At Camunda, we have always believed that Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is an incredibly valuable tool for productivity and collaboration (some would call it brilliant, actually). It’s not only an effective way to model, deploy and monitor your business processes, but its visual nature enables a high degree of alignment between business and IT.
Of course, we develop a process orchestration platform that uses BPMN, so we’re a bit opinionated on the subject. But you don’t have to take just our word for it. Our customers have been very openly praising the value that BPMN has brought to their business for years.
The perspectives of a wide range of businesses, from industries like financial services to public sector to telecom, provide a fascinating look into the ways BPMN adds value to an organization. Business and IT alignment, the power of visualizing processes and the ease of use came up frequently.
You can see all of this on our case studies page, but to save you some time, we’ve collected a handful of insightful quotations to share with you here. (Be sure to click through and read the full case studies for the complete story.)
Business and IT alignment
Getting business stakeholders and IT on the same page is often challenging because each tends to speak their own language. The business owner might ask if a process can deliver value in a specific way, and the software developer might show them some code and describe complex logic, and neither side quite understands the other.
BPMN, as a notation that is visual and straightforward enough for non-technical stakeholders to quickly understand but also can be flexibly implemented and executed by technical experts, allows both groups to look at the same diagram and understand an end-to-end process far faster.
Here are a few great examples that speak to this alignment:
“Camunda has become the BPMN tool for analysts and business experts. It allows everyone to have a common layout, pushes use of BPMN in general, and makes the transfer of functional workflows to executable workflows easier.”
Read the TotalEnergies Belgium case study
“Our business process owners joined us for the BPMN training and enjoyed it so much that they all stayed on to complete the developer training. We’ve also established a BPMN tribe – they discuss new ideas, arrange and attend meet-ups in the wider community and showcase our results. This has been so effective within the business that we have a backlog of new project requests.”
Read the Helsana case study
“Thanks to BPMN, we were able to develop and map our processes in interdisciplinary workshops, involving both subject matter experts as well as software engineers. With Camunda, the BPMN 2.0 models are then technically executed. The visual process language BPMN 2.0 has helped us simplify communication between developers and domain experts.”
Read the Bank11 case study
“The BPMN modeling was carried out by our developers at the technical level. However, communication between the developers and the department was greatly facilitated by an accompanying, comprehensive BPMN model. Now we are able to more quickly generate a joint understanding and discuss technical requirements.”
Read the Helvetia case study
Powerful visualization
One of the particular strengths of BPMN is that it is a standardized visual notation. This makes it useful for quickly understanding and monitoring an entire process, even with complex logic, for both technical and non-technical users. With BPMN, the logical flow of a process is visible and not buried in code that non-technical users can’t read.
Here are some great examples that speak to effectiveness of visualization on their goals:
“Thanks to the introduction of Camunda, the professionally documented process now 100% corresponds to the technical reality. Most questions regarding the process can be instantly answered by a quick look at the BPMN diagram. This is an important foundation for the continuous improvement of the process and thus also the further growth of Zalando.”
Read the Zalando case study
“… as well as supporting and operating a highly flexible DevOps philosophy, Camunda has enabled Deutsche Telekom IT to visualize complex logic in one place, easily align human and automated tasks and use the same language for business and development with BPMN.”
Read the Deutsche Telekom case study
Optimizing and running processes
BPMN makes it far easier to work with processes, so that you can create, modify/update and run your processes rapidly. This makes it much easier to implement business processes and greatly improves their overall effectiveness, which in turn enables faster automation and more efficiency.
Here are some great examples that speak to ways BPMN helped organizations run a higher number of higher quality processes:
“Combining Camunda with agile development and DevSecOps saved hundreds of hours of coding. BPMN and DMN functionality in Camunda enabled rapid prototyping and testing, and full visibility and alignment as to where changes should occur.”
Read the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs case study
“[BPMN] has also helped in establishing a process-oriented approach in our digitization effort, identifying common process patterns and turning them into reusable best practices.”
Read the City of Lugano case study
“The step towards executable process models was particularly easy with Camunda because more than any other Business Process Management System, Camunda consistently works with BPMN 2.0.”
Read the Deutsche Bahn case study
“We have a platform that allows for initial designs to consist of BPMN and DMN in a way that can be easily reviewed by product owners, architects, developers, and development managers. Logic and terminology issues are found during design time. Business domain language provided by the product owners has started to end up in the final implementation. Each BPMN/DMN is code reviewed independently which allows for fine grained views of steps in the process. We are also able to find bugs, refactor and enhance easier than before. Furthermore, our groups can review and approve production changes with a better level of confidence that a change won’t break other parts of the system.”
Read the 24 Hour Fitness case study
Flexibility and ease of use
A problem that often arises from a home-grown or proprietary process management tool is a lack of flexibility. What if you want to integrate your process with a new system or tool, quickly make unexpected changes due to updated requirements, or even migrate all your process models to a new orchestration platform?
As an open standard, BPMN works with a wide range of technologies, and newcomers to the standard can quickly get up to speed on how it works without a steep exclusive learning curve.
Here are a few examples that speak to the benefits of a flexible standard on businesses:
“Camunda is the only manufacturer that truly and consistently supports BPMN 2.0 and does not propagate the ‘Zero Code BPM’ myth. Camunda did not force us to change our IT environment or technology stack, but offered a fully integrated BPM engine with optional tools. This allowed us to benefit from BPM without having to adjust to specific products.”
Read the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property case study
“We had no problems with the actual development. Both the BPMN standard and the work with Camunda were very easy to learn for us. It surprises us again and again how quick and efficient we are in the implementation of new requirements.”
Read the Sony DADC New Media Solutions case study
“Once we understood BPMN 2.0 more clearly and learned the best practices, we were able to quickly gain in-house expertise and as a result became self-sufficient in creating new processes as needed by the business.”
Read the Sparta Systems case study
Get to know BPMN better
BPMN 2.0 has been a critical business standard, maintained by the non-profit Object Management Group, for well over a decade. As an open standard, it is versatile and used by many organizations around the globe. Its visual and open nature make collaboration and efficiency far easier when it comes to understanding and orchestrating business processes.
To learn more, we’ve put together a BPMN guide for you, or you can feel free to dive in deeper with a free BPMN course from Camunda Academy. And if you have any questions about how you can use Camunda and BPMN to streamline and orchestrate your own processes, just book a demo, drop us a line or get started with Camunda for free today.
