Rindap is a cost-effective BPMS solution for business process improvement. You can see below a complex process of food order delivery with lots of different software, device, people and departments involved. Running this comprehensive workflow automation for a month will cost you only $0,05 per task regardless of the number of steps in the process or the number of times the task gets updated. In this scenario, the task starts with the entry of the food order to the system. This means that for each new order processed in this workflow, only $ 0.05 will be charged.

Thus you can achieve business process improvement without allocating high budgets and deliver greater value to your customers.

The diagram above encompasses workflow automation in which a food order is received on the website and delivered to the customer to be rated.

All the process following the reception of the order is automized via Rindap;

– The control of ingredient inventory
– The issue of a purchase order if necessary
– The assignment of food preparation to the related chef depending on the cuisine
– The control of promo code and promotion inventory
– The addition of gift or extra discount to the order
– The control of the status of food
– The control of payment type
– The assignment of delivery to the right employee
– The control of payment status
– The control of delivery status
– The reception of rating from customer
– Notification of the human resources department

and all necessary communication have been orchestrated simply on Rindap via logic-based filters and advanced features. The digital process automation included the harmonization of people, devices and systems to increase overall work efficiency.

Similar to this example any business process can be fully automized, monitored and measured end-to-end with Rindap in order to improve business performance.

In order to better illustrate the financial benefits of Rindap, let’s further elaborate the example with some numbers. Let’s consider the restaurant receives 1200 online orders per month. Rindap will eliminate costs and improve processes as shown in the below table.

Reduce your operation costs drastically, seamlessly automate your process and deliver consistent value with business process improvement. Rindap reduces costs to almost 1 / 70 as seen below:

• Quantative Benefits
• Qualitative Benefits

The table has been arranged according to the median monthly wages for the related positions and the industry averages in the United States. We have collaborated with industry opinion leaders regarding the averages, percentage of time spent for individual activities described on the table and process details in order to prepare this study.

As you can see Rindap allows companies to easily automate business processes end-to-end and visualize their processes in order to achieve business process improvement. The best thing about using Rindap is that it lets you pay what you use for business process management and enables process automation on the legacy system without requiring any additional software implementation. Choose Rindap today to enjoy smarter business process automation with low costs.

An overview of BPM:

Business Process Management (BPM) is a discipline companies follow in order to streamline their way of completing tasks to be more efficient and agile. Companies use BPMS to digitally run their processes A more structured example for the definition of BPM can be given from the one by The Association of Business Process Management Professionals:

“Business process management (BPM) is a disciplined approach to identify, design, execute, document, measure, monitor, and control both automated and non-automated business processes to achieve consistent, targeted results aligned with an organization’s strategic goals. BPM involves the deliberate, collaborative and increasingly technology-aided definition, improvement, innovation, and management of end-to-end business processes that drive business results, create value, and enable an organization to meet its business objectives with more agility. BPM enables an enterprise to align its business processes to its business strategy, leading to effective overall company performance through improvements of specific work activities either within a specific department, across the enterprise, or between organizations.” (ABPMP International, 2018)

The growth is considered by some in the business field as the zenith of all accomplishments, yet it also comes with its side effects. With growth, management becomes complex and problematic. Procedures become obsolete, tasks increase and goals lose their clarity due to unmanaged growth. 

If not intervened at the right time, unmanaged growth can cause the very collapse of the company. When companies start to grow, they usually seek for Business Process Management

Efficiency, operational excellence, quality and predictability have long become the key aspects for companies to be successful in today’s business environment. This requirement makes most of the companies turn their heads to business process management to combat the complexities and excel. BPM has recently started to be considered to take place in the early agenda of companies regardless of size.

At this point BPM offers several advantages to the companies:

• Increase control and gain a vantage point to detect bottlenecks
• Increase everyday efficiency
• A structured map to define, design, analyze and optimize processes
• Deliver more value
• Reduce costs and waste
• Risk management
• Alignment of procedures
• Knowledge retention

It is a common mistake to consider business process management merely as a software solution. In fact, business process management is a discipline, a methodology to increase efficiency. There is a myriad of software platforms though that are used as a means to business process management in a digital sense. They are called BPM Suites, BPMS.

As expected there are many ways to vary the BPMS. You can consider low-code BPM or no-code BPM software platforms in terms of structure. Forrester Research categorizes BPM Suites in three distinct classes;

*human-centric BPMS

*integration-centric BPMS

*document-centric BPMS

Regardless of alternatives, the common goals of BPMS are to provide a digital tool for business analysts and software developers to streamline company business processes. They offer sections in which business process management lifecycle is run such as design, modelling, execution, monitoring and optimization.

How relevant is it for SMEs to focus on BPM? What are the setbacks?

