In the previous blog, we talked about the major challenges in managing and automating business processes and why in-house apps are not a sustainable solution. The way to go is to use the most suitable Business Process Management (BPM) platform that meets your requirements.
We’ve compiled a list of key considerations in choosing a BPM platform that can support your goal of delivering high-impact, game-changing business solutions.
Fast and easy deployment
Your Business Process Management (BPM) platform of choice should be easy to configure and fast to deploy so you can hit the ground running in modelling and executing the business processes. It needs to be agile and flexible to accommodate the ever-changing internal and external scenarios.
It should seamlessly integrate with your existing applications via readily-available data acquisition, data processing, visualisation, and integration components.
Low-cost and low-maintenance
Cost optimisation is high on every company’s agenda. So, the chosen Business Process Management (BPM) platform should be based on hosted deployment model where the vendor owns the software and hardware and handles critical services like availability and upgrades. This way, you don’t have to bleed yourself dry paying for additional hardware, software, and maintenance charges.
With this deployment model, you don’t have to carve out a dedicated IT team or upskill an existing one to maintain and support the system—further cost-cutting opportunities.
Flexible and user-friendly modelling options
There’ll always be a bottleneck if the task of creating and executing business processes is passed on to IT from the business. The ideal situation is to allow your business users to model and build business processes so they can be rapidly executed within the systems and achieve whatever goals they set out to do. Business users are well-positioned for this as they’ll know the nuts and bolts of the business.
To this end, the functionalities offered should be user-intuitive and user-friendly. As coding is a skill that may increase business cost and complexities, it’s crucial to have a platform with low-code or no-code capabilities. There should be pre-delivered templates like data models, rules, workflows, and processes to get them started.
Choose a Business Process Management (BPM) platform that supports self-serviceability. Within this environment, your business users are empowered to build and automate business solutions without the need to have extensive coding skills, reducing dependence on IT.
Data governance and data quality
There’s no point in getting business processes up and running if the underlying data isn’t governed. Data quality checks need to be incorporated, or else the business processes start running on bad data, misleading people into making decisions that can be detrimental to the company.
This is done via means of business rules and validations, encompassing both incoming and existing data within the systems.
Collaboration capabilities
As there’s a growing need to have people-centred processes like employee engagement and customer onboarding, it’s essential to have seamless collaboration capabilities to rally participation from people and avoid communication breakdowns.
It’s worth looking into several modes including content-specific events, real-time chat, co-browsing sessions, case or process instance documents, and integration with telephony and video chat services.
Alignment with industry standards and best practices
It’s only logical for companies that strive for excellence and higher profitability to benchmark themselves against other industry players.
One way to do this is by ensuring that you’re able to embed industry standards and best practices in your business processes. This adds value, making business processes more impactful in supporting and achieving strategic goals.
MDO FUSE as the solution
Now that we know the key criteria of a suitable Business Process Management (BPM) solution, is there one available in the market?
You can consider MDO FUSE. It is a data-driven, process platform that addresses the complexity and uniqueness of discrete business-oriented solutions. It runs on a highly-modular microservices architecture, enabling the development and deployment of solutions independent of each other.
It’s a cloud-based SaaS solution, so it’s easy to configure and can be deployed quickly. You won’t need to buy additional hardware or set up new IT infrastructure, so it’s cost-efficient. This also means you don’t have to maintain a dedicated IT team to support this platform.
MDO FUSE seamlessly integrates with SAP and S/4HANA systems via SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). To connect with other enterprise and data warehouse systems, it has Enterprise REST services and other integration adapters.
To get you started quickly, it has pre-configured business rules, workflows, role-based data security, and API frameworks. Not forgetting, taxonomies and hierarchies that follow industry standards like ISO14224 and UNSPSC, thus allowing you to adopt industry best practices.
It also has an easy-to-use interface to invite and collaborate with external partners and internal teams. It leverages Microsoft Teams, enabling contextual collaboration to zoom into specific topics and expedite problem-solving.
As MDO FUSE employs a low-code framework, even your business users can create data models, data quality rules, and business processes without the need to have deep technical skills. By being able to navigate the tools by themselves, they will gain confidence in taking up ownership and governing data. This gives you a strong footing to establish a self-service model.
MDO FUSE has a data quality layer, enabling both active and passive governance. Active governance validates new data entries based on the defined business rules. While passive governance performs validation using the latest business rules on current data in the system. This way, you’re assured of continuous data quality so you can focus on getting the most out of your business processes.
With MDO FUSE, companies can model, automate, and optimise various cross-departmental business solutions such as employee leave management, invoice reconciliation, and supplier collaboration, while saving time, money, and resources.
Author: Shigim Yusof