I already wrote about our take on BPM tools to support general process documentation and analysis and SAP projects. Each of the use cases has its own objectives and accordingly assigns different priority to various requirements or has some that are relevant for this particular application only. Providing a sophisticated interface to SAP Solution Manager, for example, can win the game in one scenario but be completely irrelevant in another.
The standards for quality management systems (QMS) these days all call for process orientation. In fact it is the landmark of modern quality management to move away from reliance on end product testing in favor of process understanding and process control. What is true for manufacturing processes translates well to the processes supporting and governing them.
Written procedures as held dear not only in the process industries usually contain or at least reference process models facilitating efficient communication. What can be observed regularly however is that the horizon of process thinking goes hardly beyond the scope of the particular Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) document. The practiced approach to process modeling is a good indicator whether quality management system takes an atomic or system approach.
It is important to realize that the user base creating and consuming quality system oriented process models tends to be larger and less technophile than the IT oriented crowds. At the same time requirements for formal correctness of models and change control are highly important. Additional features crucial for supporting this use scenario are the efficient creation and storage of process related documents as well as audit-prove release control of process models, and version and audience specific publishing of these. So in terms of technical requirements we are speaking about the repository integration, reporting capabilities and ideally, inbuilt governance workflows and document storage.
Given these points DHC Vision comes out as the clear winner of our evaluation. ARIS comes second in hot pursuit but falls short at least in its basic setup (ARIS Server plus ARIS Architect). Other products within the ARIS Platform, namely ARIS Process Governance and ARIS Risk and Compliance Manager, in combination with ARIS Connect are poised towards the high end of Governance, Risk and Compliance that is hardly matched by other players in the market. However DHC Vision offers a very well chosen set of capabilities in a slim package.
Join us for our webinar for more details and as a jumpstart for defining criteria and weights for your own specific BPM needs. Has your approach to quality and management systems already evolved from atomic to systemic? Let us know what is holding you back!