Business Process Management

Unlock the Potential of Business Process Management

Business Process Management (BPM) solutions have emerged as a new breed of enterprise software for companies that consider processes to be fundamental business assets. However, to be fully effective, BPM must not be approached as simply another IT toolset but rather as an environment where a business-process-oriented view is the means of communicating business requirements throughout the organization. iGrafx provides companies with a top down approach to defining, improving and deploying business processes.

Becoming a Process Driven Organization

In an effort to face competitive pressures that continue to increase at an accelerating rate, companies are driving improvement throughout their organization with methodologies such as Six Sigma and Lean. At the same time, customer demands and regulatory requirements have created a host of process-centric standards such as ISO9000 and Sarbanes-Oxley. BPM solutions enable companies to define, analyze and deploy business processes as competitive assets that help them fulfill customer requirements.

BPM provides a cycle of capabilities from process analysis, design, optimization and management to process execution and monitoring and back to analysis. Through this cycle, one of the core concepts is that of process independence. Processes are maintained outside of the systems that execute them. This fundamental concept is a key benefit of the iGrafx solutions.

iGrafx is a set of solutions for Business Process Analysis (BPA) and modeling that enables companies to develop and maintain their process knowledge and information separately from the execution environment. By maintaining processes independent of the execution environment, organizations can take a top-down approach to business that enables companies to become more agile and drive IT related development and change from the business analyst's perspective.

iGrafx offers a rich set of process design, analysis, optimization and management capabilities that together fulfill the needs of the three key process constituencies: the IT user's needs for process modeling for implementation; the business analyst community's needs for process modeling for optimization; and the process initiative community's needs for process methodology support. The solution effectively adapts to the specific user requirements based on the task at hand while providing a single environment for process improvement.

Through a tiered architecture, central process repository and distinct functionality for different user groups, iGrafx bridges the gaps between the constituencies. iGrafx enables business analysts to view and work with even the most complex, hierarchical processes in a format with which they are comfortable - the process map. Then, through additional modeling data, mapping to Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) definitions and exporting Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), the IT user can rapidly deploy processes. These capabilities, when combined, provide organizations with a clear time to market advantage.

Another key success factor for BPM deployment is the adoption of standards. iGrafx supports the leading process standards including Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and BPEL. BPMN is a natural extension of the swimlane® mapping notation that has been a standard component of iGrafx. By supporting the BPMN standard, iGrafx provides users with the option of using the notation which best fits their requirements, both of which can result in BPEL output.

Through its BPEL export, iGrafx can seamlessly interface with leading process execution engines that adhere to the standard. And with the iGrafx XML interface, other XML based standards can be supported by request. This capability provides an additional means of ensuring process independence.

BPM solutions hold the promise of bringing a process-centric approach to IT solutions. To approach BPM from a systems perspective misses the opportunity to drive the business with the process as the competitive advantage. iGrafx helps unlock the potential of BPM by providing a powerful means of creating process independence and bridging the gaps between the major organizational constituencies.

iGrafx engages with organizations to support your BPM needs. Click here to see a list of leading technology partners that integrate iGrafx capabilities. Additionally, iGrafx provides full support for key Business Process Modeling Notation components and diagramming, as well as offers a Business Process Execution Language Interface.

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