BPM-platform-based case management frameworks are configurable 'apps' meant to help solution architects accelerate the delivery of unique and flexible case management solutions. Case management frameworks (CMFs) are commercial software offerings designed to reduce the time and complexity of creating case-style process solutions by providing architectural patterns and at least some business domain capabilities 'out of the box.' Work is caselike when each work item — each case — requires unique handling, involving complex interactions between content, people, transactions and business or regulatory policies in order to deliver an optimal outcome. Case-style processes do not progress in a serial or completely predictable fashion. Rather, they often require multiple dependent workflows to be orchestrated, making them particularly complex to architect. Very often, caseworkers need the flexibility to decide the best next action for a case, rather than following a prescribed workflow.
Gartner defines business process automation (BPA) tools as software that automates business processes by enabling orchestration and choreography of diverse sets of actors (humans, systems and bots) involved in the execution of the process. BPA tools provide an environment for developing and running applications that incorporate process models (and optionally other business, decision and data models) enabling digitization of business operations
Gartner defines business processes as the coordination of the behavior of people, systems and things to produce specific business outcomes. 'Things' in this context refers to devices that are part of the Internet of Things (IoT). A BPM platform minimally includes: a graphical business process and/or rule modeling capability, a process registry/repository to handle the modeling metadata, a process execution engine and a state management engine or rule engine (or both). The three types of BPM platforms — basic BPM platforms, business process management suites (BPMSs), and intelligent business process management suites (iBPMSs) — can help solution architects and business outcome owners accelerate application development, transform business processes, and digitalize business processes to exploit business moments by providing capabilities that manage different aspects of the business process life cycle.
Content services platforms (CSPs) are foundational for managing and utilizing content within an organization. CSP technologies enable employees to retrieve and work with content in a modern and seamless way across devices and organizational boundaries. Core CSP functionalities include content capture, creation, consolidation, processing and retention to support personal, team, departmental and enterprise business operations.
CCM software is defined as both a strategy and a market-fulfilled by applications that improve the creation, delivery, storage and retrieval of outbound and interactive communications. It supports the production of individualized customer messages, marketing collateral, new product introductions and transaction documents. It is a collection of computer programs that composes, personalizes, formats and delivers content acquired from various sources into targeted and relevant electronic and physical communications between an enterprise and its customers, prospective customers and business partners. It delivers targeted communications through a wide range of media including mobile, email, SMS, Web pages, social media sites and print. The CCM market has evolved from the convergence of document generation/composition and output management technologies. Current CCM solutions include the core elements of a design tool, a composition engine, a workflow/rule engine and multichannel output management.
Digital asset management software includes capabilities for ingestion, storage, retrieval, collaboration and life cycle management of rich-media assets, including text, graphics, images, videos and audio.
Gartner defines document management as the tools and practices used to capture, store, process, and access documents and content in support of personal, team and enterprise needs. It is used for a wide range of collaborative and operational purposes, enabling the digital workplace, content collaboration, content-centric processes, content services for enterprise applications and content governance. Gartner estimates that 70% to 80% of enterprise information is unstructured, posing a significant challenge for organizations that must unlock the potential and mitigate the risks of content. Document management tools are critical to enterprise application strategies that need to support unstructured information or content.
Gartner defines enterprise low-code application platforms (LCAPs) as platforms for accelerated development and maintenance of applications, using model-driven tools for the entire application’s technology stack, generative AI and prebuilt component catalogs. Enterprise LCAPs target software engineering teams responsible for custom application development and maintenance. Enterprise LCAP features include support for the collaborative development of all application components; runtime environments for high performance, availability and scalability of applications; application deployment and monitoring with detailed usage insights. Enterprise LCAP platforms feature governance controls and success management through self-service capabilities and APIs, developer documentation and training, and service-level agreements for platform operations. Enterprise LCAPs provide the foundation for developing a wide range of application types and application components, including complex front ends, business process automation and distributed data sources.
Gartner defines Insight Engines as follows: Insight engines apply relevancy methods to discover, analyze, describe and organize content and data. They enable the interactive or proactive delivery or synthesis of information to people, and data to machines, in the context of their respective business moments. Insight engines should be viewed as platforms on which applications are provided, developed or augmented by applying the capabilities listed above to specific employee and customer experience use cases. Such applications are provided out of the box by vendors (e.g., intranet or site search), developed through technical partnerships (e.g., search within third-party applications), developed with customers in-house (e.g., expert finder), or developed through integration with third-party applications (e.g., extracting data from documents to support RPA).
Integrated HR service management (IHRSM) solutions provide holistic platforms to manage physical and/or virtual HR shared services operations and communications. They also deliver “content in context” to employees and managers in support of employee-related processes, policies and programs. Typical capabilities are: - Employee and manager content delivery via a portal (This could also extend to a dedicated HR portal that combines the content delivery with the other functionalities mentioned in this list.) - Content knowledge bases - Digital HR document management - Business process management (BPM) tools - Case ticketing and routing - Service-level agreement (SLA) monitoring - Employee relations support
Gartner defines robotic process automation (RPA) as the software to automate tasks within business and IT processes via software scripts that emulate human interaction with the application UI. RPA enables a manual task to be recorded or programmed into a software script, which users can develop by programming, or by using the RPA platform’s low-code and no-code GUIs. This script can then be deployed and executed into different runtimes. The runtime executable of the deployed script is referred to as a bot, or robot. RPA is used across numerous business functions for tactical task automation. Business and IT users can leverage RPA to: Move data in or out of application systems without human interaction (unattended automation). Scripts are designed to replicate the actions of a human interacting with those systems or documents, which usually do not have available APIs. The goal is to automate and complete a task successfully without human intervention. Typically, unattended automation is triggered by a system and bots executed on a server. Automate tasks with a human in the loop (attended automation). RPA can extract information from systems and related documents, shaping it and preparing it for consumption by a human at the point of need. Typically, attended automation is triggered by a human and bots executed on a local device.