The selection of software for the technological implementation of the Business Process Management (BPM) discipline will depend mainly on whether we want to cover the entire BPM life cycle or only some of its phases. The selection methodology explained below is valid for both cases, but when defining the evaluation criteria, it will be necessary to take into account what is the scope sought (with respect to the BPM life cycle), in order to evaluate similar products.
BPM Platforms
If what we are looking for is a BPM technology platform that covers most of the phase of the BPM life cycle for the continuous improvement of business processes, we have several types of platforms following Gartner's classification: basic BPM platform, BPMS (Business Process Management Suite) and iBPMS (Intelligent Business Process Management Suite). It will be essential to pay attention to the criteria that are evaluated in the analysis carried out by the analysts (Gartner, IDC, Forrester ...), so as not to rule out solutions that do not appear in these reports, because they could be adequate solutions for our requirements. Or, it can be considered a set of software solutions from different vendors that compliment each other (although both vendors and their future should be studied).
Process for the selection of BPM Platform
For the selection of the best BPM solution, a specific process must be defined that adjusts to assess how the solution responds to our specific technical requirements, but without ignoring other important criteria such as, for example, the future of the supplier and its situation in the market (it will be analyze later). When I advise on software selection, I recommend relying on the following process that includes three main phases.
