Helpful Guidance - An introduction to business processes

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In your crazy-busy world, you deserve access to the tools to make your work easier, faster and where the system provides intelligent guidance. You deserve to have a CRM that has the capability to tie a set of interconnected actions to achieve common goals. Thus, having a single platform that centralizes workflows, data and activities speeds up your reaction period and puts your key operations back in normal gear.

This is where business processes and dynamic case management are most effective. Bpm'online CRM  is designed to be simple enough for a business analysist and yet functional enough for a developer

What is a business process?

• A business process is a set of interconnected actions that have a common goal.

• Business processes are widely used for the purpose of managing and transforming organizational operations of different types.

• This approach constitutes the so-called Business Process Management System (a.k.a. BPMS).

Why do we need business processes? 

Using business processes helps us automate operations. A business process must ensure implementing of the following operation objectives:

• achieving the desired output (the operation goal)

• making it clear what the process actions are and how they should be performed

• understanding who is responsible for each process action

• ability to manage and monitor the process workflow

Types of business processes

Depending on their objective, business processes have several types:

2 types of Business processes used with Bpm'online, business process management platform

• BPMN business processes generally follow BPMN 2.0 notation. Using BPMN tools, you can create and maintain highly structured sequences of actions, both automated and those performed by the users. This is the best tool for creating custom business logic, such as integrations, custom UI, etc., as well as automating routine processes.

• Dynamic cases are a type of flexible business processes, which generally follow a life cycle of a bpm'online record: a document, an opportunity, an order, etc. Dynamic cases streamline and organize employee workflow, prompt them the activities needed to achieve positive result for the current record (e.g., activities needed to successfully go through the deal stages when processing an opportunity).

 BPMS  vs Cases - When best to use each

The BPMN notation in bpm'online is comprised of these key elements to create and manage a business process.

Business processes are created using a special “language” – NOTATION. There are various types of notations for describing business processes: textual, graphical, etc. In bpm’online, we use the BPMN notation, which enables us to:

• Create a visual diagram of a process and describe it graphically as a stream

• Coordinate the sequence of actions between process participants

• Resolve the “conflict of business processes and specialized notations”

Example the built-in Business Process for "Sending reminders for overdue activities":

Cases in bpm’online

Can your business process management software (BPM) handle cases that don't follow a structure?  That is what dynamic case management (DCM) provides. DCM uses business process management solutions to manage work-related cases that lack a clear problem-to-solution path. DCM consolidates all data related to the case, including persons, companies, events, incidents and issues, and processes as they happen to spot insights and patterns.

• Cases are a separate kind of business processes.

• Unlike BPMN processes, cases do not describe strictly arranged action flows, but enable a user to adjust such flows depending on specific business cases.

• Sales processes make good use of a case - where there are stages and steps, which may be optional.

Example of Dynamic Case Management used for a "Corporate Sale"

Resources: Bpm’online process and case management

• Business processes in bpm’online – A quick overview on business processes in bpm’online with useful links on how to create, run, monitor and manage the business processes.

• Getting started with Process Designer – Learn more about the Process Designer interface.

• Getting started with dynamic cases – Learn more about the Case Designer interface.

• “Process log” section – Learn how to work with the Process Log in bpm’online.

BPM’ONLINE MARKETPLACE CONTENT

Check bpm’online marketplace for free business process templates illustrating different aspects of bpm’online business process. These are examples of processes covered in the Process Designer guide.

• Business processes: start events template contains examples mentioned in the Process events article.

• Business processes: parameters template contains examples mentioned in the Process parameters article.

• Business processes: basic steps in working with data template contains examples mentioned in the Working with data article.

Examples of Marketplace business process templates:

• Engaging dormant customers – is a great template illustrating how to create a cyclic business process in bpm’online.

• Granting new owner access rights to the account data – this template provides a practical example on how to manage access rights as part of a business process flow.

• Employee on-boarding – a working process for handling a new hire, with all common practices found in bpm’online process design.

• Feed notifications on account related events – an example of automating notifications using BPMN business process.