Recent posts about workflow

During the course of our relationship with customers, there is usually a point that constitutes the "a-ha" moment. It is at that time they realize the importance of workflow in standing up an automation initiative.  While few dispute the need for workflow, it usually requires seeing workflow ‘in action’ (and understanding the resulting benefits) before people recognize that workflow is important and is more than just a tool for process efficiency.

Developing your workflow is important but it has challenges; it’s like planning the world's largest reception and taking into consideration every plate, glass, napkin, hors d’oeuvres, beverage and the hundreds of other details that must be coordinated beforehand. Planning the reception mandates viewing the event holistically yet acting with singular precision. 

Workflows operate in a similar way. They create a foundation on top of which business activity can happen more efficiently. The result is the ability to view, operate, manage, analyze and improve your business in dramatic ways.

Knowing the importance of workflow is one thing, but having a sense for what an effective workflow software solution is — and what it can do — is the next step.

The following list may be helpful in better understanding the importance of workflow and specific areas that business process automation software offers tangible workflow-related benefits to organizations:

1. Paper trail is replaced by a digital trail

We have talked with people who manage warehouses full of files. The result is a morass of paper, cabinets, lost or misplaced documents — and stress. Workflow software keeps digital copies of files, automates the routing of tasks, alerts those who need to take action, and keeps a record of everything relevant to the process.

2. Eliminate redundancy

So much activity in an organization is duplicative (or, worst, wasteful.) A workflow software solution helps to identify up-front the critical points of activity, enabling you to define specific actions, participants and results that should occur.

3. No stopping for signatures

Electronic signature technology on eForms allows for fast approvals (including executives on the go) and the reduction in time lost as a result of waiting for paper-based signatures.

4. A better understanding of how time relates to action

Business activities are deadlines driven. Effective workflow solutions provide triggers that keep processes moving according to a timeline, enabling participants to see precisely when and where input is required.

5. Greater insights

Your business processes are meant to deliver results. You should know what is happening within your operation at any point in time. Workflow is important because it gives you regular insights into what is occurring within your processes, the people involved, and a sense for how effectively your organization meet its deadlines.

6. Automation focuses on activities

A workflow engine that has the ability to create automated workflows allows you to set up processes, then let them run. The majority of work that occurs within processes can be automated, freeing up time and allowing you and your team to focus on more strategic activities.

7. Accentuates the positives

Workflow is important because it's an excellent tool for assigning tasks to people based on their strengths and skill sets. By giving people the most appropriate tasks, you can improve productivity and keep employees more engaged.

8. Workflow is important because it never forgets

Every activity in digital workflow is tracked. Whether you need information for compliance purposes or to review how your organization operates, the ability to quickly see the ‘who, what, where and how’ of your processes provides important insights.

9. The business runs the business

Workflow used to be the domain of people who walked around buildings with plastic flowchart tools; it was a fairly specific function. Now, there are workflow solutions with rapid application development software capabilities that enable and encourage non-developers to build, adapt and manage workflows. Business managers know the importance of workflow and how it has become an important tool for themselves, ensuring that the requirements of the business are not at the mercy or interpretation from IT.

10. Encourages collaboration

Whether through more access points (mobile, Internet of Things), communication channels (social media), or platform (on-premise, cloud, hybrid), a solid workflow solution gives everyone involved with your processes—both inside and outside of your firewall—the appropriate level of access along with the BPM tools to make a difference.

Have more questions about implementing strong workflows in your business? Contact BP Logix today.

The original intent of workflow processes was to create a standardized and accepted way of identifying and solving for issues of efficiency. Eventually, workflow processes were introduced as a component of effective BPM, and today, innovative organizations apply both in a way where they support one another. These organizations realize that a workflow process will help you create repeatable outcomes, and workflow process is the workhorse that maintains consistency among the disparate elements that make up processes. To put it another way, workflow tools give organizations visibility into processes in order to monitor results, reduce inefficiencies and incorporate automation. But let’s look more closely at how workflow and process support outcomes through their own unique attributes.

Workflow Process Evolution: from Coordination to Prediction

Workflow Process serves to align the process management discipline to tasks and to support and work with patterns of business behavior. The technology that drives workflow is all based on coordinating interactions, milestones, and assets. When workflow automation software was first available as a codified technology solution, it was embedded into applications to supercharge their connectivity and operational capability. For the most part, those who benefited were typically just those with access to the specific applications. Over time, workflow became a foundational element to the overall process-driven mindset that smart companies employ. It now operates almost as a middleware technology, and its shared capabilities enable interactions among disparate groups of stakeholders. This includes both internal and third-party users.

But today’s innovative workflow solutions do far more than just coordinate the flow of activity. Platforms like Process Director apply machine learning and time recognition to help users take advantage of predictive insights and understand behavioral patterns. The component of time offers workflow users control they can’t get solely through application analytics and dashboards. With the inclusion of machine learning, Process Director’s workflow automation now allows identifies patterns that can require human intervention if a task isn’t expected to complete on time. In this way, the coordination of activity that a workflow process provides actually considers patterns of behaviors among different work streams to create a more focused model for delivering to specified outcomes.

Clearly, workflow design has evolved to the point that, as opposed to a typical flowchart it can almost drive activity from inception to completion. Rather than just relying on, “what happens next”, workflow is now equipped to identify and ask, “what must be completed before this step can begin, and how long will it take?” It’s in this way that workflow demonstrates its support for BPM, process efficiency improvement and governance. It delivers what’s required to provide oversight over multiple streams of activity, all working towards a common goal.

Business Workflow Process Instills Outcome-Based Discipline

For all of this effort to truly be effective, it must operate within a workflow process management framework, and this is where we find the distinction between workflow and BPM. A comprehensive workflow process approach emphasizes a holistic approach to coordinating everything that contributes to the outcome of business goals. This includes documents, cases, people, tasks, and sub-tasks are completed and executed for quality and/or compliance. Workflow assumes the work involved to connect and communicate among these things but that activity must adhere to the context of BPM.

Effective BPM solutions are foundational, and as a software application, they have to be able to integrate through APIs and other connectors so the right information and assets are available to decision-makers. Today’s knowledge workers — and in this economy, just about everyone is a knowledge worker to at least some degree — require a combination of subjective and analytical criteria in order to make decisions and move activities towards successful outcomes of business goals. BPM is the structure that enables repeatability for those processes and workflows that require consistency, but they also enable flexibility for processes that have to adapt to changing business needs.

Workflow Process and BPM are Foundational 

No business can operate without a foundation of sound, yet flexible, workflow processes. Part of that flexibility comes from being able to do more things with processes that might have been previously intended for more narrow purposes. Take, for example, an experience from the world of retail. Imagine a marketing process intended to deliver email notifications to customers about upcoming sales. While that may appear to be relatively simple, underneath that activity are a series of connected processes that include pulling data from a user database, engaging writers, involving the graphics department, and scheduling the mailing on a calendar. The end result is more contact with customers— contact that is the result of connecting processes and workflows that ultimately involve partnering with stakeholders.

Today’s business users need flexibility and accessibility to influence and participate in business solutions. Working in concert, workflow and BPM can deliver that access where and how they work and live, and engage all different types of users who are relevant to outcomes. For people and companies driving results, the ability to adapt and modify, review and approve in real-time, improves decision-making and keeps things moving forward.

Organizations depend on their business processes for the smooth, orderly flow of all their activities. But as companies evolve, the workflows they have relied on may not necessarily have evolved accordingly, and this can limit an organization’s ability to grow and adapt. The shelf life of most workflows is fairly limited, especially in a business climate that never stops changing. This is where workflow analysis comes in.

Workflow analysis can provide major benefits because it identifies where workflows are either outdated, need to be re-worked, or where a process requires an entirely new approach. The process takes apart the workflow in order to identify where there are issues of inefficiency and where changes within the process demand corresponding changes in the workflow. Going through this exercise of workflow analysis identifies bottlenecks, users who are no longer stakeholders, redundant tasks, and uncovers where improvements can be applied.

