8 Critical BPM Must-Haves
So you're considering BPM, and have been doing a lot of reseach into it. You've probably looked at numerous vendors, each with their own set of features and functionality that sound tantalizing. Before you delve any further, see how vendors stack up against this checklist.
A typical BPM application should allow you to:
- Design a graphical map of the overall process flow
- Determine the people and/or systems responsible for performing specific steps in the process, and allow for flexible "plug-in" or integration with other systems and third-party applications
- Determine the types of data that are needed in various steps of the process
- Determine how data elements are shared and used by people and systems in the process
- Determine when and how process steps are supposed to happen, even allowing for simulation scenarios
- Monitor the process progress each step of the way
- Manage the process execution in a variety of ways, e.g. intervention methods in the event of any exceptions
- Generate useful reports about the process, steps, and people and systems involved
Each vendor's strengths vary across the above features - some may provide more superior integration capabilities but lousy reporting tools. Our recommendation is that businesses thinking about BPM should:
- first, understand the main components of BPM described above
- ascribe an importance level to them for each element, and finally
- score vendors on each element, and match it up with their own importance for the given features
In the end, you should have narrowed it down to a list of potential vendors. Of course, we can help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of various BPM technologies, and even determine if it's better to come up with a home-grown, customized solution.
Here's what other people say about what are "core" and "essential" BPM elements:
