Business processes consist of a sequence of steps that take the business system from one state and deliver it into another state. The transition to a next step may be conditional on the outcome of the previous step. Business processes consume inputs to deliver outputs. Inputs and outputs can be of various kinds such as financial assets, materials, facilities, tools, labor and know-how.

In almost all modern organizations, business processes are identified and documented. In this respect, business processes can be considered as repeatable recipes to achieve business goals. Identified and blueprinted business processes can be measured and therefore managed.

Expense reporting, time-off request processing, purchasing, hiring, production planning, and field service management constitute a small example set of frequently encountered business processes.

Process digitalization is the transformation of a business process reliant on data stored in physical files, offline stores and the heads of agents and performed through manual means, to a business process that utilizes online data stores to retrieves and store all actionable information and is at least in part automated.

Digitizing processes greatly improve the efficiency and effectiveness operations. With digitized processes, data is easily and instantaneously accessible, and real-time monitoring and management of the process is simple. Process digitalization enables the automation of many tasks and the implementation of business rules to streamline and standardize operations.

next4biz BPM allows for the digitalization of processes within an organization or between an organization and its stakeholders. All elements of business process definitions are all easily modelled in next4biz BPM: Initial and end states, processing steps, data collection, business rules to determine follow-on steps and business rules to determine assignee processing agents.

next4biz BPM stands-out, in that it facilitates the design and implementation of digital business processes without recourse to IT experts and coders. The application is designed to help organizations simply and rapidly digitize their processes through the sole business knowledge of its users and stakeholders.

An important capability facilitated by digitalized processes, is the easy identification of process failure points. next4biz BPM automatically stores process performance telemetry, eliminating the need to manually setup process performance measurement. next4biz BPM utilizes report templates for the presentation of this data, which are designed to spotlight process failures and identify process improvement opportunities. Improved processes measurements can then be compared to previous versions of the process.

You have essentially three ways open to you:

Path 1:

What to do:

Get your IT department or an external developer team to develop custom software applications to digitize and automate the processes.

What to expect:

You will obtain a system that faithfully reflects your definition of the processes to be digitized – if your original requirements were correct, and if the software is complete before your requirements change and if overruns don’t make it cost prohibitive.

It will be possible to maintain and change your software to reflect process changes and improvements – if the developer team is still at hand, and if you can finance it, and if the required changes don’t cause too significant deviations from the original software architecture and if you and your customers can wait long enough for the new version to be tested and debugged.

You will always need a big IT group just to keep the application up-and-running.

Path 2:

What to do:

Utilize commercially available workflow tools. Customize them with heavy use of coding.

What to expect:

You will obtain a system that somewhat meets your definition of the processes to be digitized at a lower risk/cost than “Path 1” – if you can bring together a developer team with the right skills to code within the boundaries of the workflow tool, and if the architectural constraints of the workflow tool do not make implementing your requirements impossible or infeasible.

It will be possible to maintain and change your software to reflect process changes and improvements – if version upgrades in the workflow tool don’t break your current developments, and if the same technology set is still supported by the vendor, and if you don’t need to be to agile in responding to changing business conditions.

You will always need a big IT group just to keep the application up-and-running. Same as “Path 1”.

Path 3:

What to do:

Use next4biz BPM! Design workflows, digital forms, user interfaces, business rules, reports and other artifacts related to your processes. Don’t use coders, as you will not be doing any coding. Do not employ expensive outside resources, all the process know-how you need is within your organization and needs very little training to use the intuitive “drag-drop” style interfaces used for all the design work.

What to expect:

What to expect: You will obtain a system that perfectly aligns with your requirements, without any ifs or buts.

The subscription model will ensure that you never break the bank. Your outstanding financial risk at any time will be marginal.

You will not require external support.

It will be almost too easy to change your solution to support. next4biz BPM will deliver the data to measure processes and pinpoint inefficiencies and bottlenecks. Key users will propose and implement changes, test the changes and smoothly introduce them into production, whenever necessary.

You will not worry about obsolescence unless you allow your business to become obsolete.

You will never need a big IT group just to keep the application up-and-running. Or a small group, come to that. Cloud based next4biz BPM will not necessitate your intervention to deliver 7/24 performance.

next4biz BPM can be integrated with any and all of your existing systems and external platforms, provided they offer the necessary interfaces for integration. Due to its broad customer base, next4biz BPM already supports most established integration standards and technologies, making it highly versatile and suitable for various business areas and models. Integration requirements can typically be met with limited or no coding.

Developing integration interfaces is a straightforward process, and the comprehensive guide available at “developers.next4biz.com” provides web service documentation and code samples to assist with integration.

The major categories of systems integrated with next4biz BPM include:

• The main ERP solutions
• Retail and e-commerce applications,
• Communication channels (call centers, chat, chat-bots, social media, complaint sites, email …)
• Corporate applications of banks, insurance and other financial institutions