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Social workflow management plays key role in future of BPM

Tara Charles
August 21, 2012

Business process management software and similar solutions that take advantage of BPM capabilities to streamline operations are increasingly focusing on social media as a key part of supporting enterprise functions. According to a recent Business 2 Community report, the future for BPM solutions that focus on social workflows is clearly evidenced by the recent success of social workflow management solutions. Such systems, while not nearly as powerful as true BPM platforms, provide insight into what many BPM systems will add to their functionality as they evolve - the ability to streamline operations by integrating better with social media.

The news source explained that, in many cases, fully fledged BPM suites are able to automate so many processes that workers become bogged down dealing with incredible complexity of the system as they try to figure out the automated aspects of operations. The future of BPM is more social, simpler and able to completely revitalize operations by streamlining processes.

This future will be achieved as the BPM market increasingly embraces the shifts created by the social enterprise. The report explained that many businesses are beginning to truly embrace social media, not just turn a blind eye to employees using personal social networking accounts for work, and let social concepts permeate the workplace. As this trend continues, the BPM sector will need to adapt to the increasingly social workflow and use it to optimize operations.

According to Business 2 Community, the core systems needed to support even more social integration within BPM are already in place in most solutions. Moving forward, the key change will come in making the solutions more engaging and interactive, making it easier for employees to embrace the gains offered by the technology and preventing operations from being mired in the complexity of the underlying automation systems that can make BPM so effective.

One way to make BPM work in a more social enterprise is to provide context for the data that employees have to access on a day-to-day basis. Between various corporate and consumer social media tools, email, mobile applications, cloud systems and other devices, employees have a great deal of information to sort from, all being sent from a different context. This context can have a major influence on how data is analyzed and used. As a result, BPM systems that provide a context for information can streamline operations and better integrate with social media considerations.