Modern EDMS as instrument of business process automation of the company

According to Wikipedia determination, business process  is a set of the interconnected actions or tasks directed to creation of a product or service for consumers.  In expanded understanding business process is all organization activity.

In practice this uniform business process breaks into smaller which implement the specific, private purposes. Select certain groups of business processes:

• managing directors (planning, control),
• operating rooms (supply, production, logistics, it is sold),
• servicing (personnel, IT, support).

Their automation is a main goal of implementation of a corporate information system. And the optimum is suitable for each business process: for example, for a warehouse and process of product output – ERP, for sales – CRM, for accomplishment of tasks within administrative documents – EDMS, etc. But in the market there is also a separate class of the products relating to the BPMS group (Business Process Management Systems).

Автор текста: Vladimir Andreyev

What is automated by the systems of the class BPM?

First of all, they automate processes which differ:

• the process model is high extent of formalization and recurrence – the circle of information and users who are involved in it is outlined;

• big variability – their structure and data can change depending on external circumstances or requirements;

• simple algorithms – the main logic is connected with routing of information between participants of process, ensuring the necessary sequence and timeliness of accomplishment of stages;

• high specificity of process for the organization – in the market there are no ready means and applications for their automation.

For example, strategic planning process of the company or selection and acceptance of personnel, the procedure of a quality management system, approval of agreements and finance documents, and other processes requiring interaction of different applications in a corporate information system.

BPMS is the very formalized software class which includes:

• means of visual modeling of processes are the automatic stages implemented by a system and manual on which users interact with information;

• the services on a logical model completing automatic phases and routing of tasks to users;

• workplace of the user with an opportunity to complete manual phases and with an information access, necessary for their accomplishment;

• monitor and audit of system operation.

In addition to these mandatory functions, suppliers of BPMS offer different add-on modules among which:

• means of processing of electronic forms using which information at stages of processes is processed;

• the integration components providing a possibility of inclusion in processes of information exchange with external applications;

• integration components with the system of the analytical reporting and means of BI;

• means of simulation modeling of business processes and so forth.

The main advantage of BPM systems – an opportunity quickly and cheap to change logic of processing of business process, a data structure and their routings – so-called Workflow-automation. It allows to use BPMS as a core of the automated support of process management and implementation of the principles of Continuous Process Improvement (CPI).

Tools process descriptions and receiving their performance indicators (KPI), accumulation on these metrics of statistics – the second key function of BPM systems. A part of indicators forms automatically, when implementing processes, and a part manually – contractors of stages of business processes (if these stages are not automated). Besides, metrics can be received from external systems, using integration.

This functionality does a BPM system by the irreplaceable tool for process automation of the company which reached:

• first, administrative maturity, so and awareness of need of process management;

• secondly, high extent of corporate automation that means need of an exit for borders of an ERP circuit and problems of traditional document flow.

Implementation of a BPM system – what interferes?

In Russia knowledge of the process approach to management is widespread, a quality management system in large quantities is implemented, business processes are described, but in corporate automation real life application of the BPM tools meets seldom. The Russian market of BPM systems makes about 0.2% of the volume of the world market making more than 2.5 billion USD in 2014 and showing height about 10% a year.

First of all, it is connected with the fact that most the Russian companies are at a stage of primary automation of key processes based on ERP systems and creation of a core infrastructure. And degree of an administrative maturity in them did not grow to need of implementation of process methods of management yet. The second obstacle – BPM systems are generally ground on the large companies with already settled management processes where pay much attention to modeling of business and the analysis of KPI, but not workflow-automation. They include the complicated modeling processes almost not demanded by the Russian companies. Orientation on large world leaders dictates also higher prices, than those which are able to afford the Russian business.

One more problem – is not present support of tasks of situational management. For example, modeling of simple processes "on the fly", creations of personal templates of business processes, integration of group work and unstructured processes as BPMS. It is obvious that for such tasks the uniform integrated tool is necessary. New class software – Adaptive Case Management System can close these requirements.

