Recent posts about BPM (4)

At BP Logix we understand the amount of time and research it takes before you choose the right BPM solution for your organization. BPM use cases and workflow automation examples help play a role in the decision-making process by offering a glimpse at the software that BPM vendors provide. These BPM use cases and workflow automation examples are one way to help you determine if their software meets your organization’s specific requirements.

Process Director BPM software has helped  introduce enterprise workflow automation technology to several companies which has led them to digital transformation as manual workflow processes have been upgraded to automated ones. Below are a few BPM use cases and workflow automation examples and case studies of how Process Director has been employed.

Multi Chem HR Enterprise Workflow Automation

Today with the execution of Process Director, the company Multi-Chem is able to better enforce Human Resources workflow policies and has uniform business processes which are more effective and efficient. A more structured environment for form submission was implemented with better monitoring and auditing to create additional accountability. An approval process system is now used to push required documents to the appropriate people automatically, while forms are used to mandate required field to capture all needed information.

Learn more about this BPM example

Festival Foods Business Process Management Use Case

Instead of building a resource intensive in-house program, Festival Foods looked at Process Director in part because of its low code BPM integration and ease of use. This was a plus as this functionality didn't require tying up the IT department thus keeping them from other important tasks.

After the implementation of award winning BPM Software, Process Director, Festival Foods eliminated errors caused by manual input in the inventory process. This improvement allowed them to scale their business to expand the number of guests they could serve in additional locations.

Choosing Process Director allowed them to make better use of company data and more efficient use of internal applications, as well as more effectively manage based on real-time business monitoring and predictive analytics. Simplified, automated processes created the ability to expand and grow while reducing errors.

Learn more about this BPM example

National Eye Institute Managing Regulatory Compliance

National Eye Institute leveraged Process Director to demonstrate its BPM compliance to regulatory and legislative mandates. Improving their document management and retention process and procedures was a way to demonstrate their fiscal responsibility and decision-making to their supporters as well as their ethics in reporting.

Constant industry changes meant they needed a solution with enough flexibility to adjust annually to new laws while not overwhelming staff, their budget or the IT department. Process Director now handles document management including disposition, storage, and retention while also maintaining the security required within the medical industry.

Learn more about other BPM use cases and workflow automation examples here.

More Information

• Read BPM success stories from our customers
• More on Process Director enterprise workflow automation solutions
• Ready to learn more about the value Process Director BPM software can support your goals? Contact us today for a free BPM software demonstration from a BP Logix expert.

Likely, if you are considering a BPM solution, it is because you have heard about the benefits of business process management tools that BPM software provides. Those companies who have already implemented Process Director BPM tools are seeing a 75% reduction in data entry, improved process efficiency, and faster decision making.

What is Business Process Management (BPM)?

Business process management (BPM) is the act of managing a single or multiple workflow processes. BPM software helps with business process management because it's equipped with a series of business process management tools that improves process efficiency which leads to more profit.

Business process management tools can organize simple, complex, and even one-off or ad-hoc processes. Intelligent and flexible in their use, BPM tools can work in a variety of situations such as mobile, applications, forms, automation and more.

What are BPM tools?

If BPM is the act of managing business processes, BPM tools are a variety of strategies to accomplish the end goal. Each BPM tool can accomplish a specific result through automation, optimization/reducing waste, and/or performing analytics. The tools connect the dots between the resources needed and the person who needs them, while also creating metrics in order to continually improve and refine the processes.

The tools can be used together to create a customized solution that is agile enough to grow with the business, integrate new processes and work with existing enterprise systems, faster and easier than ever before.

Business Process Management Tools of Process Director BPM Software

The BPM tools of Process Director offer versatility to create the custom process management you need with less time and expense than former software development and coding allowed. These business process management tools include:

Extensible Software: Process Director is BPM software solution that extends your workflow application with custom features and easy integration with other programs already in place. Innovate and grow faster than ever before.

Application Integration: Provides built-in workflow and BPM application integration with many third-party and in-house applications and databases. No learning curve for new programs. Keep what works for you now and integrate, systemize and automate with ease.

Process Timeline™: This patented workflow engine allows you to construct, manage, optimize, analyze and manage, and modify business processes with ease.

Web-based and Mobile Friendly: Field service personnel, vendors and even customers aren’t tied to a desk, and your business shouldn’t be either. Process Director provides field service management software solutions for employees on-premise and out in the field..

eForms Software: Create electronic forms without coding to create consistent input and reduce data entry. Track changes easily, retrieve the most up-to-date content, and establish user permissions.

Document Workflow Management: Process Director's document workflow management system approval-based workflows, form tracking, compliance, task lists, and browse document folders to search for specific items .

Schedule a Demo

Contact us today for a free demo from a BP Logix BPM software expert and learn how to accelerate and improve service, oversight and customer satisfaction.

Business Process Management Software Evolves Into Intelligent BPM

The evolution of BPM technology, like most technology, has happened quickly. Within the industry, we have seen great strides and early adopters have come along on that journey to see truly revolutionary advances. As more enterprises look to streamline business processes and build leaner, more efficient business models, so must BPM technology become more effective. Intelligent BPM software (iBPMS) is then the evolution, a choice to keep improving by leveraging analytics and intelligence capabilities.

What qualities make Process Director an Award Winning iBPMS Solution?

Process Director low code/no code BPM technology is ever evolving. Below are some qualities that make Process Director an award winning iBPMS solution:

Artificial Intelligence

Internet of Things (IoT)

Process Director’s AI capabilities are seamlessly integrated into Process Timeline (BP Logix’s patented business process automation solution) enhancing and reinforcing it’s already industry leading predictive features. Process Director goes even further, making the same machine learning tools it uses internally available for you to exploit in your custom digital applications. Connect this foundation of Big Data streams using Process Director’s BPM IoT integration, and the possibilities are endless.

Mobile BPM

Mobile BPM technology is allowing technicians who work remotely in the field to access specialized applications for more complete data, faster processing and reduced redundancies. Developed quickly with minimal coding and integrated with the office via the cloud, these low code applications support everything from logistics to approval workflows, installations and inspection processes.