For sure Business Process Management offers many advantages for companies once adopted properly. Efficiency and agility are very crucial for small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) to boost their success in the market. Most of the SMEs fail within their first five years. (Hammer, 2012) It is imperative to focus on process management to increase the overall SME efficiency to survive in the market.

Besides BPM is not constrained with the size of the organization, at least in principle and essence. Above all, a business process is present in every aspect of work. It involves several steps, people, devices, etc mostly in sequential order to get a job done. The nature of these step, whether automated or manual, many or few, on paper or in a digital environment, are irrelevant in terms of BPM.

However, BPM is a field that many SMEs still turn a blind eye. The reason for this dismissal of the principle and the software of BPM is a catch 22. BPM requires a certain dedication, resources in terms of money and time. Besides, it needs a champion to be addressed. Also, BPM has a very strict structure namely Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN 2.0). Many BPM platforms and workflow software solutions stick to this framework.

SMEs usually lack time and resources. Business process managers or project champions often case turn out to be the same critical employees that make the company earn money in the first place. They usually do not wish to or are not willingly chosen by upper management to spend their mission-critical time at an As – Is and To – Be meeting. 

Companies usually strive to complete their goals in today’s hectic and complicated business environment. Meetings that involve business analysts and developers can be very time and resources consuming for SMEs.

The Cost Factor

Another aspect is the sophistication of the BPM as a concept itself. BPM involves lots of concepts, standards and guidelines. Sometimes the focus gets to the endless business rules management discussions involving lots of members from different departments. However, it should be simply on finding ways to automate processes.

Considering the costs of implementing such a BPM tool is high. The BPM suites usually come with a significant bill. BPM experts and advisors come to aid with high hourly rates. 

Also, BPM suites come with a standard platform in which you usually have to pay for the features that you are not going to use at all. In some cases, they require you to start using their interfaces which also involves the hidden cost of training. However, SMEs need to get results fast. Today’s market is tight and changes are extremely rapid.

The smarter way:

SMEs need to be efficient and frugal to survive. BPM is surely a methodology to achieve that. Although, it is complex, costly and demanding to implement it. That is the very paradox as it stands out. However, a smarter alternative is at hand.

Rindap is a low-code platform that focuses on the utilization of its RESTful API. It enables companies to orchestrate their business cases without the need for implementing complex BPM solutions.

Rindap has the focus to enable developers to easily achieve the objectives that have been required with the ever-growing business. The use of Rindap’s API helps developers to automate business processes without the need for integration projects.

In addition, Rindap allows developers to meet with process owners in relatively shorter meetings to define business goals and easily set logic-based filters to automate processes. Since RESTful API allows harmonization of different applications, devices or platforms developers are not bound by lengthy projects and the response to existent, repetitive and urgent problems are much faster. Besides the flexible essence of Rindap helps companies to focus on their core activities instead of joining endless meetings on how to manage processes.

References:

· “The BPM Profession – ABPMP International”. www.abpmp.org. Retrieved January 2018.

· The Forrester Wave™: BPM Suites, March 2013

· Hammer, M. H. M. 2012. “Why Entrepreneurs Fail and How to Fight It?”

· OMG. “BPMN 2.0”. Retrieved March, 2011

Efficiency, operational excellence, quality and predictability are the key aspects for companies to grow in today’s business environment. This requirement makes most of the companies turn their heads to BPM tools to combat the complexities and excel. However, most of the business process management software comes up with high costs, long-term projects, complex structures. They also have limitations which eventually lead to the deterioration of the BPM process.

Rindap is developed by developers for developers to provide a smarter alternative to increase operational excellence with various benefits: 

Low-Code Platform

Rindap’s easy-to-use drag & drop modeller helps you to easily design and automate workflows. Besides drawing the workflows instead of coding increases the speed of implementation at a great extent. This eventually leads to higher efficiency and productivity. Developers may have more time for other mission-critical projects rather than tedious coding. Rindap’s low-code platform response to changes in the workflows become much easier. Therefore, it increases your flexibility and improves the overall user experience.

Logic-Based Filters

Rindap’s drag & drop modeller also offers the developers a visual interface to create logic-based filters. Instead of typing lengthy codes, developers can use the visual interface to easily set the business criteria. Filters act as decision points that assess the attributes and process the task to the right queue. Moreover, developers can use logic-based filters as a tool for business rules management. The developers can apply any specific instructions and constraints set by the management when automating the business processes.  

Use of API

Rindap enables orchestrations of workflows to increase operational excellence. It does it in a way which is otherwise impossible or requires a lengthy integration project with risks. Developers can call Rindap’s API, Rindap assesses the call’s attributes. After that, it sends back a response on the callback URL according to the workflow. Rindap’s API is used to convey data when an event is triggered at any application, platform or device that takes place in the workflow. Thus, developers no longer need any integration or deployment of new software with a new interface.

