What is bpmPaaS?

The Gartner-generated term bpmPaaS is being used with increasing frequency in the technology media and among analysts, but just what is bpmPaaS? On its surface, it seems like a logical part of the evolution in the realm of process management and services-based architectures. By combining them, organizations conceivably have a solution to apply and adapt processes to specific business needs as they arise. It’s a perfect way to deliver on the promise of BPM as it was first conceived - a way to create processes that make work more efficient, build reusability into those processes, and track the progress of the people, data, and assets involved with those processes. By invoking the power of the cloud and microservices, bpmPaaS now adds the advantage of on-demand development and delivery.

For almost any organization, this is the “a-ha” moment. IT managers have been looking for a way to empower business users to create and deliver processes, and to be the central hub for change management. When delivered as a service, BPM is more flexible and adaptable, which is key at a time when business demands change rapidly. The promise is big, and some organizations are already benefiting from this platform-based, services-based, BPM solution - these are the ones that are using Process Director.

Process Director as a Services-Based BPM Platform (bpmPaas)

Process Director was originally developed as an easy-to-use, low-code development platform to enable teams to build and adapt processes to changing needs, whether those changes were mandated from outside or inside the company. While the cloud was not as popular when Process Director was created as it is today, its developers recognized that BPM on a platform, especially one that is agile, is the only true way to provide organizations with the promise that effective process management can deliver. After all, if teams are stuck having to deploy, build integrations, update, and manage the engine that’s running their processes, it eliminates the ease and flexibility that BPM is supposed to offer in the first place.

Gartner, who has been articulating the concept of bpmPaaS, pointed out last year that Process Director was already en-route to capturing the essence of what the category is all about. They, and countless BP Logix customers, point to how Process Director is able to integrate new technologies like predictive analytics, process intelligence, and machine learning in a solution that is built to continuously optimize for organizational process efficiency. This optimization gives business teams a platform on which to create tasks, processes, and systems, while allowing more flexibility and human guidance to create truly intelligent business process management that assists not just in creating efficiencies, but also in effectively meeting customer demands.

To capitalize on the services model, Process Director is available through a variety of platforms, including the cloud. For those that take advantage of the cloud, companies can use Process Director as they evolve in their needs. As they grow from using a multi-tenant environment to a solution with customization applied to it, they are able to build an agile process machine with minimal capital, infrastructure, and IT expenses.

bpmPaaS Drives Transformation

Consider the entire concept of digital transformation. While organizations dedicate considerable time to planning the tools and behavioral changes they need to make to transform core to how they run their business, they never stop transforming once they commit to it. The tools that enable them to do that need to be foundational and provide the necessary functionality to operate as a solution-of-record that provides continuous innovation and change on-demand. Just as transformation never stops, the organizations that want to close the gap between concept and solution must look to the services-based model provided by the cloud that offers a path to process optimization.

Process Director uses inherent rapid application development, the concept of time, and a cloud-native approach to deliver on the promise of bpmPaaS. Specifically, it looks to improve users’ business conditions and efficacy of processes with these following elements that are optimized for cloud delivery:

• Built in application integration and database connectors that enable connectivity, on-the-fly, to any data source that can inform processes and deliver information to improve business outcomes. It must have the ability to access data directly through SQL and integrate that data directly into forms and workflow.
• Ability to build, pilot, and adapt applications that ingest and use data from a variety of internal and third-party sources.
• Operate on a process engine that applies rules and provides compliance management to ensure processes are working as intended.
• Identify and predict outcomes, and then use that time-informed intelligence to automate building of better processes.
• Coordinate and choreograph how various services work together to deliver transformative outcomes.

bpmPaaS solutions can be used across different types of environments. Process Director, for example, is used in cloud-native, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments. Ultimately, its flexible architecture enables a better approach to identifying the most optimal data, applying it in context, and giving end-users a faster path to decision-making. An effective bpmPaaS like Process Director gives IT departments and line of business managers a way to respond quickly to market changes and internal business demands. Because it is built to deliver processes in a services-based environment, team members can emphasize their expertise in implementation, uptime, security, and getting the processes created the right way.