BPM and ECM are two sides of the same coin. BPM manages workflow activities and information, while ECM organizes and stores information. It will be normal that both platforms have synergies and be symbiotic.
However, platforms born with a focus: BPM or ECM. Later, noticing that the other complementary component is missing they start to expand to BPM or to ECM.
The reality is that this kind of approach has, in a practice level, a dissonance in state of maturity of the two components. A good BPM platform will have a bearable ECM and a good ECM platform should have a bearable BPM platform.
Still exist other cases when the licensing costs and the complex implementation becomes these platforms almost prohibitive for the overwhelming majority of organizations, particularly SME’s.
iFlowBPM team decided not to choose that way. We decided to create or expand a ECM and interact with the already existing platforms.
This approach has several benefits:
- Choose wisely the ECM – by the fact that iFlowBPM allows choosing the best for each organization and specific case. Since Alfresco, LifeRay, Sharepoint, OpenECM or simply NTFS and NFS. Organizations have different standards and requirements.
- Assure the non-static information processes – by the fact that we interact with several ECM, forced iFlowBPM team to keep the platform generic and open. It allows that in fact we can effectively implement processes independent of the way documents are archived. This freedom degree is the key when you’re in an organization with multiple sources of information.
One of the greatest factors of resisting using the platforms ECM and BPM is the “overhead” in using these platforms. A lot of users quit, using the platforms going back to email as a way to execute processes and transact information.
iFlowBPM solves this question lowing the needed time to send or obtain a document to about 7 seconds. If you compare this time with the normal transacting time of a document in Sharepoint, Filenet or Documentum, you’ll understand that in these platforms you spend about 20 or 30 seconds before you can transact a document due the navigating spend time and uploading/downloading documents.