Maintenance & Upgrades  

Developers no longer need to worry about drastic outcomes of software upgrades that require almost to start everything from scratch. There will be no need for integration to automate workflows or manage business cases. Also, legacy applications will not suffer performance problems or developers need to spend hours on maintenance. All simply because there will be no integration to automate processes. Rindap will cover all the necessity for integration.

Ceaseless Automation

Matching a task with a worker is a big deal. But Rindap does not stop there. Tasks get updated according to responses from workers, new attributes go through the logic-based filters designed in the workflow and the progress continues. Thus you can involve as many applications, devices, asynchronous events and resources in the same workflow.

SDK

Rindap offers SDKs in various programming languages which further eases the use.

We need to discuss some basic concepts to better grasp Rindap’s take on workflow automation.

Everything starts once the workflow has been created on the modeller. Workflow is a diagram of your business processes. Above all, it is the way how your operations work. It can be as simple as the arrangement of a service appointment or as complex as the production planning of an electronics factory that also needs to have its production equipment’s condition checked via IoT. Creating the diagram on the drag & drop modeller is the first step for workflow automation in Rindap approach.

Setting the workflow

The workflow is built to get tasks done. Workflows start with tasks. Tasks mean data that are generated once triggered by a system that interacts with Rindap. For instance, consider Rindap is automating the loan application assessment process of a creditor. The workflow should start with the generation of a task. The task in this scenario can be a loan application in the creditor’s server. Tasks contain data. In this case, data can include the applicant’s name, address, identification and so on. Once generated, Rindap’s RESTful API. inserts the task to the designed workflow.

Filters act as the decision points in your workflow. In addition, filters have a logic-based structure. They keep the business rules and the parameters to analyze the data in the tasks and channel tasks according to the workflow.

Queues are the elements that tasks are directed to be assigned to the available and appropriate worker.

Workers can be anything that operates to complete a task. It can be an email reports service that checks the email is, it can be a CRM application that opens a new opportunity record or it can be the restaurant waiter that inserts orders to the software through a smartphone. It can even be a smart production robot that runs on IoT.

Continuous automation with the tasks’ update

The main flexibility with Rindap is that the workflow does not end with the matching of a task to a worker. The process continues by adding more filters subsequently. So once a worker performs its duty, the response updates the task’s initial data.

The task with updated data continues to the following filters for assessment and assignment. This goes perpetually without any limitation as per requirements designed on the workflow. If you would like to read about a hypothetical example of a Rindap use case and get to learn more details please take a look at this article.

Examples are great to make things clear. Here is an extremely simple example to better illustrate Rindap’s concept of business process automation.

Imagine Green Salad, a restaurant trying to manage its orders. Green Salad gets its orders to the restaurant’s order management software. Shift Manager then finds a free delivery employee to dispatch the order once it is ready. This can be time-consuming and the success solely depends on the Shift Manager’s abilities. However, a business process automation can make things much easier.

Instead Rindap’s RESTful API can automate this workflow.

A workflow which starts with an entry of a new order to restaurant’s order management software (a task) can be created on Rindap platform by setting filters to allocate to the delivery employee based on the order’s details (attributes such as ordered food, total price, delivery address, neighbourhood, delivery time etc.) Filters can direct the order to the available delivery employee by matching the orders’ details with set conditions.

For example; let’s assume only Frank, John and Karen deliver the ready orders for Yellow Hill neighbourhood. For the orders to White Valley neighbourhood, Susan and Jack only do the deliveries. So we can create a workflow according to this scenario by using logic-based filters.

The management of countless tasks

If the Yellow Hill is in the details, either Frank, John or Karen should go for the delivery. But how?

Once the order details are entered to the order management software and the order is ready for delivery (a task triggered by Green Salad’s software), the restaurant’s server on which the software operates sends a call to Rindap’s API. Let’s assume each delivery employees’ availability is tracked by their PDAs. Rindap would also be aware of available delivery employees as the restaurant’s server sends API calls to Rindap about the delivery employee’s availability (worker’s status). Let’s also consider that there is a five minute period for the delivery to be assigned to the employee on the PDA. Otherwise, the assignment must be channelled to another employee (task reservation timeout).

Rindap works this information in the designated workflow, then matches the task to the available delivery employee. Later it sends a response to Green Salad’s server. From the server, the data can go to the matched delivery employee’s PDA (worker).

In this case, if Karen is off or John is out of reach for more than five minutes, then Frank will have the assignment.

Numerous benefits in every case

Even in this short and simple scenario, the Shift Manager survived a hectic workload of delivery management. Green Salad avoided delivery problems. Green Salad team managed to automate the entire order delivery allocation process. Now it is possible to evaluate the delivery staff’s performance according to data.

