We are being invited to an increasing number of BPM selection processes and it’s quite common to see an RFI with hundreds of questions regarding product features and capabilities.
While we believe this list is necessary in an advanced phase of the selection process, during the first phase we believe organizations should focus on higher level criteria that can be understood by the business people within their company.
In particular, we believe that the vendor should be able to provide you with active references that help your organization validate the following aspects of the vendor and the solution:
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Visit named references where the vendor has delivered projects of similar complexity to yours in months and verify the total cost (if monetary value cannot be disclosed by the reference then ask for the total number of resources and time involved and the total number of servers required) |
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BPM is about aligning business and IT around the process paradigm. Ask the vendor to present to you the automated process diagrams: they must be easy to understand by business people (i.e. avoid technical jargon).After all, we are talking about business processes here. |
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Visit at least one reference where the vendor has automated complex processes such as:
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Visit at least one reference where the vendor has supported in a singleimplementation:
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Visit at least one reference where the vendor has supported in a single project:
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Your BPM tool must leverage your existing and future IT investments.Visit named references where the vendor has delivered projects that integrated with at least:
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Verify that the client is able to work with incumbent partners and/or with internal resources; some tools are so complex that only the vendor can implement the solution thus locking the client in expensive long term services. |
At Bizagi we believe that if a vendor fulfills the above mentioned criteria (and do visit the references, it’s crucial), it deserves to be part to your selection process.
This is a great list (thank you!) and I totally agree with your sentiment about what should go in an initial RFI. However your list is skewed towards automation and IT-enabled improvement.
Whilst this is undoubtedly important and valid, I think you are missing a valuable additional component, which is non-IT related process improvement where automation may not necessarily be the key component. Here I’m thinking about where process mapping (and thus the use of BizAgi Process Modeler) is used to identify improved and more standardised manually driven processes. Not only does your application help to develop the as-is and to-be maps, but through its Web publishing capability, it can be used to create end-user process documentation that can be used in training and day-to-day business functions.
So I would add this to your list of high-level benefits / solution otpions.