Digital transformation is about completing work differently, and not simply for the sake of change.

It should address the dynamic business needs of the customer while optimizing the operational processes that impact the cost of service. As organizations pursue transformation, they often quickly realize that better customer and employee experiences need better and smarter automation solutions that provide workflow capabilities that address needs today and dynamically realign workflow solutions based on the demands for tomorrow.

Current digital transformation programs struggle because they address the process problems for today but do not provide flexibility for change.

Intelligent business process management suites (iBPMS) combine business process management (BPM) software with additional capabilities such as artificial intelligence (AI) to help companies dynamically automate more types of start-to-finish experiences. These suites are often cloud-enabled and provide low-code tools that help citizen developers create workflow solutions very quickly.

An iBPMS is an integrated set of technologies that coordinates people, machines and things (as in Internet of Things) and support traditional business process management requirements. These technologies also offer:

• Intelligence and support for industry and organizational specific processes
• A greater level of collaboration throughout the process, which encourages a wider adoption across organizational departments and can lead to a higher level of change and improvement within current processes
• Support for integration to various middleware and back-end technologies, providing organizations with the capability to go to market quickly with new offerings

Choosing the right iBPMS platform provider

Picking the right technology provider can be daunting, even when you have a clear goal and strategy, because there are so many providers saying many of the same things. The iBPMs space is no different.

The “right” iBPMS platform provider depends a lot on the current state of your business process maturity, the activities that support your processes, availability of skilled resources (systems, humans, robots) and access to data. Offering capabilities such as AI can play a major role as well.

When it comes to iBPMS selection, the evaluation criteria have changed over the years as new technology providers enter the field and others move to the sidelines. Gartner recently released its Magic Quadrant for Intelligent Business Process Management Suites in which it evaluated vendors across four use cases, including digital business optimization, digital business transformation, self-service intelligent business process automation and adaptive case management.

Gartner evaluated 21 iBPMS vendors on their ability to execute and completeness of vision, while outlining key vendor strengths and cautions. Vendors in the Leader quadrant have strong product roadmaps that support intelligent operations for client business. Leaders also provide a business-oriented methodology and the ability to grow with changing needs.

IBM named a Leader

According to the Gartner report, “In this latest reinvention of its suite, IBM has taken different products that had been loosely integrated and reimagined the collection as a unified platform — operating from a common data model with a consistent, web-based design and end-user experience. The end result enables multiple roles to collaborate on building intelligent applications.”

The IBM comprehensive Automation Platform for Digital Business, a powerful combination of process, task and decision automation paired with content services, is the driving force behind Gartner naming IBM a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Intelligent Business Process Management for the sixth time in a row.

The IBM Automation Platform for Digital Business enables clients to automate workflows and decisions while deriving insight from the content within those business processes with speed and at scale. IBM clients have created and are running more than 50,000 applications on this platform.

Learn more about IBM workflow automation.

Disclaimer:

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. This Gartner document is available upon request from IBM.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.