Leadership Insights: Explore Our Blog on Leadership Strategies & Best Practices — CMW Lab Blog https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/leadership/ Plan. Manage. Collaborate. Fri, 21 Feb 2025 13:48:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 Top 10 Benefits of Business Process Management (BPM) in 2025 https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/benefits-of-business-process-management/ https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/benefits-of-business-process-management/#comments Tue, 18 Jul 2023 01:27:00 +0000 https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/?p=281 Business Process Management (BPM) is a systematic approach to optimizing a company’s workflow for increased effectiveness, reliability, and understanding. You try to improve the systems that run your business so that it works more efficiently and profitably. These days, such understanding of the importance of business process management and more specifically the advantages of business process management is […]

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Business Process Management (BPM) is a systematic approach to optimizing a company’s workflow for increased effectiveness, reliability, and understanding. You try to improve the systems that run your business so that it works more efficiently and profitably. These days, such understanding of the importance of business process management and more specifically the advantages of business process management is crucial for success. By continuously improveing processes, companies can gain a competitive edge.

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Business process management systems are not easy to describe, but their impact is accurate in its focus: To improve operations processes and results, enhance productivity, and increase sales. The focus of this article is on significant positive impacts of BPM integration for companies of every size. This also addresses the core questions – ‘Why BPM?’ and ‘Why business process management in the 2024-2025 era?’ The reach of benefit of BPM software is towards all the facets of the business.

Good business process management delivers tangible business process management benefits like cost efficiency, leading to decreased expenses and increased revenue. But the intangible benefits, realized over the long term, are equally crucial. They empower companies to adapt quickly to changing market conditions, outpace competitors, and thrive.

Let’s delve into the top 10 advantages that business process management technology offers your organization, and how business process management tools can transform your operations. By identifying bottlenecks, companies can maximize the benefits of bpm. Understanding the different types of business process is also key.

The Top 10 BPM Benefits for Your Business:

  1. Cost Efficiency: Streamline Operations and Boost Profitability

cost savings

Simply cutting budgets is no longer a sustainable strategy. Businesses must ensure that costs already incurred and revenues produced by them are efficiently utilized. BPM drives cost efficiency by streamlining business operations, automating routine work, enhancing product quality, and reducing corporate risks.  In 2025, BPM is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for companies seeking to maintain a competitive edge. Companies need to increase efficiencies.” The advantages of process management cannot be overstated.

For example, implementing BPM software can automate invoice processing, reducing manual labor and human errors. 

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  1. Business Agility: Adapt and Thrive in a Dynamic Market

A key trend in BPM is the development of nimble processes that respond to organizational learning in the marketplace. Flexibility is a primary business process management goal, alongside cost efficiency. This demands ultra-flexible business process management tools that are easy to design, change, and deploy. Understanding business process management use cases is crucial for maximizing value. Business process management advantages include the ability to quickly adapt to changing circumstances.

Business agility incorporates several key elements:

    • Process Management: With CMW Platform, process management comes in the form of visual workflows that you can change on-the-fly. You can re-use workflows wherever you need to and customize them as you go.
    • Rule Management: Staying governed, visible, and compliant in an unstructured, collaborative environment.
    • Integration and Automation: Seamlessly connecting tasks, cases, and projects within a business process management system.
    • Continual Optimization and Scaling: Implementing quick wins and scaling BPM incrementally, which enables businesses to reach new heights.

With agile BPM implementations you can quickly adapt to new regulations, market trends, or customer demands. [Provide a specific example of a company using BPM for agility here. This often involves creating effective process maps.

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  1. Compliance Ease and Visibility: Stay Ahead of Regulations

real-time visibility

Changes in legislation can lead to unforeseen costs for companies without a flexible compliance system. BPM systems allow companies to build compliance into their business practices by integrating department-specific applications with the organization as a whole. This allows for automated reports demonstrating compliance in a cost-efficient way. In order to gain efficiency from a business process management system, companies need to understand its core benefits.

For instance, BPM can automate data collection and reporting for GDPR compliance, reducing the risk of fines and penalties. [Source: Link to relevant compliance documentation/article] This helps reduce errors and ensures regulatory adherence. The advantages of business process automation are substantial in this area.

  1. Customer Focus: Exceed Expectations in the Web 3.0 Era

Savvy customers demand proof-of-concept processes that demonstrate how their needs will be met through self-service capabilities. Business process management helps organizations combine people with technology to acquire and retain satisfied customers by personalizing interactions and providing easy access to information. This is made possible by workflow management.

