ProcessMaker :: Workflow Solutions, Business Process Management and Workflow Software, Web Forms, Hosted Workflow Forms and Workflow Solutions
Español |Log In
Workflow Solutions, Business Process Management and Workflow Software, Web Forms, Hosted Workflow Forms and Workflow Solutions Workflow Workflow is the operational aspect of a work procedure: how tasks are structured, who performs them, what their relative order is, how they are synchronized, how information flows to support the tasks and how tasks are being tracked. As the dimension of time is considered in Workflow, Workflow considers "throughput" as a distinct measure. Workflow problems can be modeled and analyzed using Petri nets. While the concept of workflow is not specific to information technology, support for workflow is an integral part of groupware software. Distinction can be made between "scientific" and "business" workflow paradigms. While the former is mostly concerned with throughput of data through various algorithms, applications and services, the latter concentrates on scheduling task executions, ensuring dependencies which are not necessarily data-driven and may include human agents. Scientific workflows found wide acceptance in the fields of bioinformatics and cheminformatics in the early 2000s, where they successfully met the need for multiple interconnected tools, handling of multiple data formats and large data quantities. Also, the paradigm of scientific workflows was close to the well-established tradition of Perl scripting in life-science research organization, so this adoption represented a natural step forward towards a more structured infrastructure setup. Business workflows are more generic, being able to represent any structuring of tasks, and are equally applicable to task scheduling within a software application server and organizing a paper document trail within an organization. Their origins date back to the 1970s, when they were purely paper-based, and the principles from that period made the transition to modern IT infrastructure systems. As a way of bridging the gap between the two, significant effort is being put into defining workflow patterns that can be used to compare and contrast different workflow engines across both of these domains. Workflow systems Workflow diagram systems are defined as "systems that help organizations to specify, execute, monitor, and coordinate the flow of work cases within a distributed office environment". Workflow diagrams rely on the use of standardized graphical notations to describe workflow structures. The Business Process Modeling Notation is an example of this system. The system contains two basic components: first component is the workflow modeling component (sometimes called the specification module or the build time system), which enables administrations and analysts to define process and activities, analyze and simulate them, and assign them to people. The second component is the workflow execution component, sometimes called the run-time system. It consists of the execution interface seen by end-users and the workflow engine, an execution environment which assists in coordination and performing the processes and activities. Business Process Automation Software, Workflow Software, and Web Forms for browser-based process management and workflow, business process automation, Processmaker, business process management, Process Building Software, Web Forms, Web Forms Software, Workflow automation, workflow software solutions, BPM Workflow Software, help desk process, list of workflow software applications. Download Popular Process and Workflow Templates RMA, Help Desk, Leave Requests, Collections, Marketing Funds Approvals, and much more. Stop Suffering No more using excel spreadsheets and emails to mismanage company processes; Instead Use Web Forms and Workflow Automation. Business Process Management From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jump to: navigation, search The term Business Process Management (or BPM) refers to a set of activities which organizations can perform to either optimize their business processes or adapt them to new organizational needs. As these activities are usually aided by software tools, the term BPM is synonymously used to refer to the software tools themselves. Although it can be said that organizations have been performing BPM for some time, a new impetus has been given to the theme with the advent of software tools (business process management systems or BPMS) which allow for the direct execution of the business processes without a costly and time intensive development of the required software. In addition, these tools can also monitor the execution of the business processes, providing the management of an organization the means to analyze their performance and make changes to the original processes with the aim of improving them. Using the BPMS the modified processes can then be quickly placed into operation. Business Process Management encompases other process elements, such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, Performance Management, etc.. Where Business Process Reengineering (popular in the 1990s) dealt with one-off changes to the organization, Business Process Management deals much more with the continuity and embedding of process-thinking and doing in the organization. Business Process Management is not about technology but about management.
Live Help
News |Our news|Press Releases|Newsletters|
1-800-410-0656 Toll Free
Newsletters

March 2006 | November 2005 | October 2005 | April 2005 | January 2005


ProcessMaker Newsletter Colosa
November 2005 - Issue N. 7

Improve

Subscription to Newsletters

Sign up for our free newsletter and receive information about our services and products.
Learn more about us:
Products
Workflow Solutions
Partner Program
Support& Training
About Us
Contact
For more information you can contact Colosa at
305-675-1400 or email us at info@colosa.com

www.processmaker.com














Let us hear your COMMENTS or QUESTIONS about this newsletter


Colosa, Inc.
2655 Le Jeune Road, Suite 1112
Coral Gables , Florida 33134
Tel: (305)-675-1400
info@colosa.com


Copyright © 2006 Colosa Inc. All rights reserved. Colosa is a registered trademark of Colosa Inc.
ProcessMaker
Colosa Launches Version 3.0 of its Business Process Management System - ProcessMaker™
On November 20th, 2005 Colosa released Version 3.0 of ProcessMaker™ - a simple yet effective way to automate common or custom business processes within an organization. The system is targeted at non-technical Process Consultants that work with Small-to-Medium Sized Businesses to design, automate, manage, and continuously improve corporate processes within SMBs.

