Business Process Modelling Tools: Ultimate Guide

If you wish to improve anything, you have to see how it’s being done. Business process modelling tools grant this possibility for businesses and make it easy to visualise important business processes.

In this article, we’ll look at what process modelling tools do and review some of the best process modelling tools. We’ll also see how automating complex processes can dramatically improve the performance of your business.

Coming Up

What is Business Process Modelling?

What are the Benefits of Business Modelling Tools?

What are the Best of Business Process Modelling Tools?

How to Choose the Right Business Process Modelling Tool?

Closing Words

What is Business Process Modelling?

Business process modelling (BPM) allows you to view your current process workflows as they are and map them how you’d like them to be. In this way, you can design, assess, automate, and ultimately perform process improvement.

The idea of business process modelling is straightforward and simple to understand. However, in practice, it can quickly become complicated. This is because there are often many departments and people involved in every business process.

Although you may feel like everyone is aware of the intricacies, it often isn’t the case. That’s where business process modelling tools can be of great service.

What are the Benefits of Business Modelling Tools?

Let’s take a look at the benefits of the top BPM tools, including:

1. Increased Transparency

When you are able to visually model a process, everyone involved becomes keenly aware of the steps. Additionally, they see how they are responsible; therefore, they can be held accountable.

2. Enhanced Agility

When changes happen within a business or externally (which is inevitable), business process modelling tools aid in an organisation’s ability to react with agility.

It provides a way for business leaders and stakeholders to make adjustments as needed that keep the organisation aligned with its business objectives and strategies.

3. Standardisation

With process models, organisations have a clear view of how to standardise their processes across departments and offices in an effort to increase efficiency. Additionally, finance automation solutions enable standardisation as well since they carry out repetitive processes for your team.

4. Error Detection

A top benefit of processing modelling tools is the ability to pinpoint errors. When you’re able to run through a process, you can spot mistakes, inefficiencies, or bottlenecks.

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As with everything good in business and life, it’s never completely perfect. Even the best process modelling tools can include some downsides. For example, the software cost in itself can be steep, as is training.

Additionally, it takes some time to learn how to use process modelling tools, so you have to factor in the learning curve.

If you’re looking for a way to improve business processes and implement change with speed, then a finance automation solution could be the perfect solution!

Finance automation software that is cloud-based and low-code can be deployed in under 30 minutes and used to visualise your processes, automate them, analyse workflows, and improve important finance functions.

Automation tools also offer additional solutions to help maximise your business’ productivity. For example, they can aid in account reconciliation, rebate management, regulatory reporting, and expense management, to name a few solutions.

What are the Best of Business Process Modelling Tools?

Whether you choose to use business process modelling software or manage this manually, there are a variety of business process modelling tools and techniques that can provide major upsides for your organisation.

Here are a few of the methods to know and try for yourself:

1. Unified Modelling Language (UML)

Unified modelling language is a process modelling technique that was initially developed by software developers. It has been applied to businesses in the form of diagrams. These diagrams map out roles, actors, actions, and classes to better understand or document how a system functions.

2. Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)

Business process model and notation was created by the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI). Similar to UML, BPMN is a system of developing flowcharts, or a step-by-step visual diagram of a process. BPMN designates its own language and elements so that there is a standard approach.

3. Value Stream Mapping

Value stream mapping is focused on the value delivered to an end user or customer. As such, it lays out the flow of materials and information needed to deliver a product to the customer. By doing so, companies can spot any areas of waste or inefficiency in order to improve workflows.

4. PERT Diagrams

PERT, or Program Evaluation and Review Technique, are diagrams that outline business process flows by the time they take. PERT diagrams estimate the shortest, longest, and most likely time it takes to complete every step of a business process. It’s useful to determine what approach will be most time-efficient.

5. Petri Nets

Although they have their own learning curve, Petri Nets and Colored Petri Nets (CPNs) are useful to map processes that entail sub-processes that occur simultaneously. They use mathematical language to express, but once understood, they can be incredibly helpful in visually multi-step processes.

6. Gantt Charts

If you’ve worked in project management or have had to adhere to strict deadlines, then you’re likely familiar with a Gantt chart. Gantt charts are diagrams that showcase how long it will take to complete a process. They include start and end times (or dates), along with the tasks required and an estimated timeline of how long the task will take to complete.

7. SIPOC Diagrams

SIPOC Diagrams are used to document suppliers, inputs, processes, outputs, and customers. Rather than diving into deep detail, these diagrams are used to offer stakeholders a bird’s eye view and overview of key information.

This way, stakeholders have the information they need to make informed decisions or changes to processes in an effort to improve the customer experience.

8. IPO model

IPO stands for input-process-output. This model is a functional graph that depicts inputs and outputs, along with the process it takes to transform an input into an output.

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As you can see, there are a variety of business process modelling tools that each serve their own purpose and provide advantages to businesses that are seeking to optimise processes.

However, business process modelling tools alone don’t make a change. Instead, they are the groundwork needed in order to implement change that will transform your business for the better.

Once you have your processes modeled and clearly understood, then you can take action to improve upon them. With finance automation tools, you can streamline and automate said processes to eliminate waste, reduce errors, and save time.

With accounting and finance automation, you can effectively boost productivity, improve data accuracy, increase transparency and internal control, adhere to compliance, and maximise your data’s security.

How to Choose the Right Business Process Modelling Tool?

When you’re ready to utilise business process modelling tools (as in software), then you’ll have to research the best options out there. To prepare you for your next step, keep in mind the following considerations as you perform your due diligence:

1. Integration Capabilities: Review how the process modelling tool integrates with your existing software and/or any finance automation software you may wish to utilise.

2. Formatting: The process modelling software may rely on a specific type of format for an input. Make sure that it works with all of your departments because each department tends to work with different data formats and information structures.

3. Support: Of course, you’ll want to only select tools that offer customer support that’s reliable and helpful.

4. Cost: As with any software you choose to implement, cost is always going to be of considerable concern.

Closing Words

Business process modelling tools are a powerful way to improve upon your everyday business processes. They offer a way to see how your processes currently run, as well as outline how you want them to operate moving forward. This way, you can remove waste, reduce bottlenecks, and optimise business processes.

Working in line with business process modelling are finance automation software solutions that implement the changes to your processes for you. With finance automation tools, you can automate business processes to make workflows more efficient, prevent key person dependencies, and streamline important tasks.