The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Management Technologies in 2024

Business process management (BPM) technology is a combination of digital tools and solutions that help business enterprises achieve agility through process management, automation, and optimization. Its main purpose is to help businesses adapt to rapidly evolving business and technology landscapes by continuously improving business processes.

Well-designed BPM systems play a key role in minimizing growing pains by helping employees to navigate complex processes, increasing visibility into work queues, preserving as well as organizing institutional knowledge, and reducing reliance on email-based processes.
- John Stretton, associate director, process automation at EDP Renewables

When appropriately implemented, BPM technology can drive your organization's agility, scalability, and efficiency.

Core Functionalities of BPM Technology

BPM technology is defined by four core functionalities—process modeling, application development, performance monitoring, and enterprise application integration. These enable businesses to improve workflow management and business automation continuously.

1. Process Modeling

Like a flowchart, process modeling provides a graphical representation of the business processes of workflows. It helps businesses identify areas where there are opportunities for improvement. Aside from improving operational efficiencies, it also aligns operations and processes with business strategies and goals.

2. Application Development

The generation of an application involves automation configuration, data management, task lists, and other automation technologies that enable the seamless transformation of business processes.

3. Performance Monitoring

BPM technology improves the overall productivity of a business by setting benchmarks and measuring performance over time against key indicators. It utilizes reporting tools, advanced analytics, intuitive dashboards, and other management solutions that can enhance workflows and processes.

4. Enterprise Application Integration

Enterprise application integration (EAI) connects workflows and databases to ensure that they are used consistently in business applications across an organization. It integrates BPM tools and platforms with legacy systems to avoid downtimes when business applications or processes are upgraded for continuous improvement. 

Examples of BPM Technology

To determine what BPM technology can provide value to your business, here are some examples that show the use cases of technology in BPM. 

1. Business Process Management

BPM technology is primarily used for Business Process Management (BPM). Software tools and solutions are utilized to help align IT and operations with business goals. This includes using automation tools to deploy apps, monitor performance, measure productivity, and other processes.

2. Business Rules Engine

A rules engine is a pluggable and flexible software component that manages if-then business rules. It runs one or more business rules on data and executes the corresponding action if any condition matches the data set. Business rules engine define how a process should be done based on operational protocols, legal or regulatory laws, decision-based rules, and other criteria for process management. With BPM technology, an enterprise user can change these business rules without further assistance from programmers or developers.

3. Business Process Monitoring

Business Process Monitoring is an integral part of the BPM lifecycle. It is crucial to review and analyze the performance of business processes to identify issues that need corrective action, opportunities for improvement, or successes that can be replicated. Management dashboards with data visualization and infographics automate business process monitoring while providing users with an overview of performance metrics for faster decision-making.

4. Business Process Management Suite

A business process management suite (BPMS) is an application infrastructure that supports BPM initiatives. It enables businesses to optimize their workflows, rules, and data for better outcomes. It consolidates all business applications and data in one place to achieve greater efficiency and consistency in business process management.

5. Business Process and Workflow Modelers

Process and workflow models provide a high-level view of business workflows. BPM modelers create a diagram of each workflow or process so users can easily see the tasks, activities, and roles involved. This helps users spot bottlenecks, identify risks and opportunities, and edit workflows to optimize outcomes.

Let’s look at those Enemies and How BPM Technology Can be Your Secret Weapon.

Enemy #1 – Scale

One fearsome enemy that many business teams face is scale. They can get one thing to work, but how do you replicate it 10x, or 100x? Scale is an enemy that businesses must tackle everyday, but no ordinary human can beat it on his or her own.

Tony Stark can build one Ironman suit, but it takes a long time and requires him to be in the lab constantly. Jarvis, with his automation capabilities, can build hundreds of suits in a relatively small amount of time. And, Jarvis can simultaneously be working at the lab and also with Tony fighting the bad guys.

That’s the same power that business process management technology can give you. It lets you automate your existing processes without needing human intervention at every turn. If you can create the process flow for one instance, BPM technology can scale it up as big as you want, all the while collecting data and being much more productive.

Enemy #2 – Chaos

The second enemy that haunts businesses all over the world is chaos. Chaos has many weapons – email approvals, misplaced forms, errors, communication gaps, office politics, and more. Chaos loves to get in and mess up your best plans, bringing them down to nothing.

Tony Stark’s own life is pretty chaotic. He uses Jarvis to make sure his most important tasks stay on track and are well planned. Jarvis can plan and execute each and every aspect of Tony’s life. The pressure of having to run multi-billion dollar industry, combined with having to fight aliens and improve his armor means that the details will get missed unless someone is there to pick them all up.

