You are Here: BPM Platform >> BPM Technology
It’s easy to think of your competition as your business rivals, fighting it out in the same market space. But very rarely do we think about the chaos and inability to focus inside our own office as our true competition.
More often than not, the internal struggles of your office are a much bigger foe that we must fight against. They loom over you like a cloud of angry birds of prey, waiting to swoop down and torment you. Every day, they stand at your gates and try to break down the door to invade your office and create havoc everywhere.
The growing demand for digitization in businesses heightens the need for innovation and process innovation. It also triggers the demand for more effective management strategies that optimize business processes. Many companies today already have business process management in place and the few that do not are starting to implement it. It is no surprise that the global BPM market is forecasted to grow at an average of 19.4 percent CAGR, reaching a whopping $40.6 billion market size by 2028[1].
If you still need to get a BPM strategy in place or are looking to optimize your existing one, it is essential to consider the latest BPM technologies. Though not necessarily required, BPM often uses technologies to make processes more efficient and agile.
Here, we go through what BPM technologies are, their most common use cases, and where to find ones that can enhance your business.
What is BPM Technology?
Business process management (BPM) technology is a combination of digital tools and solutions that help business enterprises achieve agility through process management, automation, and optimization. Its main purpose is to help businesses adapt to rapidly evolving business and technology landscapes through the continuous improvement of business processes. BPM technology can drive your organization's agility, scalability, and efficiency when appropriately implemented.
Core Functionalities of BPM Technology
BPM technology is defined by four core functionalities—process modeling, application development, performance monitoring, and enterprise application integration. These enable businesses to improve workflow management and business automation continuously.
1. Process Modeling
Like a flowchart, process modeling provides a graphical representation of the business processes of workflows. It helps businesses identify areas where there are opportunities for improvement. Aside from improving operational efficiencies, it also aligns operations and processes with business strategies and goals.
2. Application Development
The generation of an application involves automation configuration, data management, task lists, and other automation technologies that enable the seamless transformation of business processes.
3. Performance Monitoring
BPM technology improves the overall productivity of a business by setting benchmarks and measuring performance over time against key indicators. It utilizes reporting tools, advanced analytics, intuitive dashboards, and other management solutions that can enhance workflows and processes.
4. Enterprise Application Integration
Enterprise application integration (EAI) connects workflows and databases to ensure that they are used consistently in business applications across an organization. It integrates BPM tools and platforms with legacy systems to avoid downtimes when business applications or processes are upgraded for continuous improvement.
Examples of BPM Technology
To determine what BPM technology can provide value to your business, here are some examples that show the use cases of technology in BPM.
1. Business Process Management
BPM technology is primarily used for Business Process Management (BPM). Software tools and solutions are utilized to help align IT and operations with business goals. This includes using automation tools to deploy apps, monitor performance, measure productivity, and other processes.
2. Business Rules Engine
A rules engine is a pluggable and flexible software component that manages if-then business rules. It runs one or more business rules on data and executes the corresponding action if any condition matches the data set. Business rules engine define how a process should be done based on operational protocols, legal or regulatory laws, decision-based rules, and other criteria for process management. With BPM technology, an enterprise user can change these business rules without further assistance from programmers or developers.
3. Business Process Monitoring
Business Process Monitoring is an integral part of the BPM lifecycle. It is crucial to review and analyze the performance of business processes to identify issues that need corrective action, opportunities for improvement, or successes that can be replicated. Management dashboards with data visualization and infographics automate business process monitoring while providing users with an overview of performance metrics for faster decision-making.
4. Business Process Management Suite
A business process management suite (BPMS) is an application infrastructure that supports BPM initiatives. It enables businesses to optimize their workflows, rules, and data for better outcomes. It consolidates all business applications and data in one place to achieve greater efficiency and consistency in business process management.
5. Business Process and Workflow Modelers
Process and workflow models provide a high-level view of business workflows. BPM modelers create a diagram of each workflow or process so users can easily see the tasks, activities, and roles involved. This helps users spot bottlenecks, identify risks and opportunities, and edit workflows to optimize outcomes.
Let’s look at those Enemies and How BPM Technology Can be Your Secret Weapon.
Enemy #1 – Scale
One fearsome enemy that many business teams face is scale. They can get one thing to work, but how do you replicate it 10x, or 100x? Scale is an enemy that businesses must tackle everyday, but no ordinary human can beat it on his or her own.
