This article highlights the importance that system integration capabilities should play when selecting a BPMS. Integration is often the largest challenges in transforming business processes and can often present one of the most difficult barriers to delivering rapid success.

This article highlights the importance that system integration capabilities should play when selecting a BPMS. Integration is often the largest challenges in transforming business processes and can often present one of the most difficult barriers to delivering rapid success.

Few business processes live out their life within a single system. Consider the example of winning a new customer, on-boarding them, delivering a service and gaining payment. It is not uncommon to find the following systems involved in supporting these processes:

1. Electronic Content Management for storage of  document (ECMS),
2. Customer relationship management (CRM) for lead and customer data,
3. Internally hosted specialist business support systems such as accounting systems,
4. Cloud based services,
5. Supplier or partner hosted systems.

(…)

 “Out of the Box” Capabilities

The first area to consider is the “out of the box” integrations the BPMS comes equipped with. It is almost impossible to find a BPMS that does not offer integration with at least one major system, with connectors to ECMS, CRM and email systems most prevalent.

The key is to understand just what functionality is exposed via the connector. Does it allow updating of data in the remote system, or simply to read data? Can it react to events and launch processes automatically, such as someone checking a document into the ECMS triggering an approval process? It is also important to understand if the remote system can easily initiate workflow within the BPMS.

(…)

Ability to Integrate Using API’s and Database Functionality without Writing Code

Despite the growth of the cloud, the significant challenge for many organizations implementing a BPMS is to integrate with internally hosted systems. These are often specialist systems which are industry specific, and are unlikely to come with connectors to any BPMS.

Traditional integration with these systems tends to focus on developing software that will take advantage of exposed API’s or database stored procedures. It is important to know that the proposed BPMS will make this possible. Ideally, it will be feasible to interact with the API’s and database procedures via wizards within the BPMS.

(…)

Extensibility using Code

There will of course be occasions where integration is only possible through bespoke code. Once again it is important to understand how your BPMS will support executing your own custom code.

Will it execute within the BPMS, adding to the audit trail, or will it execute as a stand-alone application outside of the main product? Will you have options to execute code in your chosen language or are you restricted to a basic scripting language?

(…)

Connecting to Third Party and Cloud Based Services

It is becoming almost impossible to avoid utilizing cloud based services in delivering an IT Strategy. Whether it is sending SMS, creating a customer survey or finding a secure way to transfer data between suppliers or customers, the cloud offers cost effective solutions which cannot be ignored.

This means that the BPMS being selected must also have an awareness of the cloud and an ability to work within that framework. A key consideration is to review how straight forward it is to consume web services without having to write code. If the BPMS offers a code free mechanism to consume these services then the integration possibilities are greatly extended.

It is also worth understanding if the out of the box integrations are cloud enabled. Does a BPMS claiming to be integrated with SharePoint work with Office 365, or does it only work with private implementations? Finding the answer to this post procurement could result in an expensive mistake.

Summary

A BPMS rarely lives in isolation from other systems. In order to deliver rapid projects which achieve the benefits of process automation, transparency and cost reduction it is vital to select a BPMS with strong integration capabilities.

Within this article I have outlined four integration areas to consider when selecting the most appropriate BPMS for your organization.

Já está disponível a última e melhorada versão 4.2.1 do iFlow BPM.

Faça upgrade da sua versão antiga do iFlow BPM e continue a automatizar os processos da sua empresa!

Experimente já: http://www.iflowbpm.com/download/?lang=pt-pt

Siga-nos nas redes sociais:

Website: www.iflowbpm.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/iFlowBPM

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/iFlow-BPM-4777663

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/iFlowBPM

Blog: http://www.iflowbpm.com/blog/

BPM is a management approach that is available for anyone in the business market:  any company, institution or enterprise. However, for some reason, there are companies that did not implement this management strategy yet. Sometimes the reasons for not adopting a BPM approach are related to economic issues of BPM platforms, but the real problem should be: how good are the BPM tools that you are adopting?