Ultimately, a well-performed workflow analysis will provide an organization with three key outcomes:

• Elimination of manual and redundant tasks.
• Application of automation where it is currently not being used.
• Gaps in the workflow that prevent it from being optimal.

Once identified, an organization will be able to use its human and technology resources more efficiently, which reduces costs and speeds the delivery of time-dependent processes. Even small improvements save costs and time, so workflow analysis should be a regularly scheduled activity that businesses create a discipline around. To initiate an effective analysis, an organization should take into account these considerations:

Create the Workflow Analysis Structure

It’s best to have a team of reviewers that is made up of representatives from different groups. This will provide perspectives from those with a stake in certain workflows, as well as independent thinking from others. This team should have a cadence of regular meetings, a communication tool like Slack, and a set of requirements by which they will conduct their analysis. The workflow analysis should consider the impact of a workflow in a variety of ways, including these:

• Is it efficient by impacting the speed and/or efficiency of how tasks are accomplished?
• Are stakeholders able to automate repetitive tasks by using it?
• Is it directly improving business goals?
• Does it improve my organization’s ability to be compliant?

Creating an Inventory of Workflows

Collecting all the workflows you want to review may be harder than you might think. Organizations with good process discipline will have a repository of their workflows, but in many organizations, these are created in an ad hoc fashion and are not necessarily accounted for in any type of orderly way. The discovery process will require input from stakeholders across the company and will initiate the review process, so be prepared to have either an individual or team who leads this effort and can be the key decision maker.

Initial Workflow Review

After having an inventory of workflows, it’s best to start reviewing to determine what you should keep and what is no longer relevant. For some, this may take a deeper analysis of the current and future viability of certain workflows, but for others, you’ll know what can be eliminated when you see it. Those that don’t make the cut should be officially taken out of practice. Stakeholders should be made aware of next steps on these workflows - that usually means alerting about removal for some, while for others, it may mean that a replacement will soon follow.

Workflow Analysis and Data Discovery

Workflows generate all kinds of data, most of which should provide insight into usage and efficacy. A workflow that might appear to be really effective may have not been used in many quarters; this data might help you decide to eliminate it. Or perhaps the data will demonstrate that there is a task within a certain workflow that takes an unusually long period of time to complete — that might be an indicator of where the workflow needs a reformatting.

Consider reviewing for this type of data:

• How many workflows have been initiated over the previous two quarters?
• Of those workflows, how many have been completed, and how many are still in process?
• Average of the time taken to complete tasks.
• Length of time to do reviews.
• How many are currently using forms?

Involve Stakeholders in the Workflow Analysis

Armed with data, you can begin to get a better sense of what you’re dealing with, and it can act as an important filter. But the data may not tell the whole story, which is why you need to now get out of your office and talk to people to determine how workflows are being used. Identify stakeholders from different teams and groups and consider evaluating based on these types of questions:

• Start with getting a general sense of the workflow; ask them to walk you, step-by-step, through the processes they go through.
• Find out where they are frustrated by the process.
• Get a sense for whether or not they are getting things done faster and/or with greater efficiency.
• Ask for their input on how a workflow could be improved with the right workflow tools (it’s usually those closest to the problem that have the best solutions). Encourage them to be specific on this point; is there certain data they need, is there a problem of automation, do they get the notifications they need, etc.
• Consider using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) methodology by asking, “On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being ‘most likely”), how likely are you to recommend this workflow to a colleague?” The answers may give you insight into both the necessity and efficacy of a given workflow.

Regroup and Assess

Now that you’ve collected data and put boots on the ground, the review team needs to go through workflows again and determine their state, which should fall into one of these categories:

• Eliminate the workflow
• Re-design the workflow
• Replace the workflow with a new workflow

Beyond the Workflow Analysis

At this point, you should have the beginnings of a blueprint to start moving forward with the next phase of your workflow design and implementation. With a focused team and the right tool, you will now be equipped to make better decisions about what you want to achieve and how your workflows can help you attain those goals.

Most workflow projects take the approach of addressing an outcome and then working backwards to build an efficient, linear flow of processes and actions. Designing steps to think through workflow design requirements is essential, but it must be done with a methodology that accounts for all manner of variables, and includes the element of time. Every workflow is intended to deliver faster and/or better returns on work, but process agility and the application of predictive capabilities, translates into additional competitive advantages. The true goal of workflow design is getting to a state of continuous innovation, repeatability, and efficiency, and this is best accomplished by using smart, disciplined thinking.

An effective workflow is liberating for users. They can automate decision making and rely on the application to deliver content and assets to the correct stakeholders, which frees them to focus more on analyzing outcomes and coming up with creative solutions. With the component of time built into workflows design, business users get additional control by having a way to predict events that can be automatically built in to processes, all with the flexibility of being able to intervene as necessary. To take advantage of a timeline-influenced workflow, an organization should structure their workflow design with a framework that takes these elements into account:

Workflow Design - Define Your Requirements

This may sound elementary, but to get the right outcomes, you need to be specific about the results you seek. For example, declaring that you want a workflow for “manufacturing optimization” encompasses a wildly broad set of activities. But breaking that down so you understand the various, separate tasks that help you ultimately achieve manufacturing optimization will enable you to be specific about the upcoming workflows design process.

Tasks, Events, Dependencies – Know Your Process

You’ll need a whiteboard, a really big whiteboard. The best way to get started is to actually diagram the logical sequence for a workflow, and then iterate as you factor in decision points, approvals, assets, sub-workflows, and all other factors that will guide a process from beginning to end. This part of your planning is tactical, and is truly foundational, and the way your workflow design is structured will be among the most important factors on whether or not your workflow management software is successful in achieving intended goals. During this part of the planning, you should be looking out for these things:

• Be thorough and include all information and detail so you know precisely what is required to achieve success at each step.
• Know, document, and account for dependencies at every step of the workflow.
• Highlight gaps where more information is needed to ensure effective process flow, and then fill those gaps.
• Simply where you can, reduce steps, if possible, and be rigorous about eliminating the potential for wasted effort.

Account for Continuous Processes

Also, don’t forget to consider the continuous nature of some processes; for these, a true ending point may not necessarily exist. When that is the case, ensure that workflow stakeholders are prepared to continuously adapt their workflows tools as they integrate more inputs and data into the process.

Assign Roles In Your Workflow Design

Know your stakeholders, whether they be inside or external to the company. Identify which tasks and activities they will be part of, and their level of involvement. This might also be applied in terms of groups or teams, rather than just individuals. For example, some decisions may require the approval of any member of a specified team, while others may need approval from anyone who has a “Vice President” title. And in other instances, decisions might be handled by anyone in a specific team or region. Know how roles are going to be used within your workflows so you can design them for best efficiency.

Apply Timeline Dependencies

A typical flowchart lays out “what happens next”, but when you apply timeline approach to your workflow design, it forces you to think, “what must be completed before this step can begin, and how long will it take?” These questions help you to imprint process efficiency improvement and governance with a timeline-focused workflow design, and provide additional control by allowing integrating predictive elements, and allowing for human intervention if a task isn’t expected to complete on time. Typical workflow processes may include an approval step, but usually fail to communicate when the task or full process will complete.

Know What You Need to Integrate - Inputs and Outputs

Today’s workflows can be so powerful because of the amount and type of data available within a typical organization’s IT infrastructure, and through integration of data from partner and customer sources. To get the power of all this data, you need to identify which inputs will inform your workflow, and how that data will be incorporated into it. Typical integrations come from applications like these:

• Database Application Integration
• Document Imaging Software / Scanners
• File System Monitor Application Integration
• Email Servers
• Web Services / REST
• Social BPM Application and Workflow Application Integration
• SharePoint or other file-related applications

After identifying these, you will need to build requirements for the tactical implementation of your integrations. This might come in the form of pre-packed integrations or with vendor-provided APIs. Your team may need to build custom integrations, so you’ll need to account for the resources and time required to do all this work.

