Do You Like Your Workflow or BPM Software?

Dukhat asks: "I am really interested in firsthand experiences with these kinds of products and in unbiased reviews, since Google primarily gives me marketing information and vague overviews of how BPM is good for business. I have already looked at an earlier article on work-flow patterns, which gave me a few products to look at. I am trying to compile a short list of work-flow and BPM software to evaluate, but I am having a hard time determining which products are even worth evaluating. The situation is worsened by the fact that work-flow tools are often bundled with CRM or Business Intelligence packages. I am not dead set on using a big package, but I need to know more about their real world pros and cons before I can decide whether to build it myself instead. I am looking at both BPM and work-flow software, since some BPM software can also do work-flow, but it may be more worthwhile to just use a rules engine for automated processes and use a specialized work-flow tool." Dukhat has a fairly long list of software choices that he needs to whittle down. What packages would you recommend and why?

"Here are some of the goals we have that we are trying to solve with work-flow/ BPM software:

• To be able to understand the path of a process without perusing in and out of a lot of functions.
• To be able to report on how long each step in each process takes.
• To be able to see exactly where in the process software errors occur and be able to skip over failed steps so that we can come back and fix them later.
• To be able to integrate with our issue tracking system, billing system, and CRM software. We definitely will have to write some webservices here.
• To be able to give process managers in different departments the ability to tweak certain processes without giving them full access to all processes.

We started off looking at rules engines, but it looks like a rules engine would only be useful for choosing actions at each step in the process, but we would have to glue together each step in the process ourselves. A lot of BPM software includes business rules software or is designed to integrate easily with specific packages.

Here is a list of packages that I have assembled so far:

• JBoss jBPM & Rules
• ILOG JViews & JRules
• webMethods & Blaze Advisor
• Oracle BPEL Process Manager
• COSA
• FLOWer
• Microsoft BizTalk
• Lotus Workflow
• Global360 BPM
• Bizflow
• WebSphere MQ Workflow
• Tibco BPM
• Fujitsu Interstage
• FileNet BPM
• Savvion
• Pegasystems
• BEA AquaLogic with Fuego

Please help me narrow these down. Thanks!"

Depends on what you are willing to spend...

[FortKnox]

I used to deal with BPM's a lot. The more you spend, the more flexible and more stuff you get out of the box. Personally, FileNET is probably the tops of the list, but is extrodinarily expensive. JBoss is the cheapest (free), but requires extreme customization.

The best answer depends on what you will be using it for. If you don't have a reason to use a BPM, then you probably should take the cost (or development effort) to throw one in.

And, of course, 90% of the replies here will be "do your own homework" which is semi-legit. As while I've seen a company work well with the adobe workflow, and one work great with the fileNET and jboss ones, it really depends on the client and their specific needs (which you really didn't define except in a very global sense).

The best answer would be to hire an expensive consultant that has lots of experience with BPMs. Let them look at your situation and make suggestions for you. You won't get anything worthwhile, here...

FileNet if you got the money

[BunnyClaws]

I have worked with both Bizflow and FileNet. Bizflow does a decent job if your looking at a small to medium size workflow that will not require a lot of transactions with change management. If this is for something like medical claims or AP/AR type stuff Bizflow will probably get the job done. However, if you are willing to spend the money FileNet is the way to go. FileNet is very robust and scalable. It is ideal for a large workflow process.

Lotus Workflow

[JohnnyOpcode]

I work with Lotus Workflow almost everyday. I am able to tap its power for anything that comes along. It does have a learning curve like all things, but since it is Lotus Domino based it's capabilities are vast. If your company/client are already Notes/Domino then the incremental costs are very reasonable since you have the client/server infrastructure in place. If you don't, and are intending on a Web-centric approach then the cost of a Domino Server with a suitable number of browser CAL's may not be too excessive. If I had to size up my options (as in your case) I'd start by looking at the existing infrastructure. If you are a MS-type facility, go with one of the .NET based workflow systems. If you have existing Oracle DB/AS then with a 10g upgrade you get Oracle Workflow capabilities under a J2EE model. Lotus Notes is the infrastructure, go with Lotus Workflow etc. Most workflow systems are extensions of popular platforms, although there are various independent stand-alone versions out there. DO YOUR HOMEWORK!!!

Do Your Research

[DaRat]

Do your proper due diligence and examine each package very carefully. You'll start off with a very large list (far beyond what you currently have) because everyone and their brother is claiming to have a BPM package these days. Some are way better than others and some are just cobbled together bits of something else.

You need to know what you want and what you need.

Then, you really should do a proper test by implementing a good prototype in each system with minimal help from each vendor. That's the only way to get some decent idea of how well each might really work. Don't let the vendor implement the prototype since each vendor will have some consultant how can throw up enough smoke and mirrors to do anything.

We started with a list of about 20 different vendors, narrowed it down to 5, and then did prototypes with 3. And, we discovered things which we wouldn't have known if we had just read some magazine or white paper and listened to a vendor's song and dance.

Fortune 500 experience

[anomaly]

I've been doing this at a Fortune 500 company for a couple of years now. We have worked with two different packages, and have had some successes.

1. We worked with a major CRM package using it's internal workflow capability. This required a dedicated programmer, and ended up costing about $100,000 per business process to implement, and took a few months per process to get in production. WAAAAAY too expensive and didn't scale. On top of that, the software was VERY hard to get working properly. (We already had the CRM package in place, the workflow was supposed to be a cherry on top, but it clearly was not.)

2. We went with a "workflow lite" vendor. The tool is organized to process orders, and has workflow capability. This is not enterprise workflow like FileNet, but theoretically means that business analysts could do the workflow design.

We've had some success with this. The absolute biggest pain point has not been technical - the problem has been defining the process to be automated. Business process analysis is an entirely different skillset than automation.

Once the process is defined clearly, automation is not terribly painful. Unfortunately it hasn't been the case that analysts could do the automation, but it also doesn't require programmer-level skills, either. We've been able to implement a large number of services.

The tool we picked has been completely immature, and our back end processing costs have been HUGE compared to what the vendor estimated initially.

Overall it's been a good ride, and the tool we used provides the types of metrics you're looking for. It's important to know that whatever path you go will be EXPENSIVE. On top of that, another key lesson learned was that we don't need to model EVERY possible path through the business process. We model the "happy path" and an "exception path" and that provides the Pareto model (80/20)

I'd be happy to converse off line about this if you want to know more about our experience.

Regards,
Anomaly

You should add Lombardi Software to your list

[mmarkham]

This has got to be one of the best pieces of software I've ever seen. You should definitely add them to your list. They can be found at Lombardi Software [lombardisoftware.com].

Sounds like you want ProjectLink

[nightowl03d]

I have been working in the BPM field for about 10 years, and I think ProjectLink is very nice.

The workflow engine in particular really rocks. Full Petri Net expression capabilities, robots, inline Java code to fine tune activities and provides automatic rollup of dependant activities. Workflows can even be created from an MS project file, or their native UI.

ProjectLink [ptc.com] is NOT freeware.