Process Modelling Software

Process modeling visualizes processes and workflows to provide more process transparency and control over the tasks, activities, parties, and steps involved in the business processes. With process modeling, users can detect happy paths, failure points, and undesired outcomes. As a result, they can standardize their processes and improve their operational efficiency. 

Process modeling tools refer to software, process modeling techniques, and diagrams used in process visualization, such as:

1. Process maps: Process mapping includes any step, task and activity that is essential to a process. 
2. Flowchart mapping: They represent simple process flows.
3. Journey mapping: It is the map of customer journey with all details, including customers’ perspective.
4. Process blueprints: An extended diagram illustrating B2C processes at different levels, such as internal operations, customer-company interactions and other processes related to the main process.  
5. Data flow diagrams: They show data points in the operating systems. 
6. