Business Process Management (BPM) system is a business application development environment that requires no programming knowledge.
The greatest feature of the System is Easier to Modify Business Processes comparing with Workflow Systems and Made to Order Systems. Modified Business Application is ready to use, so it enables to operate business systems responding quickly to changes in business environment. "Questetra BPM Suite" is a SaaS based BPM System.
※ Award Winning "Cool Vendor Prize (World)" by Gartner
(BPM : Business Process Management)
At the first place, BPM is a Business Administration concept that "improve business processes continuously." So BPM systems also focuses on
Looking over the records of average processing time on each process or processing performance of the member, a field manager him/herself can actively improve workflow like "better processed concurrently after this point" or "this process should be double checked". We can say that BPM systems sublimate a business processes itself to the source of competitive strength.
Questetra BPM Suite, as well as functions of the conventional workflow products, various tools are equipped to improve workflow (business processes). Especially, aggregation graphs of process data and discussions about improvement on in-house micro-blogging would guide a business process it should be.
A story of 'TAKEO' who works for "TAKETORI Firm" which is a micro enterprise of bamboo crafts, see how he succeeded to improve "Made to Order Flow" (Production management system)
(Japanese)
Stories about 1: How to draw a Business Process Diagram? 2: What kinds of business can we kaizen (improve) remarkably? 3: How to Exercise Knowledge Management under Application Control? 4: How to Balance Productivity Improvement and Acquisition of Customers' Trust?
BPM Story
Recently, varieties of BPMS are released such as IBM BPM Suite (2011 release) and Oracle BPM Suite 11g (2010 release) and many others. There is no difference among them on its purpose of continuous business improvement. But it is also true to say there are differences such as approach to atypical business or the concept of social features.
Compliance? SOX Act? - Which employee does what, when, how and with which tools? That's a critical question which usually rely on BPM solutions to visualize, streamline, and implement predefined workflows.
Why BPM?
Both of "BPM System" and "Workflow System" are online tools for business efficiency working according to "Workflow definition". This is a description of difference about them.
Difference between BPM and Workflow
BPM systems are categorized into "Human-Centric BPMS" and "System-Centric BPMS" This is a description of difference about them.
HC-BPM and IC-BPM
'Workflow Engine' is core software which is installed in Workflow system and BPM system. Questetra BPMS supports Non-block structured loops.
BPMN workflow engine
Task: Units of work that constitute the workflow. In the international standard BPMN, tasks are defined as units of work that “cannot be broken down to a further level” (Atomic Activity). The employee who has a good grasp of the involved work and organization should be the one who decides what kind of tasks should be included and who should be in charge of those tasks (including computers).
Click here for details
Workflow engine: Software applications that manages business processes. These software products identify process models (workflow definition), accept work data from upstream tasks (human input or computer-processed) and send it to downstream tasks. Workflow engines can differ in functionality, like compatible workflow formats (conditional splits, concurrent processing, etc.) or operable number of processes. Also called BPM engines.
Click here for details
Token: Comes from “tokens” labeled on goods for delivery. The token is the ID given to each operated workflow and is managed within the workflow engine. When a workflow splits into multiple concurrent tasks, the token is divided and a new ID is provided.
Click here for details
BPMN: An international standard for defining process models (workflows). The standard maintains definitions of task and event icons. Today, workflows in the SOX Act are more often written in BPMN. Up until BPMN 1.2 the official name was Business Process Modeling Notation, but was changed to Business Process Model and Notation with the BPMN 2.0 upgrade (January 2011).
Click here for details
Offer: To offer work to a prospective employee. Not all work automatically has a pre-specified employee. When it is not yet clear which team member will be in charge of a task, the task is first “offered” to all members and waits to be accepted.
Click here for details
Process data: The set of data that is handed down through each process model (workflow). These are things like “purchased items,” “billed amount,” “comments on approval,” etc., and are passed along from upstream tasks to downstream tasks. Each employee’s position and authorization establish the limit of how much process data he/she has access to.
Click here for details
Process model: The definition of a workflow, or the overview of a sequence of tasks. Workflow overviews generally include three types of information: (1) Flow, (2) Person in charge, and (3) Handled data. The flow is usually conveyed by a diagram and split conditions. (Also called business process)
Click here for details
BPR: Business process reengineering, or the activity of making fundamental changes to business flows. BPR was proposed in the early 1990s with the rise of information technology, and focused on reconsidering inefficient workflows from scratch. Although similar to the concept of BPM, which hit the spotlight in the 2000s, it puts less emphasis on “continuous” improvement, and tends to be less popular because it connotes the idea of failures.
Click here for details
workflow, business process management, saas, bpmn, software
