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.
Gartner defines the collaborative work management (CWM) market as the market for stand-alone software tools that provide task-driven workspaces to enable end users to plan, coordinate and automate their work. These tools provide an integrated assembly of user-friendly capabilities for work planning, in-context collaboration, content collaboration, workflow and automation, reporting, analysis and dashboarding, intelligent assistance, and use-case acceleration on a platform that handles data management and administrative operations. Tools are defined by their purpose (work planning and execution), target users and breadth of functionality.
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 the source-to-pay (S2P) suite market as an integrated set of solutions to source, contract, request, procure, receive and pay for goods and services across an enterprise. These solutions typically are sold as cloud-based software as a service. Source-to-pay suites allow organizations to manage all of their sourcing and procurement activities within a single integrated solution. These solutions are modular in nature allowing customers to activate the functionality that is relevant for their needs. The integrated nature of these solutions allows for data to easily flow across the source-to-pay process providing needed visibility to upstream and downstream documents. An example of this would be the ability to view a purchase order and see the contract that the purchase is related to, the e-sourcing event that led to the contract and downstream documents such as receipts, invoices and payments.