Users can Sign up Online for a FREE 3 user Starter Edition of ProcessMaker™. The Starter Edition is a fully functional ProcessMaker™ Account Plan and will allow a user to download and modify a number of different Out-of-Box Solutions for a variety of processes such as RMA, Help Desk, Leave Request, Purchase Request, Invoicing and Collections, and others. 

If the user doesn't see an Out-of-Box Solution which meets his development needs, then he can always develop one from scratch within the ProcessMaker™ Factory - the administrative design environment within the ProcessMaker™ system.

The ProcessMaker™ Factory comes with three complete authoring tools: Builder (a flow chart design tool), DynaForms (an XML Forms creation tool), and Reporter (a wizard driven reporting tool). An admin user can enter the Factory work area and create and modify DynaForms, edit step rules and derivation rules, create or modify XML based Output documents, and much more. 

The reporting tool called Reporter which comes included with ProcessMaker™ Factory offers a very simple yet powerful way to design company reports. With Reporter users can design custom reports with a simple, step-by-step report wizard. Custom reports can be run on variables captured in XML DynaForms or variables from external tables that an advanced user can include for reporting purposes. A report can be exported to excel, or it can be turned into a number of different graphs. These reports and graphs can later be stored as objects which can be included on an executive dashboard for specific users in the company.

ProcessMaker™ comes stocked with an extensive Out-of-Box library of processes and forms in both English and Spanish that can easily be molded to fit any business needs. As a result of being a hosted solution, clients can experience an immediate ROI and instantly begin automating their processes.

Although ProcessMaker™ is designed to be powerful enough to meet the needs of Business Process Consultants performing multiple projects, it is also simple enough that it can be used by SMBs that wish to reengineer their own processes and automate them in our hosted service. This allows a company to use a functioning tool that brings to life best practices, handles compliance issues, enhances quality control, facilitates training, and keeps an audit trail in real-time. ProcessMaker™ is designed for business managers and consultants; therefore it requires no programming experience to master.



Aligning Business Operations and IT
For years people have searched for a way to perfectly align Business and IT. Object orientation was one such proposal that experienced mixed success. Now Business Process Management (BPM) is trying to tackle this dilemma.

According to an article recently published by the BPM Institute by Dr. Setrag Khoshafian there are four critical points that must be addressed to unite Business and IT.

  • Measurable Strategies: The majority of companies agree that providing the plans for achieving corporate objectives is essential. However, measurable strategies often fail to be executed by firms. Companies need to be able to drill down from top level management to specific processes, partners, organizations or even individual workers. The better an organization can drill down from management performance to specific executing processes, the higher chance it has of aligned business and IT.
  • Unified Policies and Processes: To achieve optimum results, it is important that business rules and processes are modeled and executed within the same system. The appropriate use of business rules simplifies the process flow and facilitates the management of applications. Business and IT need the process flow and the business rules to be completely integrated. This can happen only if the two are unified.
  • Extensible Solution Frameworks:  BPM alone will not bring Business users and IT together. Business and IT must take the first step and align themselves around best practices, associated processes, business rules, usage models, and integration.

 Accessible Platform: The Web is the ideal platform for both Business and IT. In fact, browser-based development is conducive to continuous process improvement and decreased process time.

If these four requirements are met, aligning Business with IT within BPM is possible. Contact Colosa today to see how ProcessMaker™ can help you unite Business and IT.






ProcessMaker™ 3.0 Offers New Features to Help You Manage Your Processes

For ProcessMaker™ 3.0, Colosa collaborated with its clients in order to make product improvements that addres the process needs that firms are facing on a daily basis. The end result is a powerful On Demand process management system that can handle any type of process for any type of industry.

Building on its Version 2.0 ProcessMaker™ product, Colosa has added the following enhancements in Version 3.0 to meet the needs of business users:

  • Configurable Dashboard - Users can now import reports and graphs of reports to their dashboard to see a real-time version of the report each time they log in.

  • Enhanced Factory Interface - We have greatly improved the Web Factory Interface so that it is easier to navigate.

  • Enhanced Company Interface - the Company Interface has also been updated so that it is easier to understand and complete assigned tasks.

  • External User Initiation - Besides external form initiated processes, Version 3.0 handles user driven external data capture.

  • Dynamic Forms- Users can now create dynamic DynaForms which allow users to add fields as they fill out the form.

  • Webservices - Version 3.0 adds a complete Web Services developer's interface for interconneting to third party systems.

  • Tables Interface -Version 3.0 adds an interface so that external tables can be imported to the system and used for reporting purposes.








  • |Home|Products|Workflow Solutions|Subscribe|Partner Programs|Support|About Us |
    ©2006 Copyright Colosa Inc. • All rights reserved • Various trademarks held by their respective owners. • info@colosa.com