How to automate business processes from order to sale using open software

Companies from the most diverse business sectors face the often repetitive business processes involved in processing applications. Most business processes in companies begin with an incoming request from the client. At the same time, in many industries, performance of standard works and services is a complex and extensive business process, at different stages of which interaction of employees from several departments of the company is required.

Often these typical tasks are not solved by the most highly qualified employees, which, with a large amount of work, can lead to errors and failures that affect the speed of implementation and the quality of the work and services provided.
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It would seem that the problem can be fixed with the help of automation, but in reality everything is not so simple. Often a business finds itself in a situation of choosing from two bad options - costly investments in the deployment of business process automation systems and their integration with the existing infrastructure, or “freezing” the business process in its current state, which in the future will reduce the company's competitiveness.

What is the problem

Organizing the interaction of employees from different departments is not always easy - often in the process of communication there are overlays, there is a "human factor", conflicts, employees are dismissed, etc.

The situation is aggravated by the complexity, branching and opacity of the business processes themselves. An example from the field of telecom. When processing a subscriber connection request, there are two types of checking whether the service can be provided - automatic, when the coverage area is analyzed by the database, and manual, when it is possible to find out exactly whether the subscriber is in the coverage area, only through paper or unstructured electronic documents. It may be difficult for employees to understand how a process should evolve in a particular case.

As a result, this leads to errors and delays, while the fastest connection is the key task of the telecom operator. Every day waiting for the connection reduces the likelihood of a successful outcome - the client can connect to faster competitors or even change his mind.

And even after the master goes to the client, who connects him to the network, back-office workers will need to start a new subscriber into various systems - from HelpDesk to billing and CRM. And, of course, at any moment an error may be made that will lead to problems in the future - for example, erroneous debiting of funds or improperly issued invoices.

Business process pipeline

You can avoid such problems by automating business processes. Special order management systems (OMS systems) are used to organize work with requests, and BPM (Business Process Management) tools are used for a general description of business processes. In the latter case, descriptions are created using the ISO approved BPMN graphic notation. For example, the appointment process described by BPMN might look something like this:



Such descriptions are created by business process architects. Subsequently, the scheme is loaded into the BPM system, which takes over the execution of the business process. According to the relevant triggers - for example, when an order appears - employees of different departments receive tasks that they solve. If the process “freezes”, then the management immediately sees at what employee this happened - at each stage it is possible to set deadlines, approaching which generates notifications for those responsible.

At the same time, the tasks of interaction with other programs are performed without any human participation at all - for example, if the applicant is required to check for a loan purchase, the system can request its financial data through the API of the credit history bureau.

This helps reduce the likelihood of errors, standardize complex business processes, update them in accordance with changing requirements and speed up staff work. As a result, less dissatisfied customers and more money from the company. It looks great, but in fact it is also “not so simple”.

Not so simple

For Russian business, an important point is that such products are not widely distributed in our country. Most of the existing systems are not translated into Russian. This is a big problem: since we are talking about the automation of typical and routine business processes, low-skilled employees who do not know English are working with BPM software. Therefore, localization is extremely important for such systems.

In addition, such software, as a rule, is implemented in the form of a web portal, in which users are brought up with the corresponding roles. For employees, it all looks like another program in which you need to work, which is not very convenient.

Another important point - the developers of BPM-systems, as a rule, almost do not pay attention to creating a beautiful and functional working interface. It is assumed that customers implement it independently in their client application, interacting with the system through the API. Therefore, the “native” interface is usually only used to demonstrate the capabilities of the system. But only large companies can afford to engage in such a costly integration and creation of a new interface, while small and medium businesses do not have such resources.

And finally, the main disadvantage is the futility of using separate software for automation without integration with other tools used in the company. Such integration is extremely expensive, even if the source system itself is free. For example, BPM systems do not store data related to business processes and requests - it means that you need to connect a system in which such information could be placed.

As a result, a company whose business is not related to software development simply cannot afford to implement such systems and live in the old way, working inefficiently and losing money.

Open Source to the rescue

We in Latera thought a lot about all the problems described above and came to the conclusion that it was impossible to create a universal solution for all occasions. However, you can create a tool that each company could easily adapt to it.

Therefore, we have developed a new product, Hydra OMS , an open source application integrated with a BPM system. In our case, this is an open source BP system Activiti.

Data on orders and their status are stored in the built-in storage, and therefore there is no need to use external databases. Instead of monstrous web portals, the user works here in a user-friendly interface. It integrates a BPM widget that allows you to run business processes for new orders and perform the current task of the business process. With it, you can automate the movement of orders and configure a step-by-step "master" of their implementation.

Let's give a small example - a typical process - a request for a vacation. The business logic of such a process can be represented by the following BPMN diagram:



When the business process reaches the Handle Request stage, the widget in Hydra OMS displays the form to the user:



The set, the location of the fields and the ability to edit them are configured by the administrator for each form in advance. The widget displays the form, filling the fields with the values ​​from the current order.

All this allows you to create "end-to-end" business processes, the stages of which are executed in various systems. Users of these systems receive relevant alerts, and their managers can track the progress of work at any step.

At the same time, the open source code of the project allows, if necessary, to create a version of the software, “sharpened” for a specific business, rather than waste time and money on integrating a third-party tool, or, moreover, developing your own from scratch.

Download Hydra OMS from Github , put asterisks there and write us your wishes.

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