So, if BPM is available for everyone, it would be interesting to discuss why companies don´t adopt this management strategy. Maybe it has to do with the developers and sellers of BPM tools. Maybe they don’t explain very well the benefits of these strategy and their investment return, they don’t demonstrate the usability of BPM tools and how it really changes the company processes and therefore the client’s satisfaction.

When the client takes the initiative to try one of the BPM tools available on the market the seller should adapt his strategy in order to persuade the customer and allow him to try the product. It is at this point that the client has the first experience with the product and it should be satisfactory! The consumer will try to analyze it properly and assimilate all the advantages of this new business tool.

As expected, the reaction is not the same for all customers. There are some people that enjoy the platform and intend to immediately implement it but others can’t easily see the benefits and the return of the invested amount. This is the normal operation of the market and it is at this stage that the art of selling is put to test.

Companies need to think more about the BPM approach and how they can implement it on their processes. There should be a market research about the best BPM tools available, their pros and cons and its value for money.

As with many IT professionals, I was first attracted to BPM by the capabilities offered by BPMS technology to increase business agility and reduce costs. Working as an IT Director, I identified two compelling reasons to invest in a BPMS. The first was that it offered a low cost and effective solution for automating administrative business processes, thus reducing operating costs. I secondly saw it as an effective solution to achieve a stated business aim of continuously improving processes at low cost, where the pace of change would be rapid.
A third compelling reason has recently emerged; using a BPMS to meet increasing business demand to complete business processes via mobile devices. Let’s look at each reason in more detail, so I can explain my conclusion that all senior IT professionals should give serious consideration to implementing a BPMS to increase agility, even if they don’t plan to embrace wider BPM principles.

Compelling reason 1 – A BPMS supports rapid and low cost automation of business processes Against the current macro-economic background, businesses are looking for ways to reduce costs whilst not degrading their ability to offer quality service. Automation achieves this by decreasing staff involvement in processes whilst creating a consistent and quality service experience. Extend automation with real time reporting and well-designed escalations and management effort will also switch from monitoring work queues to identifying further cost saving opportunities.
(…)

Compelling reason 2 –BPMS technology increases the pace of application change processes If you work in a senior IT management position it is almost inevitable that you are faced with business users complaining that change requests take too long to implement or that they never get their change prioritized even though it is only small in size. It is also common to be told that the last project didn’t deliver everything that was needed, even though it was signed off as meeting all requirements before implementation, and additional change is now urgently required.
(…)

Compelling reason 3 –BPMS technology exposes business processes to mobile apps at low cost With increasing consumerisation of IT, expectations are being raised at an incredible rate. Requests to IT are no longer limited to providing a windows client or an intranet based application. Business users now expect to execute business processes on their mobile devices.
(…)

Summary I believe that a key behavior of an agile business is its ability to implement decisions taken against emerging opportunities or threats, rapidly and with confidence of execution. For an IT Director, this means being confident of delivering functionally rich applications, available on any device, that meets business requirements, again and again.
For the reasons outlined in this article, I believe that when senior IT professionals consider the potential benefits offered by leading BPMS solutions, they will be attracted to their many capabilities, even if they are not interested in BPM.

See original article at BPMInstitute.org

O interesse actual nos processos de negócio advém da necessidade de organizar operações e consolidar organizações tornando-as mais adaptáveis ao mercado. 

A gestão de processos de negócio, disciplina que aborda esta área, apoia-se num conjunto de ferramentas designadas por BPMS’s  (Business  Process Management Suites), que permitem abordar os processos de negócio de uma organização  de modo a fornecer a agilidade pretendida.

O iFlow BPM surgiu com os novos avanços das IT, esta ferramenta baseada em metodologias ágeis , responde às necessidades de agilidade e  adaptabilidade das organizações.

Actualmente podemos identificar as ferramentas de BPM em dois grandes domínios predominantes  –  modelação e execução.