Social BPM

Great and consistent customer experiences are one big way intelligent BPM is changing the face of business. Automation in response to particular client actions and predictive responses to customers are creating better engagement, interaction, and sales.

Cloud based BPM

Through Process Director's cloud based BPM technology, you can create processes that utilize the best of online products such as Dropbox, Google Docs, SharePoint, Salesforce and more. Easy integration means you are never stuck with an outdated, archaic system. Cloud-based BPMs are agile, transformative, innovative and always improving, just like your business.

Workflow Automation

Workflow automation allows redundant tasks to be handled consistently so human capital can focus on higher business functions. Again, consistency is a goal of iBPMS solutions and automation means less gaps in both simple and complex workflows, including data entry, compliance and approval based business processes.

Process Timeline™

Case Management Solutions

Case management solutions require the ability to have “exceptions to the rule”. Being able to have workflows that are event and/or time driven, plus any ad hoc activities, and sequential workflows all moving toward the same outcome, are critical. Without iBPM, these types of business processes can experience significant loss through redundancies and down time.

To learn more about Process Director business process management software and how its BPM technology has evolved visit our BPM capabilities page.

Process Director is your intelligent BPM solution. Ready to see for yourself? Contact us for a free Process Director demonstration from a BP Logix business process management expert.

What is Digital Transformation?

Simply put, digital transformation is the leveraging of technology to improve efficiency and provide more value in your business. Reaching this goal can be much more complicated than the definition given here may suggest, however, it can radically change business processes, activities, customer relationships and even value propositions.

Technology To Help With Digital Transformation

Considered disruptive in nature, digital business transformation has executives in nearly all industries on alert to changes in the industry. They watch in order to get a glimpse into the future to see how they can integrate new technologies to grow revenues, reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction, improve differentiation, and increase their speed-to-market. In essence, forward thinking executives are looking at ways to use technology to refine, and accelerate their businesses.

“The best companies…combine digital activity with strong leadership to turn technology into transformation. This is what we call Digital Maturity. Companies vary in their digital maturity, and those that are more mature outperform those that are not.” MIT Sloan Management Review

Therefore, the goal of a digital transformation platform is to create a more agile business to keep up with the constant flux of technology advancements, environmental changes, and customer demands. The additional benefits are more streamlined business processes, reduced waste, and increased productivity and efficiency.

What Is Digital Transformation To BP Logix?

Well, all aspects of business process management (BPM) – its functions, tasks, processes, and assets are interconnected. A BPM platform pulls all these items together and in that process eliminates redundancies and inefficiencies, increasing profitability and improving the user’s experience. BPM software, such as Process Director, additionally serves management with business process automation solutions offering predictive analytics to allow for immediate intervention and correction, further reducing down time, costs and ineffectiveness. Consider for a moment the main drivers for using a BPM platform and digital transformation:

Technology Advancements: Changes in technology means things are moving faster – production, delivery, demands . A big problem in the past has been in the interconnectivity of legacy programs and new technology. Constant updates to new programs leads to employee frustration, and a loss in productivity due to training and implementation. However, low code BPM with rapid application development allows seamless integration between programs to reduce “learning curve” challenges that come with new product deployments.

Basically, digital business transformation platforms, or BPM, allow for a level of customization never seen before without the high costs, significant time investments and specialized coders.

Environmental Changes: Changes in supply chain, regulations and compliance law, competition, and even the economy can have an impact on businesses and are mostly unforeseen. Agility, through the use of Process Director digital transformation platform, helps accelerate the transformation of workflow processes to allow the business to make adjustments as needed and set themselves apart as market leaders.

Digital business transformation allows changes to be integrated quickly through low code, rapid app development technologies.

Customer Demand: Along with technology advancements comes the changes in demand and expectations of customers. Businesses who are digitally mature have the ability to provide a better customer experience, resulting in increased revenue. Imagine if a customer is able to engage with your company, find exactly what they are looking for, and make a purchase within minutes instead of hours or days. How could this increase your revenue growth?

Process Director makes this possible through predictive analytics, custom forms and mobile apps.

Process Director Is Your Digital Business Transformation Solution

Digital business transformation is upsetting the old way business has been done. Innovation, disruption, agility, and a constantly improving environment is the way business will thrive in years and decades to come. Executives are tasked with change management as a way to unlock revenue streams, reduce waste, and gain competitive advantages by creating outstanding customer experiences.

Process Director BPM software provides business process automation solutions that allows your company to develop more agility and innovation, streamline systems, and create people-oriented processes quickly, easily and at less cost than in the past. The ability to move faster in response to demands, forecast challenges, and adhere to compliance and regulations leads to better decision making, healthier management, and an improved customer/supplier/staff experience.

Process Director from BP Logix is a versatile digital business transformation platform designed to support forward thinking businesses looking to improve efficiency, manage workflows and compliance, and create a valuable experience for all those engaged with them. For a demonstration of Process Director and to see how automating processes with BPM software can help you with your digital transformation strategy, contact us today.

BPM and Case Management solutions share a common bond; they are both approaches to managing work. In fact, here at BP Logix we see this bond becoming more relevant and are creating ways to intertwine both BPM and Case Management into Process Director.

But before we talk about how they work together, let’s first begin with a definition of both terms:

BPMInstitute.org defines Business Process Management as:

“The definition, improvement and management of a firm's end-to-end enterprise business processes in order to achieve three outcomes crucial to a performance-based, customer-driven firm: 1) clarity on strategic direction, 2) alignment of the firm's resources, and 3) increased discipline in daily operations.”

Whatis.com defines Case Management as:

“CM — sometimes called “advanced case management” (ACM) or “dynamic case management” (DCM) is a both a human- and a technology-based approach that is driven by incoming events. These events change the context of the information, requiring responses from caseworkers or other knowledge workers knowledge workers. DCM’s ultimate goal is helping such workers make faster, better and more accurate decisions.”

How BPM and Case Management Solutions Work Independently

When looking at the BPM approach on its own, process is the most important organizing construct around business activities and speaks to improvement in corporate performance as a by-product of managing and optimizing a company’s business processes. This practice is especially useful when processes can be repeated, and therefore accurately monitored and then improved. Practitioners of, and tools to support BPM refer to this analysis and modification as “optimizing a process”.

Process optimization works best when a specific process is tightly defined and repeatable in many individual instances over varied work cases.

On the other hand, case management solutions -- when in a vacuum -- are most effective when processes are encountered as a one-off; that is, they are not repeatable. It is most useful when employed in situations where the process(es) cannot be predicted in advance of the actual work.

For instance, a detective investigating a murder might have little idea where the clues will lead and will hardly be served by repeating the steps used in investigating unrelated crimes even if on the surface they seem similar. Adaptive case management solutions rely on the ability to communicate goals, vision, and intent as a rudder throughout the workflow lifecycle.

The critical difference between BPM and case management solutions lie in the predictability and the repeatability of how work is completed. BPM assumes a level of repeatability that leads to the pursuit and refinement of the process until it is considered a best practice. CM doesn’t assume that there is an order and structure to work; tasks can be approached and completed in different ways and in a different order depending on how events and other variables dictate, lending flexibility through acceptance of the changeable nature of the work.

How BPM and Case Management Solutions Work Together With Process Director

While there are critical differences between them that must be recognized when seeking to apply these approaches and when considering tools to support each methodology, there is also no reason you cannot look at them both together. By doing so, you may even maximize your results.

Yes, BPM assists in the upfront design and optimization of a predictable process and CM assists in enhancing communication and the collection of information for decision making. But together you can pull together process data and rules to respond expeditiously to business events which mean you are working toward time based goals.

Process Director is a BPM and Case Management solution that includes Process Timeline, a time-based dimension that supports the multimodal run-time patterns required for Case Management, combining sequential flow style with both event-driven and time-driven execution, as well as checklists of ad hoc activities. This design creates a robust system that maximizes both repetitive processes and unique, unpredictable processes with human decision making into one.

Want to learn more? Contact us today for a free demo from a BP Logix business process management expert and learn how to speed your workflow, communication and decision making processes with case management solutions combined with BPM software.

In typical medium-to-large enterprises, the approval process for any significant work product can, and often does, take longer than the time required to actually create the deliverable. As work output becomes more complex, approvals will necessarily involve more stakeholders, more sub-approvals and more opportunities for approval-based black holes to form around any given plan.

Assigning a detailed document review process, approval tracking and oversight to employees allows for the potential for human error and it can places otherwise productive employees in a non-productive watchdog role. This can be avoided by using a robust, integrated, scalable automated workflow software such as Process Director®.

Process Director And The Document Review Process

Process Director enables automated approval deadline alerts through embedded messages in the software itself, and/or in email generation to key players in the approval process. In addition to routine process reminders, Process Director can also generate time-sensitive alerts when work products carry deadline sensitive components, such as compulsory production targets or legal cut-off date requirements.

Automated email reminders and SMS notifications can be tailored to individuals at a specific task level using custom templates to ensure accuracy and timeliness and can integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook for task review and completion. Email-based approvals can even be carried out on mobile devices for use when offline, or in the service field or for remote work.

Process Director Approval Process Software Offers These Advantages:

• Automated adherence to workflow processes.
• Simplification of the approval process through the removal of mundane, repetitive process steps.
• Robust document and forms storage and retrieval, ensuring adherence to audit and compliance record-keeping mandates.

Process Director's document review process capabilities enables alert management, review tools and approvals all within its self-contained system, leaving no loose ends in an otherwise cumbersome process. And, taking the approval process workflow beyond simple due-date notification is made simple and practical through support of:

• Sub-Workflows – When document approvals become increasingly complex, sub-workflows can be created to allow for more intricate approval process management.
• Workflow Management Task Lists – Process Director’s customizable task lists allow you to prioritize task completion and distribute pooled assignments to individuals for self-assignment or to automatic routing, thereby avoiding task imbalance.
• Ad-hoc and Unstructured Processes – Manage process exceptions easily through business-rule-based dynamic task assignment, task-sharing and task re-assignment through simple, familiar email notifications, menu and pick-list based task assignment or ad-hoc comment and discussion through Process Director’s comment feature.
• Conditional and Rule-based Routing – Process Director enables you to “build in” process paths and task assignments that reflect actual process data, changing external conditions and user activities. Additionally, these can become re-usable objects for use in multiple workflows.
• Human, Machine and Document-Centric – Process Director is agnostic toward human-centric or machine-centric workflows. Our comprehensive workflow management software fully supports human interaction, automated functions and document management, making it suitable and preferable for almost any workflow situation.

BP Logix Process Director workflow and BPM software can be configured as an on-premise BPM, cloud based BPM or OEM BPM integrated implementation. Contact us today for a free demo from a BP Logix business process management expert and learn how to speed your document review process with BPM software.

The process of creating a document, sending it out for review and approval, for as many times as it takes before publishing it, can be a nightmare. The more eyes on the document, critical the material, and personalities involved, the higher the probability of delays and stalls in your project(s). Many solutions have been created to address this problem, but we think the best approach is through document review process automation.

The Problem

Documents, for the sake of this article, can be anything from internal policies to sales flyers. They can be printed documents, electronic documents or even web pages. The workflow for these documents include a series of steps that happen in sequential order, or concurrently, and they include 5 stages, namely: create, review, approve, update and publish. For example:

Concurrent Review Process: John writes a policy and sends it to Jane in HR, Chris in Operations, and Paul, the GM. The three reviewers make independent edits and send it back to John. He makes the changes and resubmits the document to the three reviewers. They all approve, sending it back to John who then publishes the document.

Sequential Review Process: John writes a policy and sends it to Jane. Jane requests edits, returns it to John. John sends it to Jane who approves it and sends it to Chris. Chris approves it and sends it back to John. From there, John publishes the document.