Review Your Workflow Design

This isn’t just a “check my work” step; it’s really intended to give all stakeholders an opportunity to provide input and change anything that isn’t supposed to be part of the workflow. Additionally, it allows you to take a step back and evaluate whether or not the structure of your workflow is still capable of meeting your intended goals.

Automate Your Workflows

By automating workflows, organizations will be able to dramatically reduce cost and improve efficiency. Automation allows them to handle every manner of workflows and sub-workflows so there is repeatability and consistency, all while freeing time to focus on more strategic issues of the business. Workflow automation enables teams to do the following:

• Build processes and create forms to meet changing business goals.
• Access data that can help with decision-making and meeting workflow milestones.
• Efficient approval handling.
• Insight and visibility into all aspects of processes.

Business goals involve increasingly complex levels activity and collaboration in order to achieve them. Workflows, however, don’t need to be overly complex, and this is why they provide huge benefits. Developing and codifying workflows removes barriers to speed and alleviates the stop-start cadence that trips up too many organizations.

While there is not a single way to develop and manage workflows, adhering to a smart framework of workflow design can help organizations improve their operational capabilities and achieve better outcomes.

Invoice Process Solutions

Though digital transformation is upon us, many organizations still face a pesky outlier in the form of paper (or otherwise outdated) invoices. Because of this, invoice processing solutions are becoming a heightened priority. The most common complaints include:

• Lost invoices
• Incomplete information
• Illegible data
• Errors in data entry transfers
• Purchase order matching
• Supplier/vendor discrepancies

Accounts payable and management become so frustrated with these issues that they have turned to Process Director as their invoice processing solution. BP Logix client IDEX, has met with tremendous success from implementing Process Director.

IDEX’s Cost Savings

"We discovered that Process Director’s business logic lets you go as deep as you need to be consistent with your business process. With auditors, this has made our lives a lot easier."

IDEX Corporation manufactures and markets a wide array of engineered pumps and other industrial products
and is the world leader in fluid-handling technologies. They needed an invoice approval workflow automation software solution to centralize their CapEx process.

Accounting wanted to control the process for capital expense (CapEx) requests, a manual, paper-based process at that time. As a result of misplaced documents, Accounting was missing deadlines for audits.

After an exhaustive search, they decided Process Director  was the best fit for their invoice processing requirements as it:

• Would require minimal coding
• Would enable users to make changes easily
• Be scalable
• Be cost effective
• Be deployable out-of-the-box

Process Director Invoice Processing Benefits

Businesses choose Process Director to:

• Reduce errors
• Avoid delays
• Track invoices
• Consolidate multiple formats of invoices
• Reduce costs associated with paper forms

Process Director allows businesses to streamline the approval process when invoice processing begins. This can be triggered by the scanning of paper-based forms, completion of online information, or even manually triggered when certain conditions are met. Invoices are easy to find as keywords, metadata, and indexing creates multiple search criteria, removing the problem of losing the document.

Easy integration with current accounting software, as well as other systems and software, reduces the learning curve and the need for expensive, time consuming coding. Reporting is critical to invoice processing, as is having all approval activities to create a complete audit trail for business process governance. And finally, approvals can be made on any device, making mobile workforce approvals and submissions faster and easier than ever.

The flow for invoice processing typically follows a fairly standard process, but can get stalled if the processes lack automated mechanisms for ensuring smooth movement from creation to completion. Process Director enables these processes to be easily created and modified to meet the specific finance and operation needs of a company. It provides the flexibility to incorporate different requirements and procedures that map to changes in invoice automation policies. With Process Director, IT teams can create electronic forms the enable uploading of receipts into a convenient online workflow, either as one-off expenses, or as a bulk upload.

Additionally, Process Director allows for invoice categorization capabilities for different regions, amounts, and expense types, and can automatically generate accounting codes that correspond to those categories. Those codes can be used to populate the auto-fills to validate that the dropdowns are correct.

Transform your manual, paper-based processes with audit friendly, searchable, consistent electronic forms, automation processes and simple integration with current programs. Reduce redundancies and delays through streamlined invoice processing with Process Director.

A business is, among other things, an assortment of activities that are intended to produce profit-generating products and services. To arrive at the successful goal of delivering those products and services, a company has to rely on a myriad of actions, events, resources, and decisions. As economic demands require companies to move faster, and as technology creates a more efficient way to adapt, organizations need a way to coordinate and manage the different, but related, recurring tasks that form the foundation of a business. The vehicle for these management efforts often come in the form of a workflow engine.

Workflow Engines vs Intelligent Process Modeling Engines

At its core, a workflow engine is the technology used to apply logic and rules to move operations toward completion. At BP Logix, the thinking is that while that is all fine and well, generic workflow is far different from applications driven by an intelligent process modeling engine— one that uses automation, can adapt to changing business needs, and is able to apply the concept of time to help users predict a path for better outcomes.

Those are precisely the reasons for developing Process Director. With organizations operating in a continuous, non-linear world, Process Director employs a process modeling engine that goes beyond workflow to unify different business elements into models that can be executed to derive more efficient processes.

Legacy Workflow Systems: The Enemy of Productivity

The enemy of productivity isn’t just lack of action, it’s waste. It comes in the form of wasted time, wasted effort, and unnecessary resources that don’t apply to the intended solution. Legacy workflow systems hand information and documents from one actor to the next, all with the presumption that each decision point was arrived at with all the necessary data needed to make an actual decision. As workplaces and systems have gotten more complex with multiple digital input channels and a working style that prizes collaboration, old style workflows cannot rely on the standard style of handoff. As a modern solution for transformative enterprises, Process Director uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to incorporate predictive analytics and create not only seamless processes, but ones fueled by informed, data-fueled decisions.

A Workflow Engine Heading Where?

Popular author and researcher Brene Brown uses a concept called, “what does ‘done’ look like” to emphasize that there are many ways to arrive at the completion of a task, but it requires all parties to be on the same page about what they’re trying to accomplish. Process Director uses Process Timeline™ to enable the aggregation of different viewpoints and methods, and arrive at an agreed-upon goal. We get a sense for this through the element of time, a major component missing from the standard workflow engine, that is heavily leveraged by Process Director customers in a variety of vertical markets.

Traditional BPM focuses on quality and business process governance, but adding a modeling 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.

Beyond Review and Approval

In most workflow engines, there is a review and approval step in place, but it doesn’t answer questions about the specifics of completion. These questions are of huge importance to 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 transaction in a register to discover errors, rather than simply looking at a monthly profit and loss statement. This is where Process Timeline within Process Director can establish a continuous assessment of, and application of actions for, the direction of where the process will move in its effort to guide processes forward.

With a process modeling engine that uses predictive capabilities, simple models can be created to help businesses go from discovery to full automation faster, yet more intelligently. Process Timeline gives each activity with its duration estimate to create faster processes. Activities can run at the same time, without complicated coding to configure parallel behavior. The status of the entire process, as well as sub-processes can be determined at a glance, which allows for proactive response and the earliest notification of potential delays to allow for quick intervention. When confronted with similar ‘tasks of parallelism’, standard workflow engines tend to stumble.

A Predictive Workflow Engine?

The predictive nature of Process Timeline is such that it identifies potential problems in the course of the process, and can trigger actions to the changing circumstances. This results in obstacles being 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. Process Director stores every aspect of the process for audits, internally or externally, for improved compliance.

Today’s workflow engine takes a very different form: with a foundation that combines IT process automation with BPM software solutions, Process Director provides a codified way to deliver timely, effective processes for organizations of all types.

