Business Process Management and Digital Transformation 

AgilePoint approaches Business Process Management (BPM) as part of organizational modernization and Digital Transformation initiatives. A company may have started its BPM journey with function-specific workflow or RPA-based task automation. However, they soon run into silos of tools and narrow automation that do not play well with each other.  As a result, executives aspire to rescue their RPA or process-automation investments through technologies that enable them to manage and orchestrate cross-functional business processes spanning across multiple functions, IT stacks, and business units, subsidiaries, and partners.  

Automating business processes across many departments:  

• Functional departments (like Operations, Supply Chain, Finance, Procurement, HR, Legal, Support, and Sales) 
• IT Stack (ERP, CRM, HCM, ECM, IT Ops, Collaboration, Databases) 
• Business Units (BUs), global subsidiaries, and partner firms 

Subsequently, IT and Citizen Developers can collaborate to implement BPM and application development initiatives that span across departments (as represented below in Fig 2).  

Fig 2- Digital Transformation oriented BPM 

Why Business Process Management? 

Every so often, growth-oriented firms go through an enthusiasm for process work to accomplish their corporate goals like: 

• Increase efficiency of employees and internal business processes 
• Improve visibility of business processes 
• Eliminate time and resource wastage 
  
  

Fig 3- Corporate Goals for Implementing BPM Initiatives 

Understanding the history of the BPM space, and how it has advanced over time is helpful and what it means for your business. 

History of Business Process Management 

The history of BPM is rooted in the manufacturing industry where Frederick Winslow Taylor, also known as the 'Father of Scientific Management,' applied his principles of scientific management. He advocated manufacturing plant managers to determine the best way for the worker to do a job and to provide the proper tools and training. Though Taylor published his seminal work 'Principles of Scientific Management' in 1911, between 1898 and 1900, Taylor and his colleague Maunsel White improved the process of treating tungsten steel. He revolutionized the machine shops of the world, enabling tools to cut metal at least three times as rapidly as before. Thus, his principles and process improvement research encouraged the manufacturing industry to make factories process-driven instead of human-driven. 

Fig 4- Frederick Taylor Process Improvement Experiments in Manufacturing 

Another wave of using ‘process’ as a competitive advantage surfaced on December 1, 1913, when Henry Ford installed the first moving assembly line for the mass production of an entire automobile. Ford reengineered the process in stages of production, step by step through the manufacturing process. The new manufacturing process improved the production output of Model T by reducing the build time to just 90 minutes from its original 12 hours. However, the emphasis on ‘process work’ passed through multiple phases before it came to be associated with BPM automation technologies (Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) and later Intelligent Business Process Management Suite, or iBPMS). 

In the early 80s, Six Sigma and Total Quality Management (TQM) gained traction; in the early 90s, Business Process Reengineering (BPR) caught the attention of boardrooms and then came ERP. ERPs had the most significant impact on modeling how an organization should automate and manage business processes. Following the success and rising adoption of ERPs, the corporate and IT interest moved to BPMS and i-BPMS, where every new letter in the acronym reflects a set of new features and capabilities introduced by 2nd and 3rd generation BPM tools.  However, a thread common between all phases is the emphasis on ‘process work.’ Later, BPM tools evolved with advancements in information technology (IT). 

Fig 4.1- Timeline of the Evolution of BPM Space 

1st Generation of Business Process Management Solutions 

In its humble beginnings, FileNet developed a digital workflow management system in the 1980s designed to route scanned documents through a predefined process. IBM later acquired the company to strengthen its document process automation offering. 

Thus, initial tools for business process management were meant to automate processes around two use cases, content and workflow management. 

• Workflow management systems 
• Document automation systems 
• E-Forms 
  
  

Nonetheless, you can get your head around BPM tools by assessing how well a BPM tool handles three types of use cases: document processing and automation, system integration, and human-centric workflows. 

Types of BPM Tools 

You can categorize Business Process Management tools into three segments: 

1. Document centric BPM 
2. Human Centric BPM 
3. System centric BPM 
   
   

Document-Centric BPM

A document-centric BPM tool is more appropriate for a company with many business processes centered on document approvals. You can automate the document approval workflow by setting up approval controls and hierarchies you define in the setup steps, making the whole process smooth, visible, and efficient. Law firms and corporate legal departments are the power users of document-centric business process management platforms. 

System-Centric BPM

Large companies with complex workflows spanning 10s of internal and partner systems prefer system-centric business process management. For instance, a large manufacturing or financial services company may typically use ERP, HCM, CRM, financial planning software, and homegrown systems. In this scenario common to most enterprise companies, an integration-centric BPM system inter-connects multiple systems to share data and ensure quality decision-making.   

Human-Centric BPM

Human-centric business process platform allows users to design and execute end-to-end workflows suitable for exception handling, support human actions, and automate cross-functional tasks and workflows. HR processes, especially employee onboarding, are an excellent example of a business process that human-centric BPM tools execute well. 

AgilePoint enables cross-functional process automation at scale as the system is architected to: 

• Handle the most extensive set of out-of-the-box workflow activities (900+) and 100+ connectors to enterprise systems and cloud services 
• Manage Process-modelling and provision process patterns (15+ Dynamic Process Patterns) 
• Manage exception handling 

BPMS and iBPMS 

Gartner categorizes BPM platforms into: 

1. Basic BPM Platform 
2. BPM Suite (BPMS) 
3. Intelligent BPM Suite (iBPMS) 
   
   

Each type of platform differs based on its capabilities and features. Gartner first published its report on BPM Suites in 2006 and later recognized the emergence of intelligent business process management suites that combined business process analytics, decision management, and event-driven systems. From 2009 to 2019, AgilePoint was part of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for iBPMS. However, since 2021 Gartner replaced the magic quadrant study with market guide. 



Gradually, the iBPMS tools have evolved into BPA (Business Process Automation) platforms, Low-Code Application Platforms (LCAP), and specialized SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) process automation tools.  AgilePoint provides process-automation and application development capabilities to both Professional and Citizen Developers. The platform also handles sophisticated and complex use cases elegantly. You may access some examples of such a scenario in this video.   

However, not all BPM platforms are created equal, as we see many companies trying to migrate from 1st or 2nd generation to modern and cloud-enabled BPM platforms. We can categorize business process management (BPM) as legacy BPM and modern BPM. 

Modern BPM vs. Legacy BPM   

The legacy BPM implementations needed process-management consultants, an army of IT, and year-long projects, and the result was the basic routing of processes and limited agility. On the contrary, a modern Low-Code/No-Code BPM platform is highly focused on governance, risk and compliance assurance, organizational agility, and eliminating traditional code generation-based solution development. Since a modern BPM platform would use metadata models to compose an application, nearly 100% of the solution behavior from the model (or models) is executable, with no additional programming. 

Hence, switching to modern BPM technology aims to improve operational performance, achieve greater agility, and reduce the risk of future technical debt. 

A modern BPM platform creates a synergy between people, process, and the technologies used by an organization. We often see our customers pulling all of their business process information (from ERP, CRM, and systems of record) into the AgilePoint platform so that their teams spend less time loading multiple systems.  In a nutshell, a modern BPM platform has many qualities, that includes: 

• Elegantly addresses both data- and process-centric app development 
• Features and capabilities that support both professional developers and Citizen Developers 
• The ability for business users to bake process capabilities into apps 
• Greater visibility into processes and apps through analytics and executive dashboards 
• Organization DevOps toolset support, thereby satisfying IT’s governance needs related to infrastructure-, app-, and process-monitoring
• Mobile, cloud, and OOTB integration capabilities within the same platform 
  

Figure 7 below represents how a modern BPM platform, with equally adaptable Low-Code/No-Code capabilities for both professional and Citizen developers, helps eliminate the silos created by systems of record (like ERPs and CRMs). 