Leverage BPM to map customer journeys, identify pain points, and design streamlined processes that enhance the customer experience. [Source: Link to customer experience statistic or article]. This leads to more informed decisions. By understanding what are the benefits of business process management in this context, companies can create exceptional customer experiences.

  1. Staff Satisfaction

staff satisfaction

With clear and automated workflows employees tend to avoid manual tasks and instead focus on other activities that require more attention. This leads to increased job satisfaction and reduced employee turnover. [Source: Link to statistic about employee satisfaction and process automation] This is one of the key benefits of business process automation.

  1. Efficiency and Productivity

BPM is a major contributor to the productivity and efficiency objectives of business enterprises relative to their goals. It is important to appreciate the role of process management in this regard. Measuring and monitoring processes, establishing process excellence, and optimizing workflows leads to greater process efficiency. The ability to quickly identify and remove tasks that bring little value boosts productivity overall. Understanding the importance of process management in this context is critical.

By using BPM to automate the approval and routing of documents, the time needed for each task to be completd is greatly reduced, which increases the overall productivity of the group.

  1. Reduced Micromanagement

BPM eliminates the need for micromanagement by providing clear documentation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and assigning responsibilities. Employees can complete tasks confidently without constant supervision.

  1. Single Digital Environment

A good BPM tool serves as a unified environment for data fetching and pushing to vital software platforms like ERP and CRM. This integration reduces manual entry errors and grants access to the company’s fundamental operations to all employees (while ensuring proper access control for security purposes). This fosters better collaboration and decision-making across the organization.

  1. Measurable Results

Evaluate the results of new processes using BPM. Estimate time saved, determine if improved processes save money, and monitor these findings in real time. Use these findings to further direct your internal processes.

With effective BPM analytics, track key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the impact of your process improvements. This enables businesses to make data-driven decisions.

  1. Improved Responsibility

Implementing BPM in your organization empowers employees to take ownership of their work. Dependency on the IT department minimizes, and processes can be built and completed faster by non-technical users. This places the power in the hands of any employee who sees a bottleneck and wants to bring value.

Conclusion: Is BPM Right for Your Business?

Could your organization benefit from improvements in the following areas? What are the benefits of process management overall for your specific business?

  • Increased customer satisfaction and shorter time-to-market for products and services
  • Greater efficiency (and cost savings) with existing applications and processes
  • Greater team satisfaction as collaboration and best practices are improved
  • Full transparency of all activities across the team and organization

If so, then take advantage of work management software, which delivers a full set of tools and services that apply workflow structure to information and workers so that processes are streamlined and performance is improved. Business Process Management (BPM) is a core subset of effective work management. Don’t confuse BPM with BPMN; BPMN is a modeling and notation standard that facilitates effective business process management. It’s important to understand what does bpm services mean.

Some companies already have BPM systems. However, after a year or two, professionals often find it difficult to change processes and discover that colleagues use “work-arounds” for unstructured projects. When formal business processes cannot be changed easily, or when the team isn’t using the formal processes for all work, visibility, agility, organizational learning, and market response times all suffer. Low-code BPM software enables non-technical users to change business processes easily, ensuring that staff don’t need “work-arounds” for projects and remain effective! Choosing the right automation tools is also critical. Why business process management is important? Because it allows companies to stay competitive.

You should also explore learning BPM services to improve your business practices. Understanding the purpose of business process management is key to unlocking its potential.

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Kamille Nixon is Senior Manager, Product Marketing for Comindware.
A former newspaper reporter, Kamille specializes in database applications, researching how developments in graph databases help organizations reach their goals. Kamille has an MBA from St. Mary's College of California, Global Business.

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Key Techniques for Delivering Business Process Automation Benefits https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/business-process-automation-solution/ https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/business-process-automation-solution/#respond Tue, 27 Aug 2019 07:57:00 +0000 https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/?p=2529 As businesses evolve and more work needs to be done, the conventional solution is to either overwork the people or hire more people to do all the extra work. As things stand nowadays, companies cannot afford to keep hiring more people. High-skilled jobs are already difficult and expensive to fill, and getting more people on […]

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As businesses evolve and more work needs to be done, the conventional solution is to either overwork the people or hire more people to do all the extra work. As things stand nowadays, companies cannot afford to keep hiring more people. High-skilled jobs are already difficult and expensive to fill, and getting more people on board to do low-skilled and sometimes merely repetitive tasks can set cost-saving goals back.

This is where business process automation (BPA) solutions come in handy.

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Why implement a business process automation solution

Business process automation benefits the organization by setting a clear step-by-step workflow solution and speeding up otherwise vague business processes. These processes could range from something as simple as filing an expense report to something as multifaceted as drafting contracts and sending out invoices to clients.