We all know that as technology has become more accessible, it’s also created more data and more connections that users must manage. According to ZDNet, the average medium-to-large enterprise uses between 300 - 400 different software applications. The irony of this proliferation is that it creates a gap between the data we should use versus the data that’s most accessible to us. In the past we used the term ‘workflow tools’ to describe the bundle of amenities used by organizations to tackle these issues, but is ‘workflow tools’ still an appropriate fit?

Intelligent Process Automation vs Workflow Tools

‘Intelligent process automation solution’ has replaced ‘workflow tools’ in many spheres, but a process-driven approach still embeds a mindset within organizations around how to develop and deliver better data, be more agile, and ensure that approvals and requirements are addressed according to expectations. What has changed is the scope available in the modern BPM solution, now workflow tools are just a component of a larger whole.

When business (and thus processes) were simpler, workflow simply looked like a series of lines and shapes that veer off into multiple directions. And this worked, for the most part. Workflow tools streamlined a goal-oriented task, and was a critical tool that made life easier. But the modern organization is hardly linear, and workflow tools have hit the ceiling of enabling communication between disparate people, data, and decisions. For the modern solution to be successful, it must allow processes to be easily centralized and distributed.

Process Director: The Way Forward For Workflow Tools

Serving these widespread needs was the reason we created Process Director in the first place, with its unique Process Timeline process modeling engine– a replacement for the standard workflow tools of the past. At the time we first developed it, we couldn’t have known how rapidly and completely digital transformation would change the nature of business and technology. Yet, part of our mission was to give organizations a foundational structure that they could use to adapt and grow their business.

But Process Director is so much more than a workflow tool, it was also created with the mindset that those closest to problems are likely the ones best equipped to solve for them. Rather than building a complex application development solution that demands highly skilled coding capabilities, Process Director allows for non-programmers to build robust, comprehensive process-driven applications. Additionally, it helps organizations reduce complexity and enhance results through these advantages, which could be considered tools for your process tool box:

Workflow: A Part of a Greater Whole

1. More collaboration: Whether through more access points (mobile, Internet of Things), communication channels (social media), or platform (on-premise, cloud, hybrid), a solid workflow management software solution gives everyone involved with your processes—both inside and outside of your firewall—the appropriate level of access along with the BPM tools to make a difference.
2. Insight through analytics: Process is a facilitator, but it delivers additional value when it provides insights about your operations. Process Director uses analytics to deliver regular insights into what is occurring within your processes, the people involved, and a sense for how effectively your organization meet its deadlines.
3. Moving from paper to digital: Even in the digital age, so much data is collected and transacted through paper-based documents. It’s hard to process and requires dedicated manual effort to store and retrieve. Process Director enables the digitization of documents as images so they can be included as assets within workflows. This delivers relevant data directly to decision-makers and ensures relevance throughout the process.
4. Maximize skill sets: Process Director can automatically assign tasks to people based on their strengths and skill sets. By giving people the most appropriate tasks, you can improve productivity and keep employees more engaged.
5. Avoid redundant behavior: Process Director views workflow tools as an organized, automated way to eliminate unnecessary steps. It does this by initially identifying the critical points of activity, enabling teams to define specific actions, participants, and results that should occur.
6. More inclusive: Process Director applies rapid application development capabilities that enable and encourage non-developers to build, adapt and manage process. Non-technical employees can apply their knowledge directly to workflow solutions that will both reduce the IT burden, and deliver solutions in context.
7. Enable rapid validation through digital approvals: Process Director enables non-developers to rapidly create eForms , which enables fast approvals (including executives on the go) and the reduction in time lost as a result of waiting for paper-based signatures. This is where workflow becomes a critical factor in supporting speed and real-time action.
8. Automation: Automated workflows allow you to set up processes, then let them run. The majority of work that occurs within processes can be automated, freeing up time and allowing you and your team to focus on more strategic activities.
9. Adapt the concept of time to processes: Business activities are deadline-driven. Process Director provides triggers that keep processes moving according to a timeline, enabling participants to see precisely when and where input is required.
10. Tracking provides historical data: Every activity in digital workflow is tracked. Whether you need information for compliance purposes or to review how your organization operates, the ability to quickly see the ‘who, what, where and how’ of your processes provides important insights.

Is Your Digital Transformation Toolkit Ready?

To produce anything meaningful in today's market requires discipline, repeatable actions, and a foundation that will help conduct ideas from inception to desired outcome. The pace of today's business demands that traditionally time-consuming tasks like collaboration, reviews, and approvals all be done with incredible rapidity and yet still be brand compliant and impactful. Workflow tools have traditionally been proven to be the most effective way of achieving that, but the tool box has expanded to include so much more. The very foundation on which agility and transformation needs to take place rests on the shoulders of intelligent process automation.

Clearly, no one can predict the future — however there is a significant difference between a ‘guess’ and an informed estimate. In our case, we derive our workflow and BPM trends by combining our knowledge of products, technology, workflow and BPM trends we’ve seen with the continuous feedback we receive from our customers, analysts and other influencers to develop what we believe to be an informed estimate.

Our customers in various industries, you see, are a fairly vocal bunch. Because we partner closely with them, we learn about their vision and the direction(s) they are pursuing. We also learn about what they consider to be hard priorities and daily realities. That combination of information and factors brings us to propose (and share) our view of key potential workflow and BPM trends in 2019 for business and IT managers:

Championing Simplicity: We are all aware of the vast number of digital workflow tools available to modern employees. As technology drives more of our lives, it also exerts a greater influence on almost every decision and action we take. This is neither good nor bad. The reality, however, is that the sheer number of options we have for applications, tools, processes and devices can become stressful and difficult to manage. We believe that one of the workflow and BPM trends in 2019 will be that BPM companies will take measures to reduce technology options and, instead, rely more heavily on processes, checklists and repeatable methods to create desired behaviors.  Organizations will use processes that are easy to build and change as-needed, updated when necessary, and managed by the business users themselves, reducing the reliance on IT. Business managers will seek solutions that allow employees to be productive on-the-fly and make an impact in real-time to company operations.

A Prediction about Predicting: Time can be both the greatest asset and, potentially, biggest enemy, of any business. Failing to meet a schedule or not delivering on expectations can be disastrous. Having insight into your organization’s operations and rhythm, then applying that information to ‘predict and prepare’ is one of the most important advantages a company can have. We believe the BPM trends in 2019 we are going to see is that more organizations will be insisting on using analytics to provide insights. They will anticipate and predict outcomes based on both historical references and current operations. These companies are going to plan and allocate resources more effectively, becoming more agile and efficient.

The Value of Collaboration: ‘Mobile’ is a BPM trend that has clearly changed the nature of how we work. It has given employers who offer the ability for employees to work remotely a huge advantage— and has accelerated the time it takes to complete approvals and, often, tasks as well. With technology providing a foundation for productivity and communication, companies can utilize the best talent irrespective of where employees choose to live and work. Remote workers, however, have not always been able to take advantage of real-time interfaces — and this has been a challenge to that strategy. We predict that some of the workflow and BPM trends in 2019 we will see will be that companies will ‘implement collaboration’ at a greater level driven by workflows that keep employees engaged with one and other more easily (“collaboratively”) resulting in increased productivity. These capabilities will come in the form of process-driven tools that encourage workers to distribute, share and create together.

A Different Kind of Workforce: The job market is hot and all indicators suggest it will remain so in 2019. As with any cycle, however, there is a shift happening that will have waterfall effects regarding how people work in the coming years. More millennials will be hired in 2019 than at any other time; in fact, for the first time in a while, the Gen X’ers will become a secondary group. We expect millennial workers to be dedicated and passionate. Moreover they have grown up with technology and expect there to be very little difference between the technology they use for social purposes and that in their work environment. Employers who will win the war for talent will do so partly by providing recognizable interfaces and technology infrastructure that this younger generation will be comfortable using.

