21 Questions to Ask a BPM Vendor

With all the work I do in getting BPM system to interoperate with each other, I have come to recognize a set of potential problem areas.  Naturally, vendors are not always forthcoming with these little glitches.  So I have put together a list of questions that someone who is currently evaluating product might want to ask the vendor, and gauge the response.  Pick and choose, but I hope this list is helpful in getting some probing questions:

• Does your product support a standard external interchange format for process definitions? – some products support only an internal proprietary file format.

Far Flung Analytics – BPAF

Michael zur Muehlen has written a short article on “The Business Process Analytics Format (BPAF)“. This is a portable format that will allow the history events from multiple BPM servers to be aggregated together to a single process analytics server. It can be used to connect one vendor’s process engine to another vendor’s analytics server. This proposed standard will be a critical element for gaining insight into how well your processes are running, especially when you have workflow engines from multiple vendors in your enterprise.

Model Strategy & Analytics

A by-product of automating work is the records is made that indicate precisely when each task is started and completed. Analytic information about how your organization is working can actually be far more valuable than the cost savings derived from the automation. A lot can be learned from this analysis that can help you improve your organization. Some claim that this is the principle benefit of BPM.

In an earlier post, I introduced the concept of a “Model Preserving Strategy” versus a “Model Transforming Strategy” and defined them as two approaches that a BPMS can take in the lifecycle of a business process.  This post delves into how process analytics are effected by model strategy.