Business process management software comes to the masses

LANDesk product manager Toby Martin says it makes hitherto unaffordable technology entirely affordable for mid size manufacturers. “It starts at $35,000 and goes up to $190,000 – and for that you can re-do as many processes as you need to. What’s more, it makes BPM easier because of three things,” says Martin. “First, modelling is done in the popular Microsoft Visio environment. Second, this is also the run time engine so there’s no need to develop it for that. And the third thing is the documentation, which helps the IT and management to align with the business processes. Policies can be created at a high level and pushed down to process operatives.” Business analysts will be the primary users, although with Visio at the front end, all departmental managers can get involved without significant training. And with the run time engine also there, events can kick off workflows using the new business process model to prove that it works. Martin also indicates that BPM development is fast. “Companies can build the business process model, test it and put into operation in a matter of days. Normally, it would be three months for gap analysis alone.” And he makes the point that, with this eases and reduced effort, there is scope for many more manufacturers to integrate departments and automate some of the workflows between them. “The best time to use BPM is early on in an ERP project so that users can visualise their new system. But no business process should be an island so modelling and integration between very different points is valuable at any time.”