What is the right BPM tool? The variety of BPM tools in the market today can be overwhelming. Large market analysts like Forrester and Gartner already make a major distinction between tools poised for process analysis or process automation.
When focusing on BPM projects driven out of the business organization like process harmonization preparing for a joint ERP strategy or implementation of a quality, compliance, or risk management system we are clearly in the business process analysis arena. Detailed technical workflow design and implementation and technical process orchestration typically is less of a priority for these projects.
However selecting the right tool from a customer’s perspective requires even further or more specific segregation.
Most organization looking into selecting a BPM tool to document and analyze their business processes find it challenging to weed through the diversity of offerings that are marketed under the BPM umbrella. Often the task is made even more difficult by the complexity of reconciling the actual needs of the organization and the capabilities of available products.
We at bpE are preparing a webinar evaluating BPM tools for business process modeling and analysis popular in the German manufacturing industry. The results subsequently will be published as a white paper. Our evaluation criteria address three fundamental objectives:
Ease of use - How simple is the user interaction?
Smartness - How much can a user achieve with the tool?
Readiness to use - How much effort does the set-up take?
Obviously there cannot be the one tool that best supports all types of BPM projects and initiatives. Therefore we added weights to the criteria dependent on different use cases.
When it comes to general business process analysis you will realize a sharp segregation between tools that are suited isolated process analysis and improvement projects and those built to support more extensive BPM initiatives. ARIS (software AG), DHC Vision (DHC Business Solutions GmbH & Co. KG) and Signavio (Signavio GmbH) clearly fall into the latter category.
Sign up for the webinar to receive more details and as a jumpstart for defining criteria and weights for your own specific BPM needs. Let us know if you are missing particular tools or specific aspects that should drive an evaluation.