The sequential document review process can also include external users (clients, vendors, suppliers, etc.) into the workflow. Some examples of processes that includes external users are proposals, contract review and acceptance, and content review and approval.

The problem is when the  review process gets stalled, it becomes inefficient, due to multiple copies of the document being circulated, a lack of collaboration, a lack of timeliness and/or accountability, confusion as to the reviewer’s comments, etc.

The Solution

When it comes to automating a document review process, the most effective approach is to use a cloud based solution that offers a variety of workflow automation capabilities and user notifications.

We suggest Process Director workflow management software. Process Director streamlines the review process by providing:

• The reviewer’s comments to be immediately available to all parties to reduce redundancies
• Searchable tracking of changes, including reviewer name, date of change, etc.
• The ability to apply annotations such as virtual sticky notes, highlighting and free-form drawing tools
• Automatic conversion of source documents into viewable formats
• The ability to set permissions for different users to protect specific documents
• Suggested changes overlaying the documents and stored separately for author to accept or reject the edits without compiling multiple documents or versions
• Notifications and alerts to create accountability and/or trigger the next action to be completed
• The ability to toggle all reviewer comments or only one at a time
• The creation of forms to pre-define how content is submitted
• Scalable workflows that define the task, participants and rules that govern how the process advances
• Archives of the original document, as well as tracked changes for future reference

Overall, Process Director takes the best of both offline and online document review process strategies to allow participants to collaborate more effectively in real time. To learn more, contact one of our process management specialists for a free demonstration of Process Director.

Order Processing, Quality Assurance, Change Control, and Compliance are Improved with BPM Software

Our work with our manufacturing customers is not ‘just’ about implementing technology for manufacturing process automation. For Process Director BPM software to be most effective to our manufacturing customers we needed to understand their business, how they work with their own customers, and what makes them unique. The manufacturing sector provides a particularly outstanding business environment for process-minded individuals – and teams.

The complexity of building and delivering goods and services in the global economy is probably felt most profoundly by manufacturing companies. With software or services, input and communication renders location essentially unimportant, but those in the business of building hard goods need to ensure they have materials to do their work, and the ability to deliver finished products irrespective of geography. Because of the increasingly detailed nature of accomplishing ‘work’, there is a greater need for these kinds of businesses to have manufacturing process automation solutions that adopt and adhere to their business processes.

Why Manufacturing Process Automation Is Important

Order processing, quality assurance, engineering change control, government and industry compliance represent areas for manufacturing process automation. When those processes are automated they enable near real-time decision-making and auditability. With the IT ecosystem needing to be more dynamic, rigid and form- fit processes must be replaced to ensure that the company can adapt (and respond!) to changing market conditions.

Process Director BPM Software

While repeatability is desirable in any manufacturing process, so too is the ability to be flexible. We understand that companies need to adapt processes real-time. It would be costly and ineffective to halt all manufacturing while a process change request slowly travels through the IT queue. That is one of the reasons that manufacturing process automation with Process Director BPM software requires no programming skills to make changes to running processes.

Manufacturing is also a highly-regulated industry. Audits from the government and agencies are performed to ensure compliance with financial laws and industry guidelines. We built Process Director to implement the rules and procedures that demonstrate and ensure business process governance.

Being beholden to governance, risk and compliance usually means a higher likelihood of audits. For compliant organizations, the need to back-track, research, identify and review previous actions, decisions and requests is part of the audit scenario. BPM software facilitates that by allowing access to information that can be displayed, reviewed and approved for all decisions and actions.

When a manufacturing organization implement manufacturing process automation solutions with BPM software they operate according to well-defined actions and operations, gaining an advantage in terms of both repeatability and accountability. The organizations that rely on processes to handle the ‘heavy lifting’ are then able to focus on quality which, in turn, creates loyalty and competitive advantage.

Schedule A Demo

Schedule a free demonstration of Process Director BPM platform and discover for yourself how this unique business process management software platform empowers you to innovate, respond to market demands, and delight your customers. Or, contact us to learn more about how our BPM and digital transformation solutions have helped our customers conquer their digital challenges.

What is EAI? EAI Definition Explained

What is EAI, you ask? Enterprise application integration refers to the approach, services and/or technologies that integrate software, hardware and otherwise disconnected IT systems in an enterprise.

Most businesses rely on several working parts in order to complete all the tasks and processes required to run day-to-day operations. Enterprise application integration works to take all the moving pieces – from vendors to customers to employees and the processes for each, into a single module.

When Is It Best To Use?

Small enterprise who only need a couple integrations typically are able to use a point-to-point integration, but large companies, those with even four or more connections between operating systems required, are better suited with enterprise application integration. Consistency across databases becomes critical when scalability matters. When the complexity of integration is high, a more stable application integration needs to be in place.

Why Does Application Integration Matter?

Simply put, communication between multiple applications can simplify and automate business processes to improve efficiency. In the past, the time, expense and learning curve were steep to implement data structure changes. Today, with enterprise application integration, those obstacles have been overcome, providing even faster implementation and ROI.

Data integration ensures consistent information across multiple systems, managers have access to real-time information, processes are automated, streamlined and simplified, and information is more easily accessed by the right people at the right time.
Development, implementation and maintenance are faster and easier than ever before.

“If you’re looking for a platform that will help you build support systems for business processes that need to be able to be reshaped and re-prioritized to maximize service delivery – particularly, business processes in which customers/citizens, partners or suppliers play key direct roles – then you should definitely consider BP Logix and Process Director.”

The Future

What is EAI doing that is impacting the future? Better business process management is key to surviving the fast-paced, technology-driven consumerism of the 21st Century. As large business moves increasingly to cloud based computing, and rapid application development allows for greater segmentation, we expect to see top, forward-thinking companies embrace application integration to increase productivity, lower costs, provide better customer service including better social media interactions and increase their agility.