The Shrinking IT Department: As more applications run in the cloud and use more consumer-oriented interfaces, there is less reliance on IT departments to deploy, maintain and manage apps and support users. While IT is, and will always be, a critical element of every enterprise, the infrastructure that was used in companies in the 90s is very different from what we use today. We believe the will probably see less direct hires in IT, but more hiring among LOB managers who have an understanding of IT basics. The key will be ensuring that employees can address most of their own issues using tools with interfaces and dashboards that enhance decision-making.

We would love to know more about your BPM trends and plans for 2019— and how we can help you achieve them. In that spirit, we invite you to meet with us so we can share information about how workflow and BPM can help your organization in the New Year.

About BP Logix

BP Logix is a BPM vendor that offers Process Director, an innovative business process management engine combining the power of BPM software with the flexibility of rapid application development—with no programming. Electronic forms, workflow automation software and BPM case management solutions are just the beginning of digital app development. Process Director combines the easiest and most efficient workflow engine in the industry with a rich set of tools offering snap-in data integration, rapid prototyping and release, and comprehensive reporting and analytics.

Schedule A Demo

The new Process Director 5.0 is transforming the above-stated predictions into reality by utilizing BPM and AI and BPM and IoT to enhance predictive analysis, create dynamic business rules and facilitate collaboration within cases. Schedule a private demonstration and learn what Process Director will do in assisting your organization with its digital transformation goals.

Deciding on a BPM and Workflow Vendor

The review and validation process for any new product is always challenging. You are given a lot of attention from potential BPM vendors, but more often than not, they just want to tell you about their product (and are not very good listeners.) Sure, it is fun to be courted, but the attention wanes quickly when you realize that some of the BPM vendors aren't being honest with you, or you discover, after a big investment of time, that their product simply cannot deliver what you need.

Because of our due diligence in our search for BPM vendors, we made it very clear what we wanted in a workflow solution and how it should work with our existing infrastructure. We went to great lengths explaining to multiple BPM vendors our company culture and how technology is used: We let them know our IT department is already over-worked and not able to respond to change requests as quickly as they or we would like, that our sales team operates mostly in the field and requires mobile and cloud capabilities, and that our users are getting younger and more accustomed to consumer-like user interfaces.

The result: We chose a BPM vendor with a workflow automation software solution that provides functionality that no other product could deliver, get an experienced vendor who listens more than talks, a company that is already over-delivering and wants to partner with us to ensure that our feedback and experience are considered as they add additional functionality into next versions of the product.

That last part is really important to us. More than price or any other factor, knowing that the vendor will be involved and available to us after the PO is signed is so important! I can’t say we have been burned too badly in the past (as we are cautious), but we’ve heard lots of war stories about BPM vendors selling a product, upselling services, and then upselling further when later versions are introduced. That is part of their model, and I understand that. But the vendor we chose is already proactively addressing our implementation —and our comfort level about the kind of people they are speaks volumes. Our executives and I, myself, have a great deal of trust in them.

There were four elements that made this the right choice for us in terms of product fit within our organization and how we anticipate it growing. Some BPM vendors had one or two of these, but none had all four — and none had the flexibility to adapt to our changing needs. We fell in love with these aspects of the solution:

The time continuum: Falling behind, or being unaware of when activities are happening, and not properly setting expectations can lead to potentially disastrous consequences. And that’s precisely the problem we are trying to solve: getting better insights and a deeper understanding of what we can do — and how long it will take. After validating and reviewing multiple BPM vendors in 2019 and their solutions we chose one that can look at the dimension of time within our environment. Their BPM technology includes a workflow engine that provides early notice of potential delays and the ability to subsequently intervene to correct the course we are on. This advanced BPMN software solution also provides workflows and processes represented as "what if" scenarios, which gives us the ability to anticipate the impact of hypothetical situations. These cannot be represented, or acted upon, through ‘typical’ BPMN flowcharts.

No coding needed: When meeting with various BPM vendors in 2019 I stressed that we needed a workflow tool for process owners, not programmers. Understanding the impact of an action is very different from knowing how to use REST APIs to pull data from different repositories. Previously we relied heavily on IT to make changes to our processes: build requirements, code the changes, test them, and then roll them out. With IT drowning in requests and application backlog, that paradigm no longer works. We want our people to make changes they determine are necessary to the processes directly. The solution we chose is FOR and ABOUT the people who are involved in the processes. The process itself is not necessarily the goal; outcomes are. Having a BPM tool with rapid application development capabilities that can be used by our team will keep them engaged and ensure that processes are operating efficiently. Our solution provides an intuitive graphical user interface that makes building, deploying and managing processes easier. The result will be greater time-to-value from our processes and business operations.

Deployment options: I explained to multiple BPM vendors how I am looking to move most of our applications to the cloud to minimize spending, simplify our infrastructure and reduce the IT workload. Our new solution can be implemented and used on premise, in the cloud, or a hybrid of both. This gives me the flexibility to determine what works best for us. In some ways, I feel that getting a sign-off for this BPM and workflow solution is, by itself, a huge step for our organization. At the same time, this might be ‘just the right time’ to initiate my cloud plans. From what I have seen, the tool is optimized for the cloud, can extend business processes more broadly across our enterprise and into third parties (like customers, partners and suppliers). This flexibility and functionality will serve us well as we grow.

Extensibility and enterprise application integration capabilities: Our organization is becoming more complex. That said, we do not want it to also become more complicated. We rely on internal data from our enterprise applications as well as from third-party repositories. Without those, we would not have a complete picture of what our company is doing or how we can address problems that arise. After meeting with various BPM vendors in 2019 we chose a solution that has APIs, workflows, forms and business rules, offers, hooks and callouts that support scripted interactions. We will also be able to access data through extensive web services and APIs because the solution adheres to WSDL and works with REST-enabled applications. With BPM application and workflow application integration and document imaging integration built-in, I’m confident that we will not only be able to meet our needs now, but also as we grow, change and adapt.

Now, with our list of BPM vendors narrowed down to just one in 2019, our decision is made and we are moving forward. There will be a lot of organizing and planning that need to happen, but we are closer to our goals already — and I am incredibly excited to request a demo and move to the next phase.

Why Utilize Workflow Management Software?

Every efficient organization wants to do more with fewer resources. Technology can be an enabler of these goals, but only if the tools used are accompanied with an effective foundation of processes that support business goals. And as organizations seek to go faster in today's hyper competitive and increasingly connected world, they are relying on processes to enable change, create sustainable growth, and help them adapt to changing business and technology conditions. Enter workflow management software.

When organizations apply process to their operations, they not only can improve how work gets done, but it also provides continuous insight into where improvement can be made. Ultimately, efficient workflow management software leads to cost reduction, worker productivity optimization, better engagement with customers, and even higher profit margins. Without process and workflow management discipline, human, physical, and intellectual assets cannot be effectively deployed to meet business goals. And if goals aren’t met, there’s no chance for an organization to grow and establish a repeatable, sustainable model for continued growth.

Much of this is because both as methodology and practice, business process management (BPM) and workflow management have been designed to bridge the efforts of IT and business units. Both are proven, effective methodologies for disparate teams to collaborate in order to achieve better business outcomes through the use of technology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HduhwGtEMKI

Process Director: A Different Kind of Workflow Management Software

Process Director's workflow management software is equipped with powerful features that provides organizations with the ability to manage, automate and report on their critical business processes. Workflow software is foundational component of “lean BPM”, and is integral in achieving not only automated, but also fully optimized, processes.

Managed through a browser, Process Director requires no programming expertise, thus enabling business or IT users to easily create and modify workflows according to their business needs and processes. Workflow software definitions enable organizations to capture and manage their business processes according to their own policies and procedures.

In summary, Process Director is a workflow management software that enables businesses to model their review and approval procedures, automate the process, monitor the results, and satisfy their business process management needs.

The Power of Low-Code Electronic Forms

Your digital applications deserve a great user interface. Developing a flexible and responsive UI on your own used to demand lots of time, lots of programmers, and lots of money.

