The story of Goldilocks
When shopping around for a new BPM tool for your organization, or looking to replace redundant or outdated BPM software, it’s all too easy to feel a bit like Goldilocks trying three bowls of porridge—without the breaking and entering, of course. It can require a lengthy process of trial and error to find the new BPM tool that is right for your organization. Of course, the process management software market offers many BPM tools that cover different aspects of process management, and in a fast-paced world, trial and error is sometimes a luxury you cannot afford.
Simplicity vs. scalability
At one end of the spectrum, we have visualization programs, offering a ‘quick and easy’ way to model business processes. Of course, while they may be simple, the challenge comes further down the line when you are looking to scale up your new BPM tool. BPM software in this category might have an engaging interface, but just try to produce models which stand up to the rigors of enterprise-class process requirements, like built-in BPMN 2.0 notation (for standardization and consistency into the future), third-party integration, or process analysis.
The conditions become too difficult, and what started as a genuine desire to keep things simple devolves into a set of business processes that are not fit for purpose, and a workflow structure that is incapable of keeping up with an organization's growing process maturity.
Functionality vs. ease of use
At the other end, company-wide professional process management, up to and including automation of business processes, requires powerful BPM tools, working together as an overall business process management platform. However, with this functionality comes a corresponding increase in complexity, and the more complex the tool, the more difficult it becomes to use.
With a high functionality/high complexity BPM tool, extensive training is required to prepare employees to use it. A common consequence is that only a small team of skilled expert users is able to apply their BPM know-how, and actually use the software. These tools are fine if your intended use for your new BPM software is purely theoretical.
If, however, you and your team want to get some genuine value from your significant investment over the term of your (likely restrictive) contract, say goodbye to your lunch breaks and hello to complex user manuals. This is especially true if you are seeking full integration of the BPM software with your existing IT infrastructure, and even more so if you already have workflow software, which will require potentially costly time and effort to connect with your new BPM tools.
So, to return to our BPM fairytale, Goldilocks discovers that some solutions offer the necessary depth of function, but are only usable after extensive training by a limited number of experts—they’re too hot. Others include process visualization, but aren’t sophisticated enough for long term optimization of business processes—they’re too cold. How can our heroine make her choice, and find the new BPM tool that is just right?
How to select the new BPM tool you need
Thinking about your organization’s specific requirements in advance is vital. Otherwise, you’re likely to spend too much time ‘tasting the porridge’ and trying to figure out whether it’s too hot, too cold, too sweet, too salty...and never finding the new BPM tool that is right for you and your organization. Of course, you will know your own needs best, but there are a few questions which can be helpful in establishing exactly which new BPM tool will be right for you, once you have a few options in mind. Think about whether the tool you’re considering:
- Allows for all process stakeholders to be included in planning and modeling business processes
- Supports efficient and effective collaboration
- Is easy-to-use, for everyone who needs to use it
- Is ready to go out-of-the-box, or requires additional program installations
- Has the ability to serve as a solid foundation for consistency, standardization, and harmonization of business rules and activities across your organization
- Ensures critical information about business operations is available to all users in a single place, and avoids time-consuming searches for material
- Can make use of process analysis technology (process mining) to answer the question, "Just how efficient are my company's business processes?"
- Can reliably detect compliance violations in your business processes
- Provides a basis for the future development of your organization, including as a starting point for business process automation
- Has the capacity to handle business processes across the entire organization, from customer-facing to mission-critical, and for a variety of business users.
There is one tool that answers all of these questions, providing a highly advanced, all-in-one BPM platform for end-to-end business process management: the SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite. The Suite is a user-friendly and up-to-date cloud-based solution that offers extensive opportunities for professional process management, allowing you to model, automate, evaluate and constantly optimize business processes and decisions, in real-time.
If Goldilocks and the Three Bears taught us anything (other than the perils of leaving one’s porridge unattended), it is that finding the perfect software tool is possible. For organizations looking for a new BPM tool, the SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite means you don’t need to sacrifice functionality for usability, or agility for scale when it comes to IT solutions. In other words, Signavio is not too hot, and not too cold—it’s just right!
Next steps
If you’re still looking for your perfect new BPM tool, taste-test Signavio free for 30 days and find your perfect BPM porridge. Or, if you’d like to know more about the ways BPM can help support digital transformation, and upgrade your business, check out our 7 Step Guide to Effective Business Transformation.