How to automate business processes from application to sale using open source software



    Companies from a wide range of business sectors are faced with frequently recurring business processes related to processing applications. Most business processes in companies begin with an incoming request from a client. Moreover, in many industries, the implementation of standard work and services is a complex and ramified business process, at different stages of which the interaction of employees from several departments of the company is required.

    Often such 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 execution and the quality of the work and services rendered.

    It would seem that you can fix the problem 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 — an expensive investment in deploying business process automation systems and their integration with existing infrastructure, or “freezing” a business process in its current state, which will lead to a decrease in the company's competitiveness in the future.

    What is the problem


    It is not always easy to organize the interaction of employees from different departments - often in the process of communication overlays occur, a “human factor” arises, conflicts, employees quit, etc.

    The situation is aggravated by the complexity, ramification and opacity of the business processes themselves. An example from the field of telecom. When processing an application for subscriber’s connection, there are two types of verification of the possibility of providing a service: automatic, when the coverage area is analyzed using a database, and manual, when it is possible to determine exactly whether a subscriber is in the coverage area, it is possible only by paper or unstructured electronic documents. It may be difficult for employees to understand which way the process should develop in a particular case.

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

    And even after the master who connects him to the network goes to the client, the back office workers will still need to get a new subscriber into a variety of systems - from HelpDesk to billing and CRM. And, of course, at any moment a mistake can be made that will lead to problems in the future - for example, erroneous write-offs of funds or not timely invoices.

    Business process pipeline


    Avoiding such problems can be done by automating business processes. To organize work with applications, special OMS systems (Order Management System) are used, and for a general description of business processes, BPM tools (Business Process Management) are used. In the latter case, descriptions are created using the ISO-approved BPMN graphical notation . For example, the appointment process described with 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 care of the execution of the business process. According to the relevant triggers - for example, when an order appears - the tasks that they solve come to employees of different departments. If the process “freezes”, then the management immediately sees at which employee this happened - at each stage you can set deadlines, approaching which generates notifications for those responsible.

    At the same time, the tasks of interacting with other programs are carried out without human intervention at all - for example, if it is necessary to check the applicant for a purchase on credit, the system may request his financial data through the credit bureau API.

    This allows you to reduce the likelihood of errors, standardize complex business processes, update them in accordance with changing requirements and speed up staff work. As a result, fewer dissatisfied customers and more money from the company. It looks great, but in fact, here "is not so simple."

    Not so simple


    For Russian business, an important point is that such products are poorly distributed in our country. Most 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 engaged in 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 with the corresponding roles are created. For employees, all this looks like another program in which you need to work, which is not very convenient.

    Another important point - developers of BPM systems, as a rule, pay almost no attention to creating a beautiful and functional working interface. It is assumed that customers implement it themselves in their client application, interacting with the system through the API. Therefore, the "native" interface usually serves only to demonstrate the capabilities of the system. But only large companies can afford to engage in such costly integration and creating a new interface, and medium and small businesses do not have such resources.

    And finally, the main minus is the senselessness 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 associated with business processes and applications, which means that you need to connect a system in which such information could be placed.

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

    Open Source to the rescue


    We at Later thought a lot about all the problems described above and came to the conclusion that creating a universal solution for all occasions is impossible. However, you can create a tool that every company could easily adapt for itself.

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

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

    We 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 following form to the user:



    The set, arrangement of 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 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 appropriate 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 software version “tailored” for a specific business, rather than spending time and money integrating a third-party tool, or, especially, developing one from scratch.

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

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