What is EAI to BP Logix

Process Director BPM platform by BP Logix offers built-in database connectors, becoming an enterprise application integration tool that enables you to connect to and exchange information with your organization’s databases. Any data accessible via SQL can be integrated directly into your forms and workflow. ERP systems such as JDE/JD Edwards, SAP, or Microsoft Dynamics GP, HR applications, CRMs, or any program that stores information in a database can be integrated without scripting or coding. With Process Director, you simply select the database you wish to access, and the application integration goes to work assisting you in selecting the data, tables, and columns you need for security, consistency and growth.

Application integration is now faster and easier than ever with BP Logix Process Director. Ready to see for yourself? Contact us for a free demonstration from a BP Logix expert.

Forward thinking companies look at cloud-based technologies for improved business process management, but now, they are also looking at ways to leverage that for more customer engagement via social media. According to Statista.com, approximately 78% of Americans use social media, and nearly 2 billion people use social worldwide. (Source: 2016 Social Media Profile Stats)

With rapid application development, businesses are finding low code BPM platforms easier than ever to improve business processes, and are now including social BPM (social business process management) into the mix.

What Is Social BPM (Social Business Process Management)?

Social BPM is a strategic business process management tool that focuses on customer engagement, customer service and customer retention within your workflows connected to social media channels.
It allows you to activate a specific workflow behavior or series of behaviors based on a social media based triggering event. This means that a potential or current client could post a Tweet or Status Update (a triggering action), causing an alert, auto-response or even a service ticket to be created.

Leveraging social BPM software allows companies to engage with customers where the customer is: online.

The New Customer Has High Demands

Are you meeting today’s customer’s high expectations? Customer loyalty today is highly wrapped up in their ability to engage with a business 24/7/365. They are wanting fast resolution, and if they don’t get it, they have access to numerous competitors who can.

Brick and mortar businesses are now competing with online retailers. Service providers must be accessible to those who are looking at precisely the time in which they are looking. And, they are demanding fast responses, and likely even social proof, which comes through social media engagement. How do you then engage simply and immediately? Social BPM tools.

Examples

An airline passenger uses Twitter to communicate a maintenance concern to the carrier. The airline carrier in turn is notified and opens a maintenance ticket so the reported issue can be addressed as soon as possible and also provides an almost immediate human response to the passenger delivering outstanding customer service. This BPM intelligence (iBPMS) builds loyalty and rapport.

Social business process management is more than an auto-responder. In fact, auto-responders can hurt the customer experience if they don’t assist in solving the problem in a tangible way. The customer wants more than that. The bigger picture here is that the human behind the process can intervene quickly and build engagement and rapport for the client. This personalized engagement is the new expectation of today’s consumers.

Request A Demo

Ready to see for yourself? Contact us for a free Process Director demo from a BP Logix BPM software expert.

There are a lot of workflow tools out there. Call us biased but we think Process Director is the ultimate workflow tool for businesses. Why? Because it’s all encompassing. If you have a used workflow tool and thought, “Gee, I wish it could do this,” or “Why does it do that?!?!” You can trust that so have we.

Process Director workflow management software was born out of a need for something that worked exactly the way we needed it to in the workplace. Over the years, we’ve continued to innovate and create workflow solutions for workflow challenges, both yours and ours. The result is an all-encompassing workflow tool we are proud of.

What Process Director Can Do for You

Put simply, Process Director is a workflow management software with workflow tools that powers workflow and connects all of your organization’s systems and processes. Because it is uniquely intuitive, web-based, and robust, it can automate your processes, predict potential delays, eliminate programming, and integrate easily into existing applications.

Companies in advertising, education, financial services, government, health care, manufacturing, and more rely on Process Director workflow management software to:

● Drive growth
● Increase efficiency
● Boost visibility
● Reduce expenses
● Mitigate compliance risk
● Minimize redundancies

Process Director’s workflow automation software allows you to work smarter and faster by automating all of your organization’s critical processes and allowing you to continuously evaluate and improve them over time.

How is Process Director Different Than Other Workflow Management Software?

Unlike other BPM softwre, Process Director isn’t just for the IT department. It was built for not-as-tech-savvy employees, managers, and business owners in mind. You get automated smartforms, workflow management, document management, application integration, reports, and more, all without the hassle of:

● Coding
● Complex flowcharts
● Surprises or excuses

Unlike any other workflow tool, Process Director workflow management software tools are intuitive and dynamic, so you can count on:

● Total accountability. Every action taken by process participants is recorded.
● Greater efficiency. Process Director workflow management software directs you to the activities within your process that are consuming the most time. This allows you to focus your process improvement efforts where they will have the most impact.
● A bird’s-eye view of all of your processes. Review information about any activity, past or present, and see how different actors have performed within a given task.
● Real time analytics. Reset analytics at any time to understand what’s happening right now.

What you get is faster time-to-value, greater flexibility, and deeper insight into your business than any other BPM software.

Process Timeline

We developed an advanced BPMN modeling and business process automation software technology behind Process Timeline to work exactly how we wanted a workflow tool to work, but we didn’t stop there.

We have continued to add features to Process Timeline that enhance the user experience and allow you to manage your workflow more efficiently or more enjoyable all the time. Here are some of our favorite workflow tools integrated (and sometimes optional) into Process Timeline:

● Email notifications. Receive custom notifications that keep everyone up to date and on task in real time.
● Due date management. Process Director will alert you when a task is nearly due, overdue, and even when it’s predicted to be late. No other workflow tool can offer you this innovative, patented technology.
● Sub-workflows and business process segments. Manage more complex workflows by easily creating sub-workflows.
● Workflow management task lists. Create customizable task lists for groups and individuals.

Try it for Yourself – Request a free workflow software demo now.

Governance, Risk and Compliance Solutions With BPM Software

The goal of GRC software solutions is to reduce cost and risk. Compliance burden is specific to particular industries but one of the most common business process governance challenges come from the issues with SOX (The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002), which requires certain business records be accessible to auditors for a given period of time. With heavy consequences ranging from fines to imprisonment, companies are looking for safe, easy governance, risk and compliance solutions in the form of GRC software to meet the need without breaking the bank.