Fig 7- 

Hence, borrowing the ranking outlined by The Forrester Wave: Low-Code Development Platforms for Professional Developers, Q2 2021, a modern BPM platform has:
 

• Tools for data and integrations 
• Process automation and UX tools 
• Tools for app dev, testing, deployment, and release management 
• Platform governance tools 
• Reporting and platform/solution extensibility 
  

We’ve established the need to practice BPM as a management philosophy and how modern BPM tools provide an unprecedented advantage in delivering the benefit of automating cross-functional processes.
 

The objective of BPM Technology: The Promised Land 

Enhanced business performance
 

BPM Suites (and more recently Low-Code Application Platforms) empower business managers to efficiently orchestrate all the human and system resources to carry out a business process. Deploying process improvements is the first step to turning strategy into people- and technology-based execution. 

For instance, if a business runs on ad-hoc processes to solve a business problem, it is through business process management that managers define the process; determine its inputs, outputs, and tasks. Once it is described, managers can ensure that the process has an owner, its purpose is well-understood, and it is not cumbersome to execute. 

It is reported that non-value-added work is usually in the 80 to 90% range. By mapping business processes, an organization learns about its value-added vs. non-value-added tasks. BPM allows managers to align business functions with customer needs and determine how to deploy and monitor company resources—documenting and making the process visible impact process accountability, a key tenant of better organizational performance. If properly executed, BPM technology reduces business costs and minimizes errors and risk – thereby optimizing results. 

Greater agility 

Business process management is also linked to greater organizational agility. In its simplest form, agility means the ability to respond quickly to business environment changes. The Pandemic was a classic example of a sudden change in the business environment. Only organizations with the capability to modify and enhance their systems and processes had the required agility to cope with its effects.  For example, Terrassa City Council in Spain, one of Europe's worst-hit regions, was able to shift to complete remote operations within 15 days. The small staff of the City Council was able to use AgilePoint v8.0 as its iBPMS (Intelligent Business Process Management Suite) and Microsoft SharePoint for document storage. The City Council quickly responded by automating its manual processes using a modern iBPMS that fully integrated with Terrassa City Council's ecosystem of 25+ applications. 

Thus, managing your business processes through a modern BPM platform empowers teams to simplify the implementation of future process changes and even modify the runtime execution of processes. 

Reduced risks 

Organizations in heavily regulated industries, such as healthcare, manufacturing, aerospace, and defense, heavily invest in BPM technologies to mitigate operational risks to the firm's core brand. These firms may adopt BPM technologies to implement adequate internal controls and tighten compliance and oversight procedures.  Failure to establish rigorous internal processes can expose a business to significant financial or operational risks. A key example is the AIB (Allied Irish Banks) Scandal. Allfirst – the Baltimore subsidiary of AIB lost $691 million due to rouge trades by one of its traders. Subsequent investigations revealed a lack of internal controls at AIB Baltimore and a failure to alert senior executives. BPM technologies impose a specific way of working on employees and are crucial to ensure compliance and effective governance.   Nonetheless, several organizations have failed process projects, and senior management is cautious about trusting the BPM promise. BPM initiatives should be implemented methodologically, from design, modeling, and implementation to monitoring and optimization. 

BPM Lifecycle 

Business Process Management Lifecycle is an iterative collection of actions executed in stages. With new advancements in the BPM space, some BPM experts cite five distinct steps, while others emphasize six or more steps in the BPM lifecycle. Nonetheless, the aim of laying out BPM as a lifecycle is to achieve two objectives: 

• Identify and document process stakeholders, such as the management team, process participants, process owners, process or business analysts, and system engineers. 
• To implement BPM as a discipline or practice for ongoing process improvements 

Fig 8-BPM Lifecycle 

Design

It involves documentation of the ‘as-is’ process and studying different aspects of a process, such as a process initiation, documenting process flow (using a flow-chart), identifying tasks, activities, process actors (entities like a person, application, or system) that will carry out the tasks involved in a process, approvals, and end state of a process.   