The key goal of a business process automation solution is for the company to save costs. Whether it is done by simplifying operational processes, bringing down labor costs or client response times, the ultimate goal is always the same – to end up with the most cost-effective bottom line. Since the automation of business processes already hopes to accomplish this, a further solution is to integrate technology into these processes to further bring down labor costs.

business process automation benefits

Even though cost saving is still the key reason why businesses dive into business process automation, now CEOs frequently change focus to real business results rather than cost savings. It is reasonable to keep this trend in mind and check if your BPM intentions are incorporated into business strategy and ensure that they add high-level business value in addition to cost saving.

Below are some business process automation benefits:

  • Saves staff time and effort
  • Reduces work cycle times
  • Increases response rate
  • Minimizes human error
  • Decreases workload
  • Gives management the ability to track work cycles more effectively
  • Gives management the ability to document results more effectively
  • Makes process auditing more transparent and efficient
  • Increases service quality and consistency
  • Reduces turnaround times for both staff and customers
  • Increases customer loyalty

If your company is interested in enjoying the benefits listed above, the first step is learning more about common business process techniques and choose the best fit.

Business Process Techniques

There are three main techniques in implementing a business process automation solution:
  1. Extension of an existing IT system
  2. Purchasing a process-specific business process automation software
  3. Purchasing an adaptive business process automation solution

The first technique entails the extension of an already existing model, developed from the IT system. Since IT processes are already usually automated, companies find it beneficial and cost-effective to attach BPA solutions to these IT functionalities. The problem with this approach lies in the process, and additional cost and time investment in finding the appropriate talent to develop these, as well as the training it would take for employees to integrate the new program into their daily tasks.


The second technique is to purchase specially-tailored business process automation tools. By purchasing ready-made tools, companies eliminate the need for hiring more IT talent to develop the business process automation tools in-house. However, despite the variety with which these tools are produced, not all industries can make use of all the built-in features. Other industries may need some functionalities that are missing in the ready-made product, or worse, they are paying for functionalities they don’t really need.


The last automation technique is a better integration of both techniques. By purchasing a ready-made business process automation software that is highly customizable, companies can make do with an already available infrastructure and then build whatever other functionality their specific industry needs from that main architecture.

Choosing the right business process automation software

These ready-made plus customizable BPA solutions are a feature set offered by the award-winning business process automation software, Comindware Tracker.

snap to design your own business processes This tool make it a snap to design your own business processes and automate it, no coding skills required
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Comindware Tracker contributes the following business process automation benefits:
  • This web-based software is easy to learn and implement.
  • Its user-friendly interface and easy deployment process eliminates the need for hiring more employees to install, troubleshoot, maintain and develop further process functionalities.
  • Comindware Tracker is easy to operate, with a visual drag-and-drop interface.
  • The software is flexible, allowing industries to customize functionalities and adapt them to their business processes, not the other way around.
  • Designing, developing and updating the software does not require redeployment or high-level technical skills.

Conclusion

Businesses are constantly facing pressure to be more fiscally prudent. This pressure is more apparent in these volatile economic times, when taking business processes and operating costs down is one of the responsibilities managers must handle. By modeling and streamlining business processes, organizations are able to decrease response times, thus leaving more time to accomplish other tasks. This added efficiency helps to eliminate wastage of time and other resources spent mulling over procedures that could have been completed more effectively.

In the world of business, time is money, and the more time businesses can save, the more opportunities there are to make money. The best way to think about this is business process automation benefits not only the employees (decreasing workload), but the organization as well (increasing the bottom line).

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Maricel Rivera works as a financial researcher for a multinational financial firm. Outside of her full-time work, especially when the financial reporting season isn’t at its peak, aside from online marketing, she also does freelance writing, specializing in the business and technology field. One of the topics she has already extensively covered and keeps exploring is work management. She currently explores product development trends, contributes to www.cmwlab.com and provides tips for better use of Comindware Tracker workflow software

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Tired of Tracking Stuff in Excel? Try the Workflow Tool That Works! https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/stop-tracking-stuff-in-excel/ https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/stop-tracking-stuff-in-excel/#respond Sun, 07 Oct 2018 12:57:43 +0000 https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/?p=229 Microsoft® Excel™ is the default business tool in many companies thanks to breadth of its functionality and incredible flexibility. Over the years Excel users have leveraged its functionality to solve a wide range of challenges. For example, MS Excel is widely used for managing tasks and projects, tracking progress in Excel is also a widely […]

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Microsoft® Excel™ is the default business tool in many companies thanks to breadth of its functionality and incredible flexibility. Over the years Excel users have leveraged its functionality to solve a wide range of challenges. For example, MS Excel is widely used for managing tasks and projects, tracking progress in Excel is also a widely spread practice. Have you ever thought of creating a workflow in Excel? A lot of people struggle to create Excel approval workflow and give up on trying one day. If your company has a single project, Excel can be a great tool. But what if you have several projects with a huge amount of tasks people are expected to complete collaboratively? You will need more power for quick task status tracking and team collaboration.