Tony Stark can build one Ironman suit, but it takes a long time and requires him to be in the lab constantly. Jarvis, with his automation capabilities, can build hundreds of suits in a relatively small amount of time. And, Jarvis can simultaneously be working at the lab and also with Tony fighting the bad guys.
That’s the same power that business process management technology can give you. It lets you automate your existing processes without needing human intervention at every turn. If you can create the process flow for one instance, BPM technology can scale it up as big as you want, all the while collecting data and being much more productive.
Enemy #2 – Chaos
The second enemy that haunts businesses all over the world is chaos. Chaos has many weapons – email approvals, misplaced forms, errors, communication gaps, office politics, and more. Chaos loves to get in and mess up your best plans, bringing them down to nothing.
Tony Stark’s own life is pretty chaotic. He uses Jarvis to make sure his most important tasks stay on track and are well planned. Jarvis can plan and execute each and every aspect of Tony’s life. The pressure of having to run multi-billion dollar industry, combined with having to fight aliens and improve his armor means that the details will get missed unless someone is there to pick them all up.
But that’s where BPM technology can help. It takes the chaos out of your daily routines, and lets you focus on the things that really help in growing your business.
In the real world, BPM technology takes the clutter out of your life by handling emails, calendar schedules, and more, and bringing them all under a single banner. This way, you aren’t shuffling through dozens of windows and apps to see what’s where. This is one of the many benefits of BPM that lets you focus on your work, not where it is and how to get to it.
Good BPM technology, like Kissflow, is not only focused on removing the chaos from your environment, but also helps you automate any work that doesn’t require the active intervention of you or your employees.
Enemy #3 – Distractions
Everyone has met the distraction monster at some time. Whether it is that juicy gossip email, a headline that leads down a clickhole, or a subtle call to check to see if the bagels are gone, distraction is extremely effective and can easily derail you.
With dozens of tasks on your plate, it’s natural to forget something. Even Tony forgets when his anniversary with Pepper is. That’s where Jarvis comes in to remind him. Not only that, but Jarvis also helps him pick out a gift for the date without even needing active intervention. Although it is an important task, it’s not something that directly helps with Tony’s task of saving the world on a daily basis.
Business process management technology is there to enable, not hinder you. If the task needs to be done, but doesn’t provide to the growth of the business in any way, then it makes sense to have it automated.
BPM technology can pull all of your most pressing process tasks into a single dashboard so that you can focus on your primary work without having to worry about incoming emails, text messages, and other easy distractions.
Distractions often lead to delays and errors and BPM technology can help you snuff these out too. Once you’ve set the system to work as and how you want it, then it’ll keep doing that task for as long as you need it.
The Benefits of Business Process Management Technologies
1. Provides Business Agility
BPM technology allows you to respond to issues the moment they arise and to apply the appropriate solutions without disrupting operations. It also enables you to adapt to rapid changes in fast-evolving markets, ensuring that your customers’ needs are met and your business stays relevant.
2. Accelerates growth
With BPM technology, you can create a single process flow and scale it up as needed. It gives you unparalleled automation capabilities that does away with human intervention within a defined workflow. It also allows you to replicate an existing business process and run it 10 times or even 100 times more. This helps you accelerate growth and meet the demands of a growing market base.
3. Improves Operational Efficiency
One of the key benefits of BPM technology is the efficiency it brings to the workplace. With process automation, there is no need for active intervention in routine or repetitive tasks such as scheduling, email approvals, or text responses. By automating these tasks, delays and errors are also minimized. More importantly, employees can focus on tasks that help grow their businesses.
4. Streamlines Workflows
Advanced technology provides better monitoring and analysis of business performance. With BPM technology, you can generate analytics and graphic illustrations that help you identify process bottlenecks in your existing workflows. This enables you to streamline processes and implement continuous improvements that help you meet your business goals faster, easier, and more efficiently.
5. Improves Customer Service and Product Delivery
Digital transformation can help you deliver better products and provide better client services. Implementing BPM technology can make this possible without causing operational interruptions or delays as you change your business processes.
Enhance your business with Kissflow BPM Suite
Indeed, BPM technology can give you a competitive edge by enabling you to align business processes with your business goals. It allows you to meet consumer demands and adapt to market changes through process automation, continuous improvements, and agile solutions.
Begin your digital transformation journey with the Kissflow BPM suite. The platform provides a full suite of tools and services that address all your BPM needs.
Streamline and Transform Your Business Processes with Kissflow BPM Suite