Besides you can realise that there is no need for an integration between the restaurant’s order management software and PDAs. There is also no necessity to write down lots of code to detect the available worker.

Now consider if Green Salad operates in thousands of cities around the world with thousands of delivery employees and the following requirements must be on the table as well. The delivery employees should get the orders according to numerous variables instead of just the neighbourhood. The delivery employees should also get a maximum of 5 deliveries per hour (rate limit). Besides, the deliveries must leave according to the customers’ selection of the delivery time (delay). Rindap can enable all of these conditions.

Pushing the boundaries of efficiency further

Let’s step up our imagination. Consider a case when a customer should be notified by SMS, email, telephone. The automation process of ordering Green Salad’s ingredients based on the number of orders received. Consider the automation of order preparation for the process of order delivery. Even data from the IoT sensors in smart kitchen appliances can take place in the same workflow.

There will be no need for an integration to manage all of these processes in the same platform. Rindap’s business process automation ability moves beyond data silos and devices.

Another important benefit of Rindap helps you to manage your asynchronous activities and the sequential activities in the same workflow. Imagine now the order delivery case of Green Salad restaurant also involves the ingredients inventory management.

Consider once a new order is in, the workflow on Rindap’s platform requires a check of ingredient inventory. Rindap assigns the task to inventory software (worker) and retrieves the information back to the workflow if the necessary amount of ingredients are available. If there is a sufficient amount of ingredients the process continues with the order delivery, if not it continues with placing a purchase order for the necessary ingredients (worker). Rindap can convey the data necessary to the restaurant’s server to place a purchase order. (i.e a worker to online order to Green Salad’s ingredient supplier). Once the missing ingredients are back on the restaurant’s inventory software, the process of order delivery may continue.

Unleash the potential

As you can see from this example Rindap offers great potential in automation and business process management. It manages asynchronous activities (order delivery and inventory management) while proceeding with the delivery tasks for the orders with necessary ingredients in the same workflow. Developers can sequence the workflow into steps by setting logic-based filters one after another as subsequent decision points. The workers’ responses update the tasks. Also, there is no need for any system integration as Rindap conveys all the data and business decisions of the workflow.

If Rindap was not used in this case, developers would need to integrate inventory software, order management software, order placement application and so on which would cause a great burden on maintenance, huge performance drawbacks, cost a lot of resource including time and of course a significant risk of failure. End-users did not need to learn a new software interface either, as Rindap lets the workflow continue automatically as the legacy systems keep operating on their terms.

Rindap offers business analysts and developers a formidable tool and a smarter alternative that easily lets them recreate and orchestrate their business cases in terms of workflows.

In Business Process Management (BPM) systems, the operating rules of business processes and workflows are mostly structured and managed based on logic principles. There is a need for logic constructions to establish rules for components such as determining the status of tasks and resources, assigning them to Workers, specifying operational constraints, directing processes and triggering events. The use of JSON Logic for BPM is very crucial here.

JSON Logic structure, built on JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Rindap uses JSON logic for BPM for the creation of complex business rules and scenarios. Utilizing JsonLogic structure, serialize rules as JSON data, share between front-end and back-end of applications and store rules in databases. 

Each Json Logic rule is a JSON object and is defined as an operator-data pair.

In a JSON Logic structure, the operator is in the key position while one or several arguments are in the value position. Each argument itself can be a logic rule, so it is possible to define complex rules with JsonLogic. 

{“operator” : [“values” … ]}

The following is an example of a simple JsonLogic business rule. In that rule, there is a comparison of two elements of an array. If they are equivalent to each other, the rule’s result will be TRUE, else the result will be FALSE. If the result is TRUE, defined actions will happen. 

{ “==” : [1, 1] }

JSON Logic rule parsers can transform written rules into statements in e.g. Python, JavaScript, PHP and Ruby and provide the execution of these rules. For instance, we can achieve Python counterpart of the above JSON Logic as follows:

Python code:  (1 == 1 ) 

JsonLogic is a powerful alternative to rule-based creation of complex business processes. Especially as it allows rules to be stored as data and thus dynamically generated by user interaction.

Managing business rules

Business rules define specific directives or constraints that tell organizations how to take actions, make decisions about their business activities. These rules can apply in many businesses such as customer relations management, clinical pathway system, booking a hotel room, etc. 

As an example of a business process, suppose a booking agency wants to automate booking a hotel room. To do that, a set of questions will be asked to determine availability, price and rate of the hotel based on the person’s responses. For example, location, size and type of service offered are the key factors of choosing a hotel room for a person. If the distance of the hotel to the beach is less than 100 meters, the number of hotels’ rooms is greater than 50 and they offer breakfast, the hotel suggestion will be taken. The following is a simple JSON Logic for BPM example.