BPA Gartner

Evalution of Business Process Management Products

Defintions

BPM Business Process Management A structured approach employing methods, policies, metrics, management practices and software tools to manage and continuously optimize an organization’s activities and processes.
BPMS Business Process Management Suite An enterprise program to enable the BPM methodology.  It should empower business users across all functional areas to quickly and iteratively enhance existing business processes to changing market conditions with little or no IT involvement.  An effective BPMS should support BPM throughout the business process life cycle.
CEBP Communication Enabled Business Process Optimises business processes by reducing the human latency that exists within process flows.  Leverages unified communications capabilities by embedding them into the business process flow.
BAM Business Activity Monitoring See Key Elements of BPM below.
BPA Business Process Analysis The set of tasks, knowledge, and techniques required to identify business needs and determine solutions to business problems.
BPI Business Process Improvement Business Process Improvement (BPI) is a systematic approach to help any organization optimize its underlying processes to achieve more efficient results.
BPMN Business Process Management Notation Standard notation for mapping business processes developed by the BPMI (Business Process Mapping Initiative), currently maintained by the Object Management Group.
BPP Business Process Platform IT platform combining content and process automation of ERP systems with event driven and SOA architecture, supported by a single orchestration platform for human and system task flows.
BRMS Business Rule Management System Software system used to define, deploy, execute, monitor and maintain the decision logic that is used by operational systems.  Includes at a minimum a repository, BPM tools, a runtime environment and rules engine.

Business Process Management products (BPM) have evolved over the last decade to become Business Process Management Suites (BPMS), described by Gartner as ‘attempts by enterprises to establish BPM as an enterprise program rather than apply methods and technolgies to one-off projects’.  BPMS should support BPM throughout the business process lifecycle.

Key elements of the BPM discipline are:

  • Optimizing the performance of end-to-end business processes that span functions, as well as processes that might extend beyond the enterprise to include partners, suppliers and customers
  • Making the business process visible (and thus explicit) to business and IT constituents through business process modeling, monitoring and optimization
  • Keeping the business process model in sync with process execution
  • Empowering business users and analysts to manipulate a business process model to modify instances of the process
  • Enabling rapid iteration of processes and underlying systems for continuous process improvement and optimization

According to Gartner, a BPMS should provide the following elements:

  • Process Modelling, including all aspects of workflow: tasks, roles, decisions, approvals, reviews, escalations, collaborations, flows, rules, policies, forms and other documents, events, goals, objectives and scenarios
  • The ability to coordinate any type of interaction pattern among users (human to human), system tasks (human to system, system to system) and information resources (human to content, content interdependencies), regardless of location.
  • Process Simulation and Optimisation

-       Real time data

-       Estimated data

-       Historical data

  • Round Trip Engineering Process Improvement

-       Audited process execution feeds back into development

  • Structured and Unstructured Information Management (not just document attachments)

-       Document Repository

-       Integration with ECM product

  • Business Rule Management and Manipulation

-       Business Rules Engine

-       Central Repository

  • Collaborative Process Mapping Environment (between the Business Users and IT, at individual and group levels)
  • Process Development Lifecycle and Change Control, including process artifacts (models, process definitions, rule definitions, service definitions, executables and more)
  • The Process Development Lifecycle includes the phases: discover, define, model, simulate, deploy, execute, monitor, analyze and optimize
  • BAM, Alerts, Historical Trend Analysis, via Portal or Mashup
  • The ability to interoperate with external software

-       SOA web services

-       ERP applications

-       Outlook

  • Packaged Business Content

-       Sample Process Models

-       Business Rule Sets

-       Prebuilt User Interfaces

Another differentiation between BPM and BPMS can be summarised as follows:

BPM Business Process Management
‘Management Theory’ Total Quality Management
General Systems Thinking
Business Engineering
Six Sigma
BPMS Business Process Management Suite
‘Modern Technology’ Service Oriented Architecture
Application Development
Transaction Management
XML and Web Services
Vertical Market Focus
Systems Integration
Workflow

Gartner have identified 21 ‘Magic Quadrant’ BPMS products which fulfill all the above criteria:-

Adobe Systems

ascentn Appian AgilePoint

AuraPortal

Cordys Business Operations Platform

EMC BPMS

Fujitsu Interstage

Global 360 Process 360

IBM BPMS

Intalio

K2 Blackpearl

Lombardi Software

Metastorm

Oracle BPM Suite

Pegasystems PRPC

Polymita Business Suite

Savvion Buisness Manager

SAP Netweaver

Singularity Process Platform

Software AG webMethods

Tibco iPrcoess Suite

Ultimus Adaptive BPMS

Two further business process modelling tools not included in the Magic Quadrant:

PNMSoft fulfills BPMS critieria but does not have sufficient US market presence.

Nimbus Control 2007 does not fulfill all the BPMS criteria, particularly when it comes to translating business processes into SOA web services and round trip engineering.  However Control 2007’s strength is that it’s easy to understand and use, and so is ideal for pure business process mapping and for the development of ‘How To’ guides.

Detailed breakdown of features:-

Feature PNMSoft Nimbus Control 2007
Process Modelling, including all aspects of workflow: tasks, roles, decisions, approvals, reviews, escalations, collaborations, flows, rules, policies, forms and other documents, events, goals, objectives and scenarios Y Y
Process Simulation and Optimisation Y Y
Round Trip Engineering Process Improvement e.g. audited process execution feeds back into development Y N
Structured and Unstructured Information Management (not just document attachments) Y Y
Business Rule Management and Manipulation Y N
Collaborative Process Mapping Environment (between the Business Users and IT, at individual and group levels) Y Y
Process Development Lifecycle and Change Control, including process artifacts (models, process definitions, rule definitions, service definitions, executables and more) Y Partial
The Process Development Lifecycle includes the phases: discover, define, model, simulate, deploy, execute, monitor, analyze and optimize Y Partial
BAM, Alerts, Historical Trend Analysis, via Portal or Mashup Y Y
The ability to interoperate with external software e.g. SOA web services Y N
Packaged Business Content ? Y
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