Alternative to the foreign BPM systems

The alternative to expensive western BPMS platforms is. As replacement the document management system and business processes of the Russian production which implements a full stroke of automation of different business processes and includes instruments of process management can be used. The Docsvision company develops the workflow system of the same name within which more than 10 years own BPM subsystem develops.

By May, 2015 more than 500 industrial system implementations in which Docsvision solves the most various problems of the class BPM are implemented. We acquire both the principles of implementation of classical tasks of BPMS, and the specific know-how providing possibilities of the successful competition to the leading western suppliers. Docsvision BPM components

Docsvision BPM includes components which close the obligatory minimum feature set of BPM systems including:

• tools of the visual description and modification of processes (workflow designer),
• service of execution of processes,
• universal workplace of the contractor of manual stages of business processes,
• means of journalizing of course of execution of processes,
• administrative tools of processes (control of statistical parameters of processes, stop, start, removal and so forth),
• API for program expansion of functions of processes,
• API for integration of processes into other applications.

Besides, a system supports a set of add-on modules:

• monitors of processes (visual representation of the course of a copy of process),
• own simulars of business objects (forms designers) using which the user interacts with information on process steps,
• service of monitoring of events (Rule Management) – the tool which allows to define events as within the BPMS applications of systems, and other applications implemented based on Docsvision
• mechanisms of determination and accumulation of metrics of processes and appropriate means of submission of status reports on business processes and so forth,
• a set of gateways (to 1C, E-mail, SharePoint), for interaction with the corresponding systems without programming,
• the designer of reports allowing to customize the system of analytical reports about the course of business processes.

Main advantage of the Docsvision platform is that within a single system both functions of the BPMS platform, and function of an ECM system for content management and the EDMS function for automation of traditional problems of classical document flow are implemented. It allows to implement seamlessly complex projects based on a single platform.

Our know-how

Docsvision BPMS is used for automation of the most various tasks and processes in the different industries, during development of a system we formulated a number of unique features which allow to compete successfully with classical BPMS platforms, namely:

• presence of the designer of business objects: an opportunity to model objects with difficult logic and lifecycle of processing,
• support of means of work with the unstructured information uncharacteristic for classical BPMS,
• integration with means of online of communications,
• tools of work with tasks: means of delegation and decomposition, providing mechanisms of automatic routing and substitution, setup of the interface of tasks for the specific business scenario, rich tools of setup of options of end and other (this functionality is characteristic of processes of document flow with the Russian specifics),
• an opportunity to change already started copies of business processes,
• unique technology of gateways for integration without programming: events, data exchange, initialization of applied methods of an external system, routing of outer objects in system tasks,
• opportunity for work in the distributed multiserver framework, support of means of a clustering of workflow service, unique practices on optimization of loading of the server at service of a large number of processes (tens of thousands), the module of interfilial exchange allows to configure business processes in multi-server architectures,
• the unique mechanism of a role model which allows to define availability of an object and operation on its processing and also to provide the optimal interface of processing of an object at business process stages depending on the most various conditions – statuses of process, data of the processed object, external data and so forth.
• the client for e-mail who can implement the majority of functions on processing of tasks without installation additional a component, etc.

In May, 2015 the structure of the Docsvision platform switches on the new module Actionspace focused on implementation of tasks of situational management - case management, micro projects and micro processes, automation of problems of increase in productivity and group work on the joint purposes. Within implementation of this project we created unique vision of consolidation within a single system and a uniform workplace (the aggregator of tasks) of means of processing of functions of classical tasks of BPMS and SED/ESM and also problems of a subsystem of situational management, tools of increase in personal and group productivity.

Based on the Docsvision platform the considerable pool of projects on subject of BPM (including considerable, for example, process automation of operations department of VTB 24 bank) which showed applicability of this platform for solving of tasks of process management in the Russian conditions which is successfully competing with the western platforms presented at the market of Russia was implemented.