But that’s where BPM technology can help. It takes the chaos out of your daily routines, and lets you focus on the things that really help in growing your business.

In the real world, BPM technology takes the clutter out of your life by handling emails, calendar schedules, and more, and bringing them all under a single banner. This way, you aren’t shuffling through dozens of windows and apps to see what’s where. This is one of the many benefits of BPM that lets you focus on your work, not where it is and how to get to it.

Good BPM technology, like Kissflow, is not only focused on removing the chaos from your environment, but also helps you automate any work that doesn’t require the active intervention of you or your employees.

Enemy #3 – Distractions

Everyone has met the distraction monster at some time. Whether it is that juicy gossip email, a headline that leads down a clickhole, or a subtle call to check to see if the bagels are gone, distraction is extremely effective and can easily derail you.

With dozens of tasks on your plate, it’s natural to forget something. Even Tony forgets when his anniversary with Pepper is. That’s where Jarvis comes in to remind him. Not only that, but Jarvis also helps him pick out a gift for the date without even needing active intervention. Although it is an important task, it’s not something that directly helps with Tony’s task of saving the world on a daily basis.

Business process management technology is there to enable, not hinder you. If the task needs to be done, but doesn’t provide to the growth of the business in any way, then it makes sense to have it automated.

BPM technology can pull all of your most pressing process tasks into a single dashboard so that you can focus on your primary work without having to worry about incoming emails, text messages, and other easy distractions.

Distractions often lead to delays and errors and BPM technology can help you snuff these out too. Once you’ve set the system to work as and how you want it, then it’ll keep doing that task for as long as you need it.

The Benefits of Business Process Management Technologies

1. Provides Business Agility

BPM technology allows you to respond to issues the moment they arise and to apply the appropriate solutions without disrupting operations. It also enables you to adapt to rapid changes in fast-evolving markets, ensuring that your customers’ needs are met and your business stays relevant.

2. Accelerates growth

With BPM technology, you can create a single process flow and scale it up as needed. It gives you unparalleled automation capabilities that does away with human intervention within a defined workflow. It also allows you to replicate an existing business process and run it 10 times or even 100 times more. This helps you accelerate growth and meet the demands of a growing market base.

3. Improves Operational Efficiency

One of the key benefits of BPM technology is the efficiency it brings to the workplace. With process automation, there is no need for active intervention in routine or repetitive tasks such as scheduling, email approvals, or text responses. By automating these tasks, delays and errors are also minimized. More importantly, employees can focus on tasks that help grow their businesses.

4. Streamlines Workflows

Advanced technology provides better monitoring and analysis of business performance. With BPM technology, you can generate analytics and graphic illustrations that help you identify process bottlenecks in your existing workflows. This enables you to streamline processes and implement continuous improvements that help you meet your business goals faster, easier, and more efficiently. 

5. Improves Customer Service and Product Delivery

Digital transformation can help you deliver better products and provide better client services. Implementing BPM technology can make this possible without causing operational interruptions or delays as you change your business processes.

How Damamax crushed chaos with BPM technology

Damamax, a telecommunications provider established in 2008, faced challenges with its IT infrastructure. Their system struggled to support complex workflows, and the team was overwhelmed with requests for workflow enhancements. The existing tools were complicated, and the system lagged significantly.

Damamax discovered Kissflow, a cloud-based Business Process Management (BPM) platform, in their quest for a solution. It was an immediate fit, offering easy-to-use features that boosted productivity and provided control over their processes. The COO found value in the productivity enhancement and the insightful reports generated by the platform.

Kissflow's customizable forms and centralized data repository provided Damamax with a clear view of its operations, enabling it to identify areas for improvement. This led to significant benefits, including saving the IT team from burnout, eliminating manual processes, and saving time, effort, and money.

Damamax has since expanded its workflow automation to include purchase requests, sales leads, and HR functions like leave requests, with many functions now being 100% automated. They continue to seek ways to improve productivity across their organization using Kissflow.

Enhance your business with Kissflow

Indeed, BPM technology can give you a competitive edge by enabling you to align business processes with your business goals. It allows you to meet consumer demands and adapt to market changes through process automation, continuous improvements, and agile solutions.

Low-code development platforms support BPM strategies with greater flexibility and governance. A low-code platform like Kissflow offers a visual drag-and-drop editor to transform processes into streamlined workflows with minimal coding and IT costs.