Not anymore.

Process Director empowers you to create beautiful reports, dynamic smart forms and electronic forms, and rich graphical dashboards—no code required. IT organizations are slashing their development backlog by utilizing Process Director’s fast, cost-effective workflow management software for building powerful user interface elements. Business units benefit from the ability to develop mock-ups or even fully-functional dynamic e-forms using their own “citizen developers”, thereby fusing the business’s intimate knowledge of the customer and the desired customer experience with IT’s strength in building essential rules, logic, and governance features, all backed by modern workflow tools.

Process Timeline™

Process Timeline is a workflow engine with workflow automation technology that provides an easy way to compose, manage, and modify your business process. Key data, such as process duration and critical path, are available at a glance using a Gantt-style chart automatically produced and updated as your process is running. At the same time, Process Timeline is unmatched by any other iBPMS software solutions or any other workflow management software available.

Extensible Workflow Management Software

Process Director offers these workflow management software capabilities to enable you to extend your applications with custom features:

• A broad range of web services and REST APIs that can control virtually every Process Director action or access data, reports, or metadata
• A comprehensive C#/ASP.NET software developer kit to create scripts, extensions, or custom tasks (available via the Process Director SDK)

Process Director workflow management software also enables you to insert custom logic at virtually any point in the life of a workflow. And you can do so without worry: we have a great track record of backward compatibility for SDK specifications, and that’s a tradition we plan on continuing.

Document Workflow Management Software

Process Director offers a document workflow management system that empowers you to rapidly create filtered searches and tabular reports with a few keystrokes. Whether you want to review task lists, browse document folders, or search for a specific item, Process Director Knowledge Views within its workflow management software are easy to configure and even easier to use. And Knowledge Views aren’t only for display: you can export the results, automatically trigger processes, or even use the data to drive decision making in running forms, processes, or rules. If you’re looking for brilliant graphical reports, turn to Process Director’s Advanced Reporting component to produce colorful, real-time charts and graphs, suitable for interaction, email, or printing.

Web Based & Mobile Friendly Digital Transformation

The applications you create with Process Director are web apps: all you and your users need is a browser to view reports, submit requests, manage processes, etc. Any browser: all recent-release browsers on all major platforms (including iOS and Android) are supported. Your knowledge workers aren’t tied to their desks, and your applications shouldn’t be, either. Navigate Process Director’s responsive UI, create mobile-friendly interfaces for your own applications, and take advantage of native mobile BPM capabilities such as geolocation and photos—no app store download required. Just boarded a flight without WiFi? No problem: you can even take action via email. The tools that Process Director workflow management software offers enables you to do your work wherever you are, whenever you’re ready.

Application Integration and Workflow Management Software

Process Director-driven workflow applications don’t live in a vacuum. Most businesses today rely on a plethora of applications, information, and services, both within and beyond your datacenter. As an intelligent BPM platform, Process Director BPM and workflow automation software ties these disparate workflow and BPM applications together, making it easy for you to access, combine, and update information, whatever the source.

Process Director offers comprehensive BPM solutions including case management software and workflow automation software capabilities that enables both IT and business users to create robust business process management and workflow solutions to address a variety of business challenges. Whatever sector your organization occupies, and whatever your function within that organization, we invite you to join thousands of others who now rely on Process Director as their workflow and business process management solution.

Digital Transformation Solutions

Process Director workflow and business process management solutions powers digital transformation across the enterprise, providing an innovative, no-code/low-code platform for digital solutions connecting you to your customers, suppliers, employees, and stakeholders.

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Workflow & BPM Solutions By Industry

Process Director workflow and business process management solutions play a key role in helping organizations in sectors including Advertising, Education, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing and other industries. View solutions by industry by scrolling over "Solutions" in the main navigation.

BPM & Workflow Solutions By Function

Process Director workflow and BPM solutions drives growth, reduces expenses, and mitigates compliance risk. Learn more about the business departments leveraging our advanced workflow and BPM solutions. View solutions by function by scrolling over "Solutions" in the main navigation.

Schedule A Free BPM Software Demo

Process Director is an award-winning low-code/no-code BPM software solution for building and operating workflow-driven business applications. Innovative and unique, Process Director is a business process management software that offers fast time-to-value, greater flexibility, and deeper insight into your business than any other workflow software or BPM solution. Schedule a live, interactive free BPM software demonstration of Process Director.

Our roots are in the software industry however we are involved in our communities, work in philanthropic and non-profit organizations, and write books. We are grateful to be a part of a BPM company that thrives on challenge and rewards creativity and innovation.

As evidenced by multiple awards for business, BPM software, business process automation software and process excellence, we are a BPM company that is also recognized as a key partner to customers across industries and geographies.

We hope that knowing more about us and our business process management software – and what we do for our customers – will be the reason to check us out further. And we invite you to start that conversation.

More About Us

BPM Awards - View our BPM awards. We are proud to be recognized for our successful customer implementations and technological achievements.

Press Releases - Our central area for all our press releases and the latest information regarding us and our products.

Media Coverage - Learn more about the latest industry news, media coverage and announcements from us.

BPM Success Stories - Learn more about our customer and their success stories.

BPM Examples - View use cases for specific industry verticals.

Tell Us Your Story

BP Logix is a BPM company that helps companies change the way they operate through business process management (BPM). We know process, and we have discovered that it is not merely the movement of a decision, document or action along a workflow. Rather, process is an always-changing and flexible way of thinking about, and applying, a better way of doing things. What things? The things that are important to you.

Successful BPM implementation with our BPM software comes from us knowing your story and recognizing how we can help you meet your goals. That knowledge allows us to partner with you so we can collaborate to change the fundamentals of your business.

You know what you want to achieve. Tell us your story so we can help you get there.

Schedule a Free Demonstration

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.

Process Director’s BPM capabilities continue to evolve over time as BPM technology advances and as organizations needs change making it an award winning business process management software that offers faster-time-to-value, greater flexibility and deeper insight into your business processes that any other BPM software.

According to BPM.com, “by simultaneously supporting both timeline and critical-path awareness, Process Director is able to blend business process management with project management with a flexible process architecture that supports both procedural automation and in-flight adaptation”.

Notable BPM Capabilities

• Low code development modeling favoring configuring over compiling, along with the ability to combine both traditional sequence and control flow with time-based dependencies within the definition of workflows.
• Cloud and on-premise deployment options using the same codebase.
• Integration and leverage of Microsoft infrastructure and environments including SharePoint, as well as persona-based workspaces and rich UI creation using a browser-based form designer.
• User-centric alerts and notifications that enable actionable, closed-loop communication with process participants about status and events, including predicted impact on pending deadlines and dependencies.
• Rich graphical reporting and report-writing capabilities allowing for building executive dashboards and defining KPIs.
• Integration with social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and similar platforms, enabling direct-to-customer process interaction, as well as event-listeners for launching processes in response to social network events.
• Includes a business rule driven data virtualization layer and lightweight ETL capability with a function called “Business Values.” These provide a straightforward method to create reusable access points for business data, but also allows for the definition of access controls.
• Goal-driven actions that can be defined at either global, system-wide levels or down to the activity, which drive priority, state and context, and/or trigger activities and responses. They can launch specific actions, change the behavior of in-flight processes, or be linked with event listeners that serve as the “nerve endings” of the case to receive and respond to external events

Process Director Updates

Click the links below to get more details on how Process Director’s BPM capabilities have evolved with each BPM software update.