Is there any alternative to Microsoft Excel when it comes to managing project activities? Many users come to our support team with the same questions: how to avoid using Excel for managing project activities. Because they have only trouble with it. With time, such Excel file grows big and becomes unmanageable.

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The thing is that Excel is a great tool for calculating, for tables. Yet it’s not intended for managing project activities. So – what can we use instead?

“…it’s easier to cope with too much workload if you have a great workflow tool.”

THE PROBLEM: Stand-alone files with project activities track are unmanageable.

Let’s take an example of a training center School which tracks training requests in an Excel file. When a new training request arrives, it gets listed in the Excel file by whoever receives it first. He inputs the training title, location, deadline and the responsible person. This file is stored on the local computer of the manager and is updated manually: when somebody needs this file, she asks to send it to her. As the result, it causes more email communication and the process visibility is low.

excel file for tracking work

When School’s team got tired of it, they shared the file. We don’t know what they exactly used: it was maybe Dropbox or Google Docs, whatever. Anyways, now they can work on this file simultaneously and it’s easier to update it. When one opens the file and makes changes in it, he may not see that the other is working on it too, making changes to it as well. So later, when he hits ‘save’, he can have an unpleasant surprise. The least of them is having input the same training twice.

Finally, their file grew as big as 1000 trainings and it keeps growing. Since then it has become even more unmanageable. They tried to ask somebody to take care of managing this file, but all the team is already busy with organizing trainings: they just don’t have time for additional work of managing their file.

The worst is that you cannot put too much information on a single file. This would make the file even heavier and less useful. Updates are not always brought to the file timely. So with an Excel file containing information on the project you can’t be in the context, right here and right now.

The question remains: how to work on the project activities efficiently and avoid the mess with a stand-alone table?

THE SOLUTION: live-time updates by users with workflow coordination.

Workflow coordination with Comindware Tracker is the solution to this problem. It has logic of business processes integrated into it. This is drastically different from a file + comments. Here’s how the School’s team life changed with this workflow tool.

Comindware Tracker list of work items
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School’s list of training requests in Comindware Tracker still looks like a list. There’s the name of the training in the list, deadline, priority, location, responsible. Yet now it’s nothing like a list of activities. What looks like a list works now like a hypertext with a workflow coordination engine inside.

When you hit on a training item name on the list, you go to this item and see all of the information upon this training, all in one place:

Comindware Tracker work item screen

With workflow coordination feature, the School’s team has set a process for a training request. And the training request, with all of the information in it, goes through the workflow:

workflow exmaple
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The one who’s working on the work item now sets statuses, updates and priorities – and it’s immediately visible to everyone, because it’s online. No emails needed anymore. It’s possible to discuss each work item in a special comment tread integrated into the training request form. Users have an option to receive notifications when the work item has been changed.

work item discussion

With workflow management software by Comindware you can stretch beyond Excel’s built-in capabilities and easier perform repeating tasks that would best be served in automated workflow. These features are specially developed to help managing work, and they are not supported in Excel. Because Excel is good for other purposes. By the way, School’s team can now use Excel for its purposes – calculations and tables, and attach them to their training requests items in Comindware Tracker.

Nobody needs to keep it in the head: who’s the next. After I finish my part of work on this work item, whom am I to notify that it’s ready? The workflow decides whom the work item will go to next. No more need to check Excel file for status updates and details on every step of a workflow.

You can try Comindware Tracker for work management too – it’s completely free for 30 days.

Where else will this workflow tool be of use?

This functionality reveals to be efficient in specific activity. This is why we have crafted solutions for support helpdesk, finance & administration, software development and HR automation. Some clients replace their Excel customer tracker by a solution based on Comindware Tracker and enjoy it.

If you’re doing something else, yet you’d like to use Comindware Tracker to track issues – good choice! Comindware Tracker is fully customizable and we’re ready to help you set up your first process.

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Anastasia Chumakova is Product Marketing Analyst and Workflow Automation Expert at Comindware.
She currently explores online process management product development trends, contributes to www.cmwlab.com and provides tips for better use of Comindware Tracker and online work management solutions.

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What is Workflow Management Software https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/what-is-workflow-management/ https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/what-is-workflow-management/#respond Mon, 24 Apr 2017 08:53:56 +0000 https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/?p=1002 Workflow management might have the illusion of an academic, MBA pedigreed, onerous philosophy requiring years of education to conquer and effectively disseminate to the workforce. Small and medium business managers may feel inadequate to get workflow definition clear and tackle such a lofty principle. However, you already manage workflows every day under the guise of […]

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Workflow management might have the illusion of an academic, MBA pedigreed, onerous philosophy requiring years of education to conquer and effectively disseminate to the workforce. Small and medium business managers may feel inadequate to get workflow definition clear and tackle such a lofty principle. However, you already manage workflows every day under the guise of accomplishing your daily work. The key is to become aware of how you step through your daily workflows and add in tools to help clarify and communicate.

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“Think about a conveyor belt as used by Henry Ford in the auto industry when you consider workflow management.”

Workflow management means to oversee a process from beginning to end. This involves individual tasks that move from one step to the next until the task is complete. Instead of tackling workflow management definition think about a conveyor belt as used by Henry Ford in the auto industry when you consider workflow management.

An item is placed on the moving conveyor. At points along the path, different people or machines pick up the item and maybe add to it, tweak it, or identify flaws and send it back for a fix. By the time it winds its way to the end of the conveyor, many people will have added their particular expertise to creating a valuable finished product.

The management aspect is to be able to identify the people who need to be involved and to ensure you have a flow that allows for input from all required parties. The great thing is that you don’t have to understand much of anything about how a conveyor belt functions. You initiate the workflow process and if you need a conveyor belt expert, the assignment is added as part of the workflow.

There are two stumbling blocks that a workflow manager needs to understand to feel confident in establishing a workflow:

  • Who needs to be involved in a particular task? This does include what the expected input/output of a particular task needs to be. But the decision points can be built as a team and don’t require the manager to be all knowing and all seeing.
  • How to keep the movement progressing on the task? With workflow automation, you can use the system to alert you when something is hindering the progress.

Understanding these two concepts will make a productive workflow whether you are managing a simpler task such as scheduling employee hours or a complex task such as product creation.

A workflow can simply be a piece of paper where you jot down who is responsible for tasks and how the tasks are accomplished. For example, to close out your store at the end of the night, you have an employee count the money and run a register record. That employee places the money in the safe and puts the register tape in a designated place for it to be processed. However, if you use workflow software to create a simple workflow, you can add responsibilities to the process and even with thirty employees, or a rotating staff, you can expect similar results on how the process is completed. This reduces errors and provides consistent results.

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demystifying workflow management

When you tackle more complex workflows, you may want to create the skeleton of the steps and then each person along the line can add singular inputs and outputs as needed. For example, if you manage a website, you may be receiving blog entries or product pages from several people. Your marketing person may prefer looking at these prior to release. If you have an automated workflow, the marketing person can insert a step into the system and is then notified when a new entry arrives and can at that point give approval or send it back for rewrites.

As a workflow manager, you can easily make changes when you get a new writer or need to insert another approval step or whatever your business needs are.

As the workflow manager, you can observe if any tasks are not functioning smoothly and make adjustments along the way until you have a fluid system of project assignment, writing, reviewing, editing and publishing. As a manager, you can easily make changes when you get a new writer or need to insert another approval workflow step or whatever your business needs are.

Managing a workflow has many benefits to the overall business. Consider how you are managing processes to reduce errors and costs, and create the most efficient expense model possible, all by creating and managing a workflow while empowering the stakeholders to be part of the creation and task owners engaging within the process.

Keep in mind that you won’t understand the importance of managing workflows until you put your intentions into practice. If you think you are ready to try a workflow management software tool to achieve benefits mentioned already, take a look at Comindware Tracker. Creating workflow skeletons, automating designed processes, making sure tasks are assigned to the right people – this list is just a part of the possibilities available with this software.

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Debbie McRill currently works as a Documentation Program Manager at Aesbus Knowledge Solutions. She has built her career in both small businesses and fortune 100 companies (such as Hewlett-Packard in the role of a technical writer and project manager for over 10 years). Her experience also covers Six Sigma training, and creative writing as a hobby. Lives in Willis, Texas.

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Why BPM and ACM are Essentially the Same Thing, or Should Be https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/why-bpm-and-acm-are-essentially-the-same-thing-or-should-be/ https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/why-bpm-and-acm-are-essentially-the-same-thing-or-should-be/#respond Mon, 16 May 2016 12:19:58 +0000 http://blog.comindware.com/?p=3728 In one of his latest articles, Comindware BPM Evangelist Anatoly Belaychuk delves into the essentials of BPM and ACM. Although many consider ACM and BPM are different in reality they are practically the same. In a series of concrete examples, ranging from case and process interoperability to unified task management, Anatoly explains how processes and […]

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In one of his latest articles, Comindware BPM Evangelist Anatoly Belaychuk delves into the essentials of BPM and ACM. Although many consider ACM and BPM are different in reality they are practically the same. In a series of concrete examples, ranging from case and process interoperability to unified task management, Anatoly explains how processes and cases are not that different as they may seem.

Read the entire article

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What CEO and CFO Should Know About Digital Transformation https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/what-ceo-and-cfo-should-know-about-digital-transformation/ https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/what-ceo-and-cfo-should-know-about-digital-transformation/#respond Thu, 21 Apr 2016 13:02:43 +0000 http://blog.comindware.com/?p=3712 In one of his latest articles, Comindware BPM Evangelist Anatoly Belaychuk touches on one of the hottest topics in company boardrooms – Digital Transformation.  Anatoly defines the essence of Digital Transformation and how the new generation of “digital natives” is radically changing the way in which companies conduct business.  He also is able to define […]

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Read the entire article

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How to successfully implement BPMS in your company? https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/successfully-implement-bpms-company/ https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/successfully-implement-bpms-company/#respond Tue, 11 Aug 2015 11:49:18 +0000 https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/?p=1831 BPMS implementation is considered the number one issue for companies interested in preventing data silos. 74% of companies lower costs and increase productivity via ‘process’ automation, according to Gartner research (Critical Roles for Successful BPM Projects and Programs, Gartner, 2012). The infographics is designed to provide a snapshot of the strategic priorities that you need […]

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BPMS implementation is considered the number one issue for companies interested in preventing data silos. 74% of companies lower costs and increase productivity via ‘process’ automation, according to Gartner research (Critical Roles for Successful BPM Projects and Programs, Gartner, 2012).

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How to successfully implement BPMS in your company?

The infographics is designed to provide a snapshot of the strategic priorities that you need to focus on when it comes to BPMS implementation. It gives an overview of the key things to think of before and while implementing BPMS that we hope will help you to avoid pain points and speed up the implementation.



Anastasia Chumakova is Product Marketing Analyst and Workflow Automation Expert at Comindware.
She currently explores online process management product development trends, contributes to www.cmwlab.com and provides tips for better use of Comindware Tracker and online work management solutions.


BPMS

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Workflow Automation – does it really “automate people out of their jobs?” https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/workflow-automation/ https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/workflow-automation/#respond Tue, 28 Jul 2015 14:52:28 +0000 https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/?p=768 The market is saturated with solutions that, as their marketers claim, are capable of “replacing” the team manager. Does this really mean that team work automation software emerges as a real threat to the managers’ job? Strategic management divides the manager’s activities in two groups: value-added activities and peripheral activities. Most resources that are spent […]

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The market is saturated with solutions that, as their marketers claim, are capable of “replacing” the team manager. Does this really mean that team work automation software emerges as a real threat to the managers’ job?

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Strategic management divides the manager’s activities in two groups: value-added activities and peripheral activities. Most resources that are spent on activities on the whole should be spent on value-added activities that make the product more valuable. On the contrary, peripheral activities should be optimized as much as possible in order to demand fewer resources on them, or they should be delegated. That is how the assistant manager profession was born.

For some reason, delegating doesn’t always work or isn’t always possible while the amount of routine work is pretty much stable and tends to grow. As a solution to this situation, team work management systems started to emerge on the market: the niche has been empty for quite a while.

Now we can see that more advanced systems are becoming available year-on-year. We have already spoken about these systems in our recent post and mentioned that IT software developers and support departments were the first to use these solutions, also known as issue tracking systems which nowadays more often function online.

The systems are claimed to solve the manager’s biggest problem: to know who’s been doing what and then use this information both for distributing more tasks, and taking the project progress under control. Also – make ‘doable’ work, project plans and control task completeness.

The main principal of work for these systems is that the solution demands the worker to give them some data when they complete each part of their work. Then the system gathers the data and can reveal it in the form of live reports and dashboards.

If the system has built-in automated workflows, as is the case with issue tracking systems – most of them are based on executable workflows – then the solution can play a specific scenario (workflow) of further team work execution. This way, one task after another is completed, both continuously and under control. This helps avoid chaos or losing bits of data, or leaving some parts of work uncompleted.

This way, the system helps the manager with routine work. Yet it doesn’t replace them: it only helps them control work progress and task completeness, and distribute more work. Workflow automation logic also comes from the manager: even in the case where they take a pre-configured template for work processes, they can configure it to reflect the order of work they want their team to use.

Obviously, if the system only assists, it can’t be a substitute. Does this mean that the era of the manager is in decline? It’s like asking whether painters would disappear with computer graphics gaining popularity, or whether the music industry would no longer exist since software for sound processing has started to gain popularity.

Comindware Tracker is work management software and it helps reduce the time spent on routine control work, so the manager can put more effort into strategic and tactical work – the creative work he is exactly dedicated to perform.

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Anastasia Chumakova is Product Marketing Analyst and Workflow Automation Expert at Comindware.
She currently explores online process management product development trends, contributes to www.cmwlab.com and provides tips for better use of Comindware Tracker and online work management solutions.

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Project Management in the Cloud: Essential Considerations When Migrating https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/project-management-cloud-essential-considerations-migrating/ https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/project-management-cloud-essential-considerations-migrating/#respond Mon, 30 Jun 2014 14:54:51 +0000 https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/?p=2586 There’s a whole host of reasons why businesses turn to cloud-based tools for their operational needs. Improved productivity, lower expenses, real-time team collaboration, resilience, ease of use and accessibility are among the more popular. It’s no surprise that project management in the cloud is becoming popular as well. Project management in the cloud takes the […]

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team collaboration, resilience, ease of use and accessibility are among the more popular. It’s no surprise that project management in the cloud is becoming popular as well.

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Project management in the cloud takes the same benefits as any cloud migration – as long as the migrated processes aren’t broken. the cloud project management

Project management cloud solutions – garbage in, garbage out

Cloud migration of business and project management processes may sound like a technological silver bullet catapulting organizations to overnight success, given the many compelling arguments made in its favor. But in reality, it’s simply a facilitation tool, a tool that can magnify the errors in faulty processes and bolster the good in effective ones. As in any computing process, garbage in, garbage out, or GIGO, is a principle to keep in mind. As Steve Weissman, a Holly Group consultant puts it, “if they’re crummy now, they’ll be crummy in the cloud, too.”

Cloud-based project management – essential considerations

For any cloud-based project management attempt to be a success, here are some things to consider:
  1. Analyze your processes. If they’re not producing the desired results, expend the time and energy to improve them before migration. Project management in the cloud, or any cloud migration endeavor, for that matter, isn’t going to magically elicit better results.
  2. Communicate with end users, not just before the project management cloud solutions migration but during and after. Top-to-bottom organizational buy-in is a critical aspect of process improvement success.
  3. Formulate success benchmarks to gauge if cloud-based project management is a route worth taking. Generic reasons for cloud migration include cost savings, faster time-to-market and mobility, but a detailed assessment is necessary to come up with a specific checklist of cloud migration objectives. Remember, your organization is unique, and there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution.
  4. Do a data cleanup before the big project management cloud solutions move, the same way you would want to start with a clean slate when moving to a new place. Organizations, big or small, can fall prey to data quality and integrity issues, particularly as people start to rely on factors such as personal knowledge and historical practices to resolve issues.
  5. Perform tests on dummy or inconsequential data so operations remain business as usual if anything untoward happens during the test phase.
  6. Start small. Move processes little by little, not all at once. Don’t get carried away by all the excitement surrounding project management cloud solutions. Besides, complicated projects need to be subdivided into manageable bits, and problems are easier to fix in small batches than when they’re coming at you like an avalanche.
  7. There has to be a legitimate reason why project management in the cloud interests you, and not because everyone else is doing it.

Conclusion

If done right, cloud-based project management offers many benefits. When you’re ready to make the move, shop around for vendors with a proven track record of excellence. Free trials, like Comindware Project’s 30-day offer, help determine if a particular cloud-based project management solution is a good fit.
TRY FOR 30 DAYS!

Maricel Rivera works as a financial researcher for a multinational financial firm. Outside of her full-time work, especially when the financial reporting season isn’t at its peak, aside from online marketing, she also does freelance writing, specializing in the business and technology field. One of the topics she has already extensively covered and keeps exploring is work management. She currently explores product development trends, contributes to www.cmwlab.com and provides tips for better use of Comindware Tracker workflow software

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4 Questions to Ask When Choosing the Right Project Management Software https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/4-questions-ask-choosing-right-project-management-software/ https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/4-questions-ask-choosing-right-project-management-software/#comments Mon, 19 May 2014 08:17:31 +0000 https://www.cmwlab.com/blog/?p=2494 From low end to midrange to high end, the IT market is teeming with a whole slew of project management software to choose from. Having a lot of choices, however, isn’t always a good thing. Analysis paralysis isn’t a pretty thing. And then, there, too, are buyer’s remorse and finding yourself stuck with a software […]

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From low end to midrange to high end, the IT market is teeming with a whole slew of project management software to choose from. Having a lot of choices, however, isn’t always a good thing. Analysis paralysis isn’t a pretty thing. And then, there, too, are buyer’s remorse and finding yourself stuck with a software system that may not withstand the test of time.


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4 Questions to Ask When Choosing the Right Project Management Software

To get started in the right direction, here are four questions to ask when choosing the right project management software:

  1. What project management software features does your company need?
  2. How adaptive should the software be?
  3. Are there existing software platforms to consider?
  4. Should the project management software be on-premise or via the cloud?

What project management software features does your company need?

Not all projects are created equal. Project complexities vary from industry to industry, and even within the same industries, project requirements differ from company to company. For example, a company engaged in marketing won’t have the same project requirements as a software development company. A software development company specializing in gaming apps may employ an internal project management strategy that’s at odds with that of one that develops enterprise software.

Full-blown project management software vs. simple project collaboration tools

Gantt charts, graphical workflow builder, resource allocation – these are software features that project managers involved in big and complex projects find handy. On the flipside, companies that carry out simple projects involving a smaller pool of resources may not need a full-blown project management software system to steer a project to completion. Simple cloud project collaboration tools, even the free ones with limited features, may sometimes suffice.

Long story short, feature-rich doesn’t automatically mean better. The key is to know the goals your company is trying to accomplish, including the specific problems you’re trying to solve. More than what you need is fluff and a waste of space.

How adaptive should the software be?

Work environments may sometimes need a complete overhaul, like in the case of a project management approach that is more a liability than an asset. But in a lot of cases, a project management solution is deployed to enhance an existing system. Either way, integrating a project management tool into a company’s ongoing processes affects a lot of stakeholders, particularly the software’s end users.

Your software of choice, therefore, should adapt to the work environment people are already used to, significantly reducing, if not totally eliminating, the learning curve. We all know what happens when end users have to contend with software intricacies more than their usual day-to-day tasks – human errors, reworks, project delays, among others.

Agile vs. waterfall

As in software development, project management solutions use two popular methodologies – agile and waterfall. Agile has been created to augment the weaknesses of the waterfall methodology, but it’s not necessarily always the right solution.

As a rough guideline, agile is best used for consumer-driven projects where changes are a common fare, and where actual results can be radically different from those expected. Waterfall, on the other hand, is compatible with projects with defined tasks and sequences, and the final deliverable being exactly as is expected.

Are there existing software platforms to consider?

Is your company dependent on MS Outlook or SharePoint? Does your company use very specific reporting formats or require unique data import/export options? When considering a project management software, keep in mind all the software tools your company is already using. The best choice should allow you to keep your existing systems, so that the integration process doesn’t hurt your company in terms of training time, data input and lost opportunities.

Should the project management software be on-premise or via the cloud?

“To cloud or not to cloud?” is a question we hear a lot. The fact that more and more businesses are moving their data to the cloud is evidence that cloud-based project management software have their advantages.

Aside from being available anywhere in the world and on any device, a cloud-based project management application doesn’t require you to install anything and is most likely compatible with any operating platform – Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc. The downside is that without a working Internet connection, or in the event of a server anomaly, which is definitely not your fault, you won’t be able to use the software and access your data.

The foremost redeeming quality of on-premise software, on the other hand, is data safety and security, particularly if you own sensitive data that you’d rather keep in-house. Remember though that unlike web-based software applications, your data is restricted within the company’s premises, and highly skilled IT guys may need to be onboarded to keep your servers in pristine working condition.

Conclusion

While trial-and-error plays a part in determining your ultimate pick, keep in mind that in project management, acknowledging the shortcomings of your previous endeavors, if any, knowing what you already have and what you plan to accomplish are essential to narrow down your software choices from the hundreds to a considerable few.

Maricel Rivera works as a financial researcher for a multinational financial firm. Outside of her full-time work, especially when the financial reporting season isn’t at its peak, aside from online marketing, she also does freelance writing, specializing in the business and technology field. One of the topics she has already extensively covered and keeps exploring is work management. She currently explores product development trends, contributes to www.cmwlab.com and provides tips for better use of Comindware Tracker workflow software

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