Process and Workflow Disrupt Traditional BPM Market

By Jim Sinur

(Aragon Research) – It seems that the BPM gurus are lamenting that the traditional BPM market is not growing at an explosive rate. These experts are debating what to rename the BPM market all the while process is exploding.

 

The vendors that are buying or building lighter-weight workflow or process management are too numerous to list. Even Apple has gotten into the game with the acquisition of an automation and scripting app called workflow. While it might not be the low code approach that many other vendors offer, it makes Apple a player. All of the important digital business platforms have process in them – it varies from light process flow to “big BPM,” but work management, which almost all DBPs have, requires flow and collaboration of some sort. Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle have flow capabilities. New entrants to the process world like Box and Hellosign are adding fuel to the process fire.

Big BPM Drivers

Case Management is crucial for managing complex and evolving situations (called cases). They tend to be long-running, complex, emerging, and involve deep knowledge/skills. This is a growing area and usually requires fixed milestones.

Goal Directed flows are pretty new, but for situational flows where the goals or milestones change it provides a good solution. In situations and times of rapid change, goal directed process wins the day. Carried to an extreme, these flows involve smart bots, cogs, and APIs that bid on work.

End to End Journeys (Customer, Employee, Product, Partner) are about managing a journey from beginning to end giving it visibility, nudges, and orchestration. End to end process management is having a strong comeback, especially around customer journeys. This is causing processes to define themselves in terms of complex goal sets that put equal or high priority to the unique customers goals and needs.

Little Process Drivers (Also in Big BPM with Less Overhead Here)

First Mile Content Management journeys are a popular use to capture, sign, and manage documents as they hit all of the required stops to cement an ongoing relationship managed by the governed and guided by those documents.

Cross Skill / Departmental Flows are the life blood of organizations. While often quite simple, they help manage organizations and the resources that are included/guided by these processes. This is one of the fastest growing areas for process today. These are usually driven by low or no code and light weight process capabilities.

Event Response is where events, expected or not, trigger off appropriate actions to deal with the situation of pattern of events. While there may be a pause for decisions before any action because the event pattern may be new, canned process responses can be inventoried and pulled out when needed.

Bottom Line

Work, content, and data tend to flow when action is taken in response to attaining a set of goals or responding to events. Process is hot again in terms of use in new, emerging solutions. The benefits for operational improvements are proven, so process persists. I’m sure folks will be fighting about a new name, but I say enjoy the ride.