• 2018: Version 5.0 - Enhanced AI & Machine Learning Capabilities, IoT Integration
• 2017: Version 4.5 - Data Virtualization Analyzer, Modernized UI, Application Event Journaling
• 2015: Version 4.0 - Configurable Goals, Data Virtualization, Advanced Dashboards, Case Management
• 2014: Version 3.0 - Enhanced Mobile & Cloud Capabilities, Social Network Integration
• 2012: Version 2.5 - Process Intelligence, Advanced Reporting, Records Management
• 2010: Version 2.0 - Process Timeline, Predictive BPM Capabilities

Schedule a Free Demonstration

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

Learn the Benefits of BPM and Workflow with Process Director BPM Software

BP Logix Process Director provides many workflow advantages and BPM advantages as it empowers IT professionals by providing a BPM software solution that encompasses the benefits of BPM such as workflow automation, business process automation, document management, electronic forms and business rules to make lifecycle management and collaboration efficient and effortless.

Request a free BPM software demonstration to learn more about the advantages of BPM and advantages of workflow automation.

The Benefits of BPM Software from an iBPMS with Integrated Workflow and Business Rules

Process Director is an iBPMS that offers many workflow advantages and BPM advantages as it provides users with an intuitive, web-based rapid application development software that enables users to create and maintain Smart Forms of any complexity without requiring software development or IT resources. The integrated business rules engine provides a powerful graphic interface to define rules and conditions that control the behavior of the forms - and to easily route forms online in accordance with defined business processes, addressing any business function that involves completing or routing a form. Seamless integration with Process Director’s workflow engine, presenting users with familiar forms, pre-populating the forms, automatically kicking off the review and approval cycle, instantaneously track and auditing all tasks are some of the workflow advantages and BPM advantages of this integrated approach.

Process Director also incorporates a business rules engine that empowers users to rapidly implement more complex business processes. Business rules are reusable objects that can be embedded within your workflow processes to conditionally control how they should run and behave in various conditions. Business rules can be defined either as simple conditions or sophisticated interrelated rule sets. Process Director is an "out-of-the-box" product that is easy to install and administer.

Benefits of BPM Software: Streamlined Workflow Management

• Speeds Internal Routing Processes: Reduces paper handling and manual routing; eliminates errors and reduces the lifecycle of document, content and forms processing.
• Automates Business Processes: One of the workflow advantages of Process Director is that the workflow engine automates business processes by giving business users easy-to-use workflow tools. It allows existing processes to be mapped into powerful, predefined workflows. A graphical workflow builder and workflow reporter give users control over their workflows.
• Shortens Projects: Time-to-market is critical for all organizations. Workflow automation software and tracking accelerate the approval of internal projects. All members of a group or team can simultaneously perform tasks as part of the workflow process. Automatic email notifications alert members when a task is assigned to them—or if they are in jeopardy of missing a due date.
• Eliminates Errors and Miscommunications: Ensures process consistency, eliminating errors and problems due to lost or mishandled requests. Pre-defined workflow definitions guarantee that the same process is followed for each project or request. The products provide efficient tracking, management and reporting on all running processes.

Benefit of BPM Software: Electronic Forms

• Reduce Costly Paper Handling and Manual Routing: Paper-based forms are costly to print, store, distribute, mail, and process. Automation of form processing ensures there is no disconnect between a form and the business process required for that form.
• Tracking, Auditing, and Process Awareness: Instant access to current and prior activity, including completed forms and processes, ensures that authorized users have immediate access to the information they need. Having visibility into a form's complete lifecycle reduces cost, improves quality, and ensures access to vital business information.
• Accelerate the Delivery of Form-Based Information: The BP Logix workflow software automatically routes completed forms to appropriate users for review/approval. The routing provides automated email notifications and personalized task lists for users who must review or approve a form. Users can complete tasks directly from within an email, even when offline.
• Reduce Errors and Improve Accuracy: Pre-populating form fields from external sources and form segment isolation enable users to input only the data required of them. This results in fewer areas to complete, reducing errors and ensuring greater accuracy.
• Expedite Collection of Quality Information: Presenting users with electronic forms that appear similar to their paper-based predecessor eases the transition to the form completion process and improves the quality of information collected. Integrated form help, field pre-population and instant validation improve the end user experience and reduce expensive support calls.

Benefits of BPM Software: Document Workflow Management System

• Maintain Document Integrity and Security: BP Logix Server stores documents securely on the server, giving authorized users access to the most current version of each document. By assigning roles and granting permission, you can ensure secure access to all documents stored on the server.
• Locate Documents Faster: Integrated document workflow management system features provide users with rapid access to documents based on their classification. Advanced search, indexing and categorization allow documents to be located quickly and easily so users can make timely business decisions.
• Reduce Software and Training Costs: The Process Director interface is 100% web-based; native authoring applications are not required to review or approve documents. Documents are viewed inside your browser making the interface easy to use. No additional training is required.
• Maintain Regulatory Compliance: Mitigate the risks associated with electronic information management and regulatory compliance. Comprehensive security management, access control, and auditing features enable your organization to maintain compliance with various regulatory mandates (Sarbanes-Oxley, FDA Title 21 CFR Part 11, HIPAA).
• Eliminate Errors and Miscommunication: Efficiently communicate and collaborate on documents. Eliminate the "print/markup/fax" approach to document and content review, replacing it with easy-to-create graphical annotations. And you can foster real collaboration with members of your team or workgroup.

Benefits of BPM Software: A Dynamic Business Rules Engine

• Increase Accuracy of Data and Processes: The rules engine allows your business policies to be defined and automated.
• Ensure Consistency of Regulations: Reusable rules can be used by various objects to ensure that a policy is consistent across multiple processes.
• Only be Alerted of Events You Deem Important: You define the rules that determine when you should be notified or alerted to events.
• Allow Decision-Making Rules to be Easily Understood: With the graphical rules interface, your rules are easy to read and report on so you know how your processes are configured to behave.

Schedule a Free Demonstration

Schedule a 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.

The Elastic Cloud-Based Workflow Solution

No business is 100% predictable. On some days, you can hardly handle the volume that’s coming through the door. On others, there’s extra time to catch up. But are your cloud workflow management software solutions flexible enough to accommodate both your busiest and quietest periods? Or, do you have to pay for peak capacity at all times, just so that it’s available when you need it?

Private Instance Cloud-Based Workflow Solutions

VARIABLE CAPACITY

Fluctuating demand for your services may be predictable (for example, an accounting firm during tax season) or seemingly random. In either case, Process Director cloud BPM and cloud workflow management software has you covered with self-provisioned resources and elastic billing.

EASY UP, EASY DOWN

Project-driven customers can take advantage of Process Director’s easy provisioning/deprovisioning. Quickly bring new instances online as new projects arise, and just as quickly deactivate them when each project is complete. Elastic billing makes it easy for you to allocate costs appropriately.

FLEXIBLE ARCHITECTURE

Choose the workflow solution that best fits your needs and your budget. Process Director BPM and workflow management software can be provisioned as a virtual instance on shared hardware, or on-premise dedicated hardware. And, your license does not limit the number of users, workflows, or reports in your environment.

SECURITY AND RELIABILITY

Regardless of which architecture you choose, your Process Director BPM software private instance is allocated for your exclusive use. Dedicated CPU and memory resources, and a dedicated database instance, offer you the flexibility to provide as many workflow applications to as many users as your business requires.

ON-DEMAND RESOURCE MONITORING

Of course, in order to be sure that you’re provisioning the appropriate resources for your needs, you need to be able to monitor those resources in real time.

Process Director Cloud Workflow Management Software offers:

• Historical resource usage
• Threshold-triggered alerts
• Scheduled auto-provisioning

Multitenant Cloud-Based Workflow Solutions

For smaller applications, applications with a limited number of users, or just as a quick way to get started, Process Director cloud workflow management software also features a multitenant option. The multitenant option offers the full power of Process Director cloud BPM and cloud workflow management software solutions at a fixed per user cost. Of course, multitenant customers enjoy the benefits of elastic provisioning, enabling you to increase or decrease the number of available user licenses as needed. Your invoice will automatically reflect these changes, and will include billing codes that will allow you to allocate usage costs appropriately within your organization.

Schedule a Free Demo

Schedule a 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.

