and one of the basic disadvantages of automation is that data is prone to corruption/hacking/data losses.
• Training the employees to gain specific knowledge to utilize the automated applications will be an initial investment which the organizations should be ready to invest in.
• Data entry errors are possible as the automation performance depends solely on its human programmers and end users.
• Reduces human interaction and inter-personal contacts.
• The proclivity of being dependent on technology will reduce the reliance on manpower, thus it poses a great risk on the basic foundation of HR.

Conclusion: Boon or Bane?

From the above pointers we see the benefits of automation definitely overshadow the failings and I would conclude that automation in industries is a blessing in disguise in making the business process more effective and efficient, along with savings in costs and making the tasks more accurate and less time consuming.

What do you think? Ponder over and share in your contributions to the boon or bane aspects of automation.

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I remember in its nascent days BPM or Workflow software was just an extension to Document Management Systems. A lot has changed since then. Today, we will look at what makes up for a great BPM Platform. It’s not just about features and capabilities, but the overall impact it has on the way work gets done in enterprises.

Here is an infographic which illustrates 5 indispensable components of a modern day BPM Platform a.k.a BPM of 2017:

1. Core Modules & Features

Listed above are five key capabilities which forms an integral combination to build Process-based Applications. These five modules also happen to be the building blocks for an enterprise-grade business application:

• Data Modeler – Enables definition of the data structure for respective process based applications.
• Forms Builder – Enables creation of responsive user experience for end users.
• Process Orchestrator – Designing flow of human as well as system activities.
• Rules Engine – Rules repository to maintain organizational rules for standardization, compliance & reusability.
• BAM & Analytics – Real-time Activity Monitoring & Analytics for process improvement & optimization.

2. Business Friendly Interface

The promise of BPM software was always to give the power to business users. But unfortunately, that never materialized. Today, process-based applications are built by business users in collaboration with IT, thus BPM systems should provide with extremely easy to use tools tailored for this new breed of hands-on visionaries.

3. Enterprise Scalable

Today, BPM systems are expected to handle thousands of transactions concurrently on a daily basis, thus it becomes imperative for the BPM system to be extremely scalable.

4. Time to Market

Speed is the name of the game. BPM systems are expected to deliver process based applications in weeks and not months, thus doing away with traditional software development methods and adopt an agile-centric development approach.

5. Return on Investment

Most of the established BPM Platforms offer similar pricing models, the key difference lies in the return from those respective investments. Modern BPM Platforms should be able to provide tangible returns in form of reduced development efforts, implementation timeline and infrastructure cost.

The above list is an indicator of the absolute must-have capabilities for a BPM Platform of 2017. What’s your take? Is there a capability which is an absolute must have for you? Let me know.

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