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The biggest question in the life of any business owner is how to make things better than it is right now. Automation is one of the most powerful instruments for this purpose, but like any other tool, it has to be used smartly. In some cases, it can make things worse and lead you to unpredicted expenses and nasty surprises.
In this article, I would like to point out the most crucial points that you have to take into account before automating business processes in your company. Also, I will show product owners how to make their software products a preferable choice for their customers.
It will start with the basic concept of the business process and the existing problems of its automation. Then we will slightly move to the idea of BPM software, and in the end, I will share with you some practical experience about BPM engine implementation.
For now, I would wish you a nice reading, and let’s get started!
First of all, every business owner has to understand the importance of business processes for the company. Business processes - is flesh and blood of any organization. It makes your company unique and competitive, and it is the main reason for your clients to trust you and come back again. Of course, customers know nothing about your internal processes, but they perfectly know the result they will get working with you. Therefore, even the smallest reason that makes your business unpredictable for customers can make them leave.
That’s why it is so important for business owners to keep their business processes as manageable and measurable as possible. To make it done, you have to understand clearly what part of the process(-s) is under your control and what behavior is dictated by the external environment. Unfortunately, the external software that you are using for the automation can make your processes static and unmanageable.
To learn more about business processes and advantages of its automation, you can read our previous article.
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Business Process Is The Essence |
When it comes to business processes automation, you always have two options: to develop custom software or choose a box-solution from the market.
The first option is costly but will fit your business processes like a perfectly designed suit. If you have a good development team, you will be able quickly and precisely develop your software according to growing business needs.
The second option is much cheaper than the previous one and can save you a significant amount of money. Of course, you can find a perfectly fitting suit in the regular shop. But the color, the material, or something else may not be so good as you wanted. The same problem with already existing software on the market. The main problem is that business owners quite rarely understand all the requirements at the moment of purchasing. When the problem is becoming evident, it is too late and too expensive to switch the solution.
To reduce this conflict, some products provide the possibilities for business process customization (partially or fully). It allows their clients to adjust it according to their requirements and makes such products much more preferable among others. The name of this feature is BPM engine or workflow management.
To learn more about automation approaches and their compromises, please take a look at our previous article.
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Business Automation Strategies Overview |
As you see from the post above, BPM software is a very powerful instrument to bring agility to your business process automation. It can be used as an integrated solution in your own software or like a standalone system for process management in your company.
It sounds so nice that some of the readers of this article can already have in mind to use such system in their organization. And it is a totally smart idea! But before you make the final decision, I would like to recommend you to make a deep investigation of available BPM solutions. Regardless of all the benefits, you can get using the BPM solution, there are still too many factors that can take you in trouble in the long term perspective.
Please take a look at this article before you start looking for BPM software. Our recommendations will save a lot of nerves, time and money.
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8 Complexities of Choosing BPM Software |
From the article above, it is easy to understand that choice of BPM software is a hard choice. And you are a happy camper if you managed to find an option that satisfies your needs.
For those who found nothing and realized that there is no acceptable option for them, I would propose to consider the possibility of custom BPM solution creation. It is not so crazy and scary as it can look like from the first sight. This task is not trivial but it is quite doable especially if you know the basic concepts. Also, you can reduce the amount of functionality of such an engine to the most valuable features to simplify the implementation.
You can find the most crucial technical insights about BPM software implementation in the following article.
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Custom BPM Software Development Guideline |
To conclude this article, it would be fair to return to our kickers. Business processes - it is the core of any company and the responsibility of any business owner is to keep it transparent, manageable, measurable, etc. It is the only way to be able to make them better all the time.
That’s why business owners have to pay special attention to software products they are using in their companies. They have to eliminate any possibility for software to dictate the internal business processes in the company.
The owners of software product companies have to take into account everything described above. The hardcoded business processes bring more problems to their clients than facilitation. To make your product preferable by your clients it has to be the most agile among others. That’s why BPM or Workflow engine is the way to go to make your product better.