Automate Your Workflow Processes with an Advanced BPM & Workflow Management Application

Enterprise workflow automation software and BPM software enables organizations of every stripe to become more efficient and effective. By eliminating legacy paper-based processes, workflow automation makes your business, agency, or non-profit better organized and more responsive.

Process Director Enterprise Workflow Automation Software

• Rapid Application Development: 100% web-based GUI workflow builder for business users—no programming required
• Business Process Improvement: Process Timeline also offers process owners the ability to examine “what-if” scenarios, enabling them to predict the impact of an anticipated or hypothetical delay in a given process instance.
• Document Workflow Management: Route, manage and locate documents, eForms and content in accordance with your existing business processes

A Workflow Management Application Purpose-Built for Today’s Business Users

Process Director's unique workflow process software enables easy, point-and-click process modeling; automated routing, business activity monitoring (BAM), and sophisticated content management. The workflow automation software is configured through a 100% web-based interface enabling you to graphically model and build processes, requiring neither development nor advanced IT resources.

Using Process Director, business users create workflows, forms, and business rules without assistance from IT. Automated workflows enable organizations to take control of their business processes. Process Director workflow automation software ensures that critical information and vital documents are routed, reviewed, and revised in accordance with corporate and regulatory policy.

Of course, with modern workflow tools such as Process Director integrates with existing user directories such as Active Directory or LDAP, enabling your organization's entire staff to participate fully with automated workflow process software. Process Director enterprise workflow automation technology  automatically notifies users of assigned workflow tasks via email and is presented with a concise and easy-to-understand web page relevant to the task or activity requested. They do not require specific knowledge about the overall process because requests are automatically routed to the appropriate users as tasks are completed.

BPM application integration with the rules engine enables business analysts to define rules and conditions that control the routing and assignment of users.

Process Director automatically routes documents, forms and tasks in accordance with defined or ad hoc business processes. In doing so, the enterprise workflow automation aligns processes with business goals and individual job responsibilities, thereby uniting business, people, and technology.

Key Benefits of Process Director

• Improved Efficiency: Reduce paper handling and manual routing; eliminate errors and improve the lifecycle of document, content and forms processing.
• Easy Automation: Take advantage of Process Director's easy graphical tools to transform new and existing processes into powerful automated workflows.
• Enhanced Regulatory Compliance: Ensure a robust GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) posture using Process Director's strong authentication, authorization, and audit capabilities.
• Reduced Errors and Miscommunications: Email notifications, dashboards, and process intelligence reports ensure you stay on top of every step of every process.

 Schedule a Demonstration

See this advanced workflow process software for yourself. Request a free workflow software demonstration of Process Director today.

Automate, Track and Record All Your Review and Approval Workflow Processes

Sometimes it seems like everything you do at work requires some type of review and approval workflow process. Whether artwork or documentation, purchasing orders or vacation requests, everything has to be checked and re-checked before proceeding.

Review and approval workflow process such as routing paperwork to the right people in the right order—without losing anything along the way— can be a difficult challenge:

• Requests are sent off with no way to track where they stand at any given moment
• Paper forms are inherently error-prone and easy to misplace
• A missing link in the review and approval chain, due to absence or unavailability, can bring the whole process to a halt
• Responding to audit or discovery requests can be expensive, time-consuming, and produce unreliable results
• Paperwork can rarely be handled by multiple individuals in parallel: it must make its way sequentially through the process

The reasons listed above are why forward thinking organizations are searching for automated approval software solutions  to solve their review and approval workflow challenges which can help reduce operational cost and improve employee satisfaction.

Advantages of our Automated Approval Software Solutions

• Ensures that the proper approval workflow process is followed, each and every time
• Turns your lengthy, sequential manual processes into efficient, highly parallel automated approval processes
• Eliminates lost paperwork by permanently storing all electronic forms, documents, and other data until you delete them
• Approval software that keeps things moving through our patented business process automation software technology that automatically escalates tasks that aren't completed in a timely fashion
• Simplifies and accelerates access to archival data in response to audit or governance, risk and compliance requests

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Leo Burnett Case Study

The Problem

Leo Burnett Worldwide is one of the world’s largest agency networks and the parent company of Leo Burnett and its marketing services arm, Arc Worldwide. They had identified the need for a more formal, technology-based solution to route client estimates for approval. Recognizing that automating the Agency’s project estimating procedure was a priority, that team had agreed to replace a tool which had outgrown its original scope. They needed a review and approval software solution to route estimates for the work that every client requests from the agency, as all estimates created for clients goes through a process that involves periodic updates along the way.

The Solution

Leo Burnett chose Process Director as their approval software solution and soon after Leo they decided to license Process Director they identified a ‘short list’ of 12-15 projects. The Automated Estimating System (AES) was the first one that needed to be addressed and completed as the agency needed a uniform workflow software solution to route, manage, review and approve all client estimates.

In the Leo Burnett environment there are designated users who create estimates for all new work entertained by the agency. Depending upon specific project criteria, each estimate is required to have specific levels of approvals prior to the commencement of work. These criteria are predefined and have been built into Process Director, allowing each estimate to run through a corresponding approval that routes it to the correct agency and client approvers. The approvers receive email notifications and are able to open, review and approve the estimates entirely within the system. Automating the estimating process drives efficiency, while allowing the agency to maintain strict internal controls and ensure that each review and approval workflow are received in the correct sequence and from the appropriate parties.

More BPM Examples

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

Service Driven, Technology Enabled

Whether they are installing and configuring hardware and software, or responding to engineering change orders and service requests, the IT team is vital to your organization. The need for IT workflow automation software and IT BPM solutions has become increasingly important as interacting with the IT department in many places has become cumbersome. Relying on organizational knowledge about whom to contact about what, and routing forms through multiple levels of review and approval has organizations searching for the right BPM solutions for their IT department.

Some IT workflow software can markedly reduce the time employees need to spend on specific tasks. Taking less time and using fewer resources to achieve desired results creates the kind of efficiency that all companies seek to achieve. To achieve those results requires an IT department who can identify the right BPM solution that can do the job, encourage collaboration, integrate successfully with existing applications (and the company’s security infrastructure) and be acceptable to stakeholders. After all, with the right mix of applications and tools, an IT department’s actions can contribute to reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

Most companies enable the IT department to make the workflow changes necessary to enable the organization to become incrementally more successful. But organizations that seek excellence and want to grow more dramatically have come to rely on a different kind of IT manager: one that knows both the technology and business requirements needed to achieve revenue growth. One of the ways this happens is through building a foundation with IT workflow automation with BPM software solutions, on top of which tasks and activities move fluidly towards business goals.

IT Workflow Automation Solutions With Process Director BPM Software

• Ensure that new employees have timely and secure access to applications and other technology resources
• Record and produce information needed for audits
• Provide a consistent and secure approval workflow process for processing requests
• Coordinate requests from various departments, facilities, vendors, and suppliers
• Order and deliver hardware and software in a timely fashion
• Meet SLAs
• Fulfill change requests
• Manage your ISO or BPM compliance documentation
• Enforce and maintain internal security, business process governance and auditing policies

How can Process Director IT workflow automation software make your IT department so valuable and efficient? Its rich feature set and simple user interface combine to offer these BPM solutions:

• Visibility into your internal processes
• Timely reporting in support of management decisions, business process governance and regulatory BPM compliance
• Process consistency and reliability
• Enhanced process success through elimination of lost or mishandled requests
• Electronic forms software for reduced paper handling and manual routing, eliminating errors and delays
• Greater user satisfaction due to more efficient processing and more predictable results

Request a Free Demo

Process Director sets the pace for your BPM and digital transformation. Request a free demonstration of Process Director and discover for yourself how this unique BPM platform empowers you to innovate, respond to market demands, and delight your customers. Or, contact us to learn more about how our IT workflow automation and IT BPM software solutions have helped our customers conquer their digital challenges.