As ferramentas de modelação auxiliam os profissionais de BPM a levantar  necessidades de negócio. Normalmente utilizando standards conhecidos (BPMN, EPC, BPEL), estas ferramentas são usadas na modelação de processos de negócio. Estes modelos servem, normalmente, como ponto de partida para a implementação ou actualização de processos de negócio implementados em sistemas empresariais. Existem também ferramentas que possibilitam a simulação de modelos. Estas simulações são úteis para a analisar o processo antes de o implementar num sistema. Devido ao grande esforço (financeiro) necessário na actualização de sistemas empresariais complexos a capacidade de simulação começa a ser um requisito indispensável para as BPMS.

O iFlow BPM enquadra-se no paradigma das ferramentas de execução. Estas ferramentas permitem para além de modelar, executar um modelo. A capacidade de executar processos eleva o poder do iFlow BPM para um nível diferente daquelas ferramentas que se limitam a modelar. Não se restringindo só a capacidade de representar um processo de negócio, o iFlow consegue interpretar processos de negócio, passando-os do “papel” à “prática”.

A capacidade de interpretação juntamente com uma plataforma de base de dados representa uma mais valia para os profissionais de BPM. Dentro do contexto de BPM por vezes estabelecem-se indicadores de desempenho para optimizar o valor dos processos e acede-se à informação proveniente dos processos para dar suporte à tomada de decisão. Quando estes indicadores de desempenho aumentam em complexidade e em quantidade de informação proveniente dos processos , então é indispensável a utilização de ferramentas deste género.

A tecnologia aplicada aos esforços  de  gestão de processos de negócio (BPM) torna-os mais eficientes e mais efectivos.

O iFlow BPM é uma solução para edição e desenvolvimento rápido de workflows segundo a metodologia BPM.

Esta inovadora plataforma BPM actua com licenciamento em sistema open source, adapta-se às mais variadas necessidades das empresas e utilizadores, possibilita a integração com diversos softwares, os custos de plataforma são nulos e permite um desenho rápido e fácil de fluxos utilizando linguagem BPMN. O iFlow BPM garante o desenvolvimento de processos sem necessidade de base sólida de conhecimentos técnicos de IT e BPMN.

Assim, a facilidade de utilização do iFlow BPM por parte dos utilizadores faz com que o tempo de produção de fluxos e aplicações seja muito mais reduzido e menos burocrático.

No contexto económico actual, o iFlow BPM permite ajudar as empresas na eliminação da burocracia nas empresas, facilitando o processos de organização de ficheiros.  Por outro lado, a não utilização de documentos em papel, permite que a empresa reduza os seus custos.  O iFlow reduz a utilização excessiva de recursos e contribui para uma diminuição dos tempos de resposta, graças à centralização da informação, o que vai permitir um aumento da produtividade e a uma melhoria na eficiência.

Sendo o iFlow desenhado para optimizar e automatizar processos de negócio, o mesmo possibilita um aumento da performance e agilidade das empresas. O facto do iFlow reduzir os erros por perda de informação e melhorar o acompanhamento das tarefas exectutadas e a executar, levam a que haja um aumento do controlo e eficiência.

O iFlow tem vindo a agregar cada vez mais funcionalidades, tais como: o avançado motor de workflow, a integração com Open LDAP, Active Directory e sistemas de gestão documental, o  desenho de formulários integrado ou ligação com webservices externos, entre outros.

Com um leque de “Ready-to-Run Solutions” disponível, o iFlow BPM permite uma adaptabilidade às necessidades coorporativas das empresas permitindo uma automatização e optimização de processos. Sendo uma plataforma completa e acessível para quem pretende a desburocratização da sua empresa, o iFlow BPM é a plataforma certa para quem pretende a melhor qualidade a baixos custos.

Agora pode seguir todas as actualizações do mundo BPM e de todos os projectos iFlow BPM.

No Blog do iFlow poderá encontrar: Continue reading →