Model

This lifecycle stage involves visually modeling a process to depict process steps. Essentially, you create models of business processes that represent a system or process in a simplified way outlining key features and functionality. At this stage of business process redesign, one can get creative to lay out the ‘to-be-process by utilizing design concepts like loops, choices, triggers, notifications, parallel phases in swim lanes, and approvals. Flowcharting, process mapping, and simulation are different techniques for model processes. A key benefit of modeling your business processes in a modern BPM tool is that you can tweak the model to trigger run-time changes to improve processes. 

Execute 

The execution stage of the BPM lifecycle involves implementing the new process and includes both process standardization and process automation. Quality is improved through standardization, and efficiency and productivity are enhanced through automation. Usually, redesigned processes are implemented and tested for a smaller subset of the total number of users. The benefit of this step is to test out the new process incrementally and incorporate change management requirements. 

Monitor

This stage involves tracking improvements and observing how the critical process steps perform over time. Stakeholders like process and business analysts, project managers, and subject matter experts gather data and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to document how process management and automation have benefited the organization. 

Optimization

This stage signals that business process management is not a one-off task or project. Hence, it involves constant or periodic optimization of a business process on an ongoing basis. The keys benefits of process optimization are: 

• Minimize cost 
• Decrease the execution time 
• Maximize throughput and efficiency 
• Ensure regulatory compliance and adherence to corporate business practices 

BPM vs. BPA vs. DPA Differentiation  

Business Process Automation (BPA) and Business Process Management (BPA) are related but not identical. BPM is a systematic approach to improving processes, whereas BPA is popularly understood to use technology (usually BPA software) to automate processes. Hence, all BPA is a form of BPM but not vice versa.   An example of BPA is to convert paper forms into electronic forms automatically submitted to the proper recipient upon completion. BPM software allows users to manage multiple workflows within an organization instead of automating a single process.  According to Gartner’s BPA vendor categorization, an enterprise-grade BPA suite ought to have certain primary and adjacent capabilities. 

Fig 8.1- Business Process Automation Vendor Categorization 

Source: Gartner (2021) 

Definitions and categorization of BPM technologies keep shifting with every new wave of technology advancements; Forrester BPM and automation technologies into four categories. 

1. Digital Process Automation (DPA) Deep Platforms 
2. Digital Process Automation (DPA) Wide Platforms 
3. Low-Code for Pro Developers 
4. Low-Code for Business Developers 

DPA Wide vs. DPA Deep 

DPA Wide platforms provide robust tools for business developers while enabling professional developers to build complex use cases. AgilePoint is a vital example of a Low-Code/No-Code Digital Process Automation Platform in this category of DPA platforms. 

According to Forrester, “DPA Deep platforms are process-first and focus on rapid deployment. They are less focused on the professional developer experience but can easily handle many low-code use cases. They are less well suited to most complex process requirements but tend to cost less than DPA solutions for deep deployment”. Nintex, Newgen Software, and AgilePoint are the vendors in this category. 

DPA Deep platforms include vendors like Pega Systems, Appian, and Bonitasoft. According to Forrester, these platforms are well-suited for pro-developers to deliver a variety of application use cases.  Having wrapped our heads around BPM, BPA, and DPA, below is a list of popular BPA platforms. 

Business Process Automation Platforms 

Some of the BPA platforms include: 

• AgilePoint 
• Appian 
• Bonitasoft 
• Bizagi 
• Nintex 
• Pegasystems 

If you’d like to dive deeper into Forrester’s research on the BPA platform and AgilePoint’s internal research about future-proof BPA platforms, below are some valuable resources. 

More Useful Resources 

• The Forrester Wave: Digital Process Automation For Wide Deployments, Q1 2019 
• Critical Characteristics of Future-Proof Apps 
• Future Proof DPA 
• Business Process Management Software Explained
• How Business Process Management Can Help in Your Organizations Digital Transformation