Government regulatory agencies such as OSHA or the FDA, or even industry self-regulation organizations, add additional governance, risk, and compliance issues to the long list of requirements. The need for governance, risk and compliance solutions that are industry specific has some businesses looking at business process management software solutions that integrate customizable applications for the specific regulations they want to stay on top of.

Process Director Business Process Management Software

Some benefits of Process Director business process management software is that it is cloud based (no need to back up data), low code (no need to hire a programmer), and agile (no need to keep updating software as needs grow). This highly customizeable BPM software meets the need for businesses searching for GRC software solutions to reduce costs while also reducing risk.
Managers of regulated businesses and/or departments are looking for governance, risk and compliance solutions that will:

• Allow them to hold individuals accountable to regulated actions
• Handle governed documents accurately while maintaining an audit trail
• Produce accurate policies, documents, and real-time information

Process Director BPM software helps the organization stay compliant, as well as streamline business processes for a more effective and efficient organization by tracking documents, managing processes, enforcing accountability, reducing errors by eliminating redundant manual input, preventing lost documents, providing reports, and more. Adherence to policy is the most important component of governance, and fortunately, GRC software solutions like Process Director BPM software makes sure organizations with highly regulated processes are tightly protected and that every transaction is tracked in a way that can be retraced by auditors and regulators.

Government, Risk and Compliance Solutions That Minimizes The Pain of an Audit

There is no magic pill that will keep your business fully compliant or audit free. The business must have a culture of compliance with strong ethics and clear procedures, policies, and accountability in place. GRC software, however, can support a business in creating that environment and creating the practices that hold it in place.
Governance, risk and compliance solutions can take some of the sting out of an audit by addressing the auditor’s biggest concerns: Are their policies compliant? Are their processes consistent? Are they following the processes? Process Director business process management software answers these questions with:

• Managing processes and documents and in a searchable way (data is easy to retrieve)
• Maintaining records of actions taken (creates an audit trail)
• Managing electronic forms (links actions to at-time-of-event documents)
• Providing accountability with electronic signature technology and/or other user identity-tracking methods

Overall, GRC software solutions like Process Director BPM suite allows organizations to create and maintain a systematic and consistent method of overcoming challenges with governance, risk, and compliance, whereby risk is managed, costs are reduced, and processes are simplified and organized.

The use of a BPM solution allow all GRC actions to be compiled into dashboards for better analysis and information about your organizations business processes which leads to better management and accountability. The future will continue to require complex governance and risk management while also facing increases in regulatory burdens. Businesses must have a scalable and cost effective way to manage this burden, and Process Director BPM software will fill the GRC software needs organizations are looking for and so much more. Want to learn more? Request a free demonstration today!

Understanding Your BPM and Workflow Needs

It is important to assess the needs of your organization to determine whether or not business process management software (BPM software) is applicable to what you are doing. The process of analyzing your workflow efficiency needs will provide a deeper recognition of what your company needs to be more successful. Having a solid grasp of that will enable you to give more thoughtful consideration to both the BPM tools and solutions that work for you — and will help you avoid the trap that a BPM solution in and of itself can make you faster, better organized and more profitable. (Since we all are occasionally all too eager to map our needs to what others tell us they can provide)

Coming to the issue of value, which is a very personal one, to really ‘get value’ for what you buy, you have to be discerning. Product marketing teams know that there is a ‘sweet spot’ within which most customer problems exist. Around that sweet spot the key marketing messages for a product are designed.

The BP Logix marketing group partners closely with our sales and product teams to understand what our customers need. That is the foundation of the way we do business. To that end, we have helped all manner of companies and organizations derive great value from business process management — not just as a tool but, also, as a way of doing business. Some of that comes from market analysis, research and observing BPM trends — the rest of it comes from understanding and putting ourselves in our customers’ shoes. We understand the value of BPM and go to great lengths to help our customers implement BPM software solutions in a way that is applicable to their needs.

Improve Workflow Efficiency With BPM Software

[caption id="attachment_9303" align="alignright" width="300"]

Our infographic, The Value of BPM, illustrates some of the key BPM elements that an organization needs to consider— and the degree to which some of our customers have benefited from using them. Everyone likes to see big numbers, and as you will see in the infographic, we certainly like to highlight where companies have seen an increase in workflow efficiency and reduction in cost or the elimination of redundancy. You will also recognize that the BPM examples we use in The Value of BPM point to specific BPM use cases. These are clearly specific to these individual companies, yet they demonstrate a sense for what BPM delivers towards workflow efficiency.

Working with a process-focused direction will undoubtedly deliver specific and measurable results when there is a well-articulated mapping of business needs with the BPM implementation process.

The BP Logix team is interested in why a prospect considers exploring BPM software in the first place— so we dive into that prospect’s business (with him, her or them) to understand how it is currently conducted. We look at the five key BPM elements:

• Workflow Efficiency: Does the organization experience a duplication of efforts, manual interactions, and/or delays in approvals?
• Productivity: Is an inordinate amount of time spent on singular tasks— and does lack of insight into the business limit their ability to provide direction?
• Process Change: As business needs and requirements change, does the organization adapt and, if so, how well does it adapt?
• Automation: Is the organization spending a lot of time on repetitive tasks, or trying to fit its needs into solutions that are not flexible?
• Knowledge: Does the organization recognize and act with regard to best practices and guidelines?

We could certainly tell you that your company will be faster, smarter, better and richer as a result of implementing Process Director BPM software — and leave it at that.

Please make no mistake. We think those are worthy and attainable goals. Where we see results and progress towards workflow efficiency, however, is when the goals focus on fixing workflow processes, not just on profitability. The value of BPM comes from the changes that occur on the way to becoming a better run company! That is the value we seek to provide.

Request a Demonstration

Process Director is your intelligent BPM software solution. Request a demonstration and discover for yourself how this unique enterprise business process management software empowers you to innovate, respond to market demands, and delight your customers. Or, contact us to learn more about how our BPM solutions have helped our customers conquer their workflow efficiency challenges.

What is Process Intelligence?

Process intelligence (PI) is the collection of data used to analyze business process and workflows in order to gain process efficiency. Including the element of intelligence within processes means that an additional layer of transparency is available. That ensures a deeper understanding of what is working in your business – and what needs to be modified to make that process better, more reliable, more accountable.

Process Intelligence = Intelligent BPM

Process Director BPM software is an intelligent BPM solution that requires no programming.  With its rapid application development users can apply rules, modify rules, deploy, apply and implement businesses processes with minimal effort. The resulting outcomes are enterprise-wide solutions that handle the workflow management software functions such as electronic forms, BPM application and workflow application integration with third party applications and delivery of all kinds of processes, even very complex ones.

With its built-in analytics and intelligence, Process Director is helping our customers achieve greater insights into their business operations and processes. As we discussed in our previous blog, being able to apply the intelligence learned during over the course of implementing its processes enables these companies to continuously make their processes more usable and more effective. Making decisions based on data and analysis of what's happening in real-time with their processes leads to better and more desirable outcomes.

Request a Demo

We're hoping these BPM resources will help educate you on our BPM software solution and how it can be applied to your organization. We'd love to talk with you further. Please feel free to contact us to schedule a discussion about Process Director or discuss your current situation.

Pointing a finger at a team and saying, “Be innovative,” won’t lead to success. However, creating an environment that allows for innovation, agility and a fast turn-around will. This is where a rapid enterprise application development platform comes into play.

If innovation is a core value of a company, there are several benefits to implementing an enterprise application, like Process Director.

Benefits of An Enterprise Application Development Platform

The development of enterprise applications have helped organizations in a variety of industries and sizes with a variety of tasks, including collecting more information from customers, staying in touch, vendor connectivity, and digital forms.

But it doesn’t stop there. Here are a few more ways an enterprise application development platform can benefit businesses.

Automate Processes

An enterprise application development platform can streamline processes that include repetitive tasks or data, even if the data is in multiple software platforms. It also reduces input redundancies by creating a single silo of information.

Simplify

Learning curves can be steep when new programs are introduced. Application development helps smooth out processes by combining data into its most useful form. Compiling data becomes easier by eliminating the creation of more IT work or re-training staff on a new software program.

Share Information

A single location for information, accessed by a variety of people at different security and/or access levels, allows the most current and relevant information to be used for decision-making. Consolidating information will reduce errors and foster more collaboration.

Long-Term Vision

Overall business growth for the long term is the goal of innovation, and application development takes this into consideration. Agile enough to grow and shift, low code platforms can assist with everything from getting a CRM to integrate with an e-mail campaign, manage disruptions in vendor-supplied materials, or stay compliant with changing laws.

Better Management

Enterprise application integration allows current information to be better managed and bridges the gap between software programs that don’t normally “talk” to each other. This creates a dashboard that allows for cleaner business processes.

With all of these opportunities, you and your team are freed up to focus on work that inspires, to see the big picture, to collaborate. Spending less time on the details that are now automated means more time for innovation.

Process Director for Enterprise Applications

Process Director is a perfect fit for companies looking for a complete and simple solution for streamlining business processes. Our enterprise application development platform is able to scale with business growth and innovate along the way. Continually reducing redundancies and having access to quality, high-level information, is the key to true business process management and profitability.

Ready to discover Process Director’s capabilities? Contact us to see how Process Director can simplify the most complex business systems.

There may be some confusion between low code BPM and low code platforms and it’s important to understand the differences, especially when searching for solutions for improved business process management. Let’s clear it up.

What are Low Code Platforms?

Low code platforms are a growing and changing technology to reshape the future. These platforms replace the need for coding by using form builders, drag-and-drop features, object mapping, and the like.

Low code platforms are designed to allow web applications to be made quickly by people with little to no coding experience. They are a solution for both professionals and laypeople who are looking for fast and scalable “templated” products that scale and grow with the business.

A variety of built-in services give these low code platforms the ability to be agile in a changing marketplace by automating workflow processes and streamlining data for multiple users. These platforms allow organizations to have quickly developed IT solutions to help meet their needs.

What Are Low Code BPM Platforms

Low code BPM platforms replace the BPM software development of old — that slow, expensive process of creating a solution that may outgrow itself upon release. Rapid application development (RAD) allows businesses to design IT solutions that enhance efficiency and performance without the help of IT specialists.

Being able to act quickly and provide agile BPM solutions on the spot allows a business to be more efficient in day-to-day tasks as well as keep the business on the cutting edge of customer fulfillment by staying in line with marketplace trends.

Low Code BPM Platform Solutions

Recently, PC Magazine put several low code/no code BPM platforms to the test. In their example, they had seasoned developers use the drag-and-drop tools to create a scheduling application that could:

“...add a new event (name, date/time, duration), invite users to the event, a save button to create the event, and the ability to view a list of events in calendar view or chronological list.” Source: PC Magazine, "Building an App With No Coding: Myth or Reality?"

In this test, all the developers were able to create results in less than an hour, some in as little as 10 minutes. These business process management capabilities create low-cost solutions for businesses looking to streamline business processes and better manage them.

Process Director BPM Platform

Process Director is a low code BPM platform that can support businesses with quick application solutions to streamline processes, reduce costs, and increase efficiency. Create workflow and business process management solutions and implement changes before your competitor even begins to write code, even without a programmer!

With Process Director’s Process Timeline feature, you will have a patented workflow engine that updates on the fly. Respond to the most accurate information available with data at your fingertips — including alerts to when deadlines are likely to be missed and when a customer triggers a specific event. Electronic forms make handling even complex data entry a simple process that can be used with suppliers, customers, and employees.

To learn more about how Process Director BPM Platform can help your business, contact us today.

BPM vs Workflow. There can be some confusion about the differences between BPM and workflow, partly because they are used interchangeably by some professionals. The confusion is understandable. Early business process management (BPM) solutions focused on the coordination of processes--they were focused on workflow. Today, workflow is a component of a good BPM, but they are not the same.

What Is Workflow?

Simply put, workflow helps organizations to see an overview of a process to monitor results, reduce inefficiencies and incorporate automation. At its best, it serves to align the processes with the business goals and systematize how documents and tasks are completed and executed for quality and/or compliance.

Workflow software is a tool for automating the process. It can provide support for steps in the business process and can trigger alerts for the appropriate users to take action. It is a single process within a more complex system.

As an analogy, it would be the steps for making the crème in a Twinkie, but not the entire creation, assembly or packaging of such.

What Is BPM?

BPM is a larger system of processes that incorporates multiple workflows, automation tools and human capital to optimize them all. It is a system that gets all the cogs working together in harmony to create an ideal end result.

All companies use business processes to produce the end result, and BPM software streamlines those processes to create a more agile and efficient business.

“BPM has been defined as a method of efficiently aligning an organization with the wants and needs of its customers, both internally and externally.” --Jay O’Brien, CTO BP Logix, Inc.

[embed]https://youtu.be/HduhwGtEMKI[/embed]

How Does BPM Software Work?

BPM software looks at the current state of the business and its processes and works with the management team’s goals to identify future objectives. In the most ideal situations, this team would create an ever evolving feedback loop and a continuously improving process that grows with the business. Automating workflow to make it faster, more efficient, and more consistent creates a measurable result on the company’s bottom line, while at the same time improving the organization’s compliance capabilities.

The structure of BPM incorporates policies, procedures, methods, metrics, human tasks, software tasks and IT to manage and optimize all levels of business functions.

Overall, BPM monitors, evaluates and even activates processes for better management. This allows businesses to serve more customers, have a better workforce and profit margin, just to name a few of the benefits.

BPM vs Workflow Bottom Line

The need for streamlining and automatization tools come from the increasingly competitive nature of business. Eliminating wasteful practices and procedures to achieve optimal performance allows businesses to control quality and costs and can be the difference between success or failure. So instead of thinking it as BPM vs workflow, think of it as BPM and workflow operating together to improve efficiencies. However, BPM takes it a step further by allowing multiple workflow scenarios, across multiple channels, to run in peak way. Simply put, BPM improves at the organizational level.

To learn more about BP Logix BPM tools and how they can help you, request a demonstration. Before the demo, we will contact you to learn about your goals and requirements so we can tailor the demonstration to meet your specific needs.

Process Timeline Workflow Engine

BP Logix is the only company to offer a BPM software solution (Process Director) with Process Timeline technology-- a workflow engine that incorporates the dimension of time all the way from model to execution. Traditionally, BPM software has been driven by two key factors:

1. Better outcomes from higher efficiency processes.
2. The need for appropriate controls.

However, many BPM solutions have neglected the element of time. Time allows businesses to obtain additional control over processes by allowing for prediction elements, or business process intelligence, to determine timeliness.

Imagine if your BPM software included an automated solution that could alert you when the timeline for a specific task wasn’t met, or if future tasks are at a risk of not being met? How could that change efficiency for your organization?

The Critical Element of Time and the iBPM

The element of time management is crucial to planning and oversight. Intelligent Business Process Management (iBPMS) allows for human intervention when a workflow process gets off track, or can trigger a different event in the process. Traditional BPM focuses on quality and business process governance, but adding a workflow engine with business process automation capabilities along with the predictive element of time gives the user the ability to see how later process stages will be affected by the previous ones. This adds huge value to the managed process by allowing the earliest possible notification of potential delays to allow intervention before timeline problems arise.

In workflow processes, there is a review and approval step in place, but it doesn’t answer the questions:

“When will this task complete?”

“When will this entire process complete?”

These questions are of great importance in management, because while it may be great to know you are on track to hit a specific goal, it is still important to know what is currently happening. It is similar to comparing the act of looking at a transactions in a register to discover errors, rather than simply looking at a monthly profit and loss statement.

Flowchart Model Failures

Time efficiency is achieved often through business process automation, with cost savings as the most obvious goal.

Example of Process Timeline Workflow Engine with Predicted Timelines

Outside of automation, these savings come about by removing process redundancies  and streamlining business processes, usually through the support of BPM software. More efficient use of time, less paper consumption, and business process automation can certainly tighten processes and reduce expenses, creating a higher ROI. Reduced risks and lowered costs of non-compliance issues also effect the bottom line.

A flowchart will say, “What happens next,” while Process Timeline's workflow engine will more importantly ask, “What must be completed before this step begin and how long will it take?”

The two benefits of BPM software, process efficiency and process governance, are now improved on by incorporating the critical element of a time-focused process technique, found only in BP Logix Process Director. Process Director BPM platform includes Process Timeline workflow engine, which results in even greater benefits.

Benefits of a BPM Software With A Business Process Automation Solution

1. Simple models allow businesses to go from discovery to full automation faster. Each activity is listed with its duration estimate, to create fast workflow processes. Activities can run at the same time, without complicated coding to configure parallel behavior.
2. The status of the entire process, as well as sub-processes can be determined at a glance, allowing for proactive response and the earliest notification of potential delays to allow for quick intervention.
3. Predictive nature “sees” future problems and can trigger actions to the changing circumstance so obstacles can be overcome before deadlines are missed or production halts. Process Timeline records predicted execution versus actual time, every time the process runs and adjusts the time estimates for even better management.
4. Process Director stores every aspect of the process for audits, internally or externally, for improved compliance.

BP Logix developed Process Director BPM software and the workflow engine, Process Timeline, in order to address the critical element of time in business process management. Process Timeline equips businesses to build robust process models without the need to develop code, making it a preferred BPM software solution. And because flowchart workflow automation is appropriate for some processes, Process Director has integrated both models, allowing traditional and intelligent processes to work together to create complex and manageable processes for optimal effectiveness, quality, and compliance needs. Contact us to learn more and schedule a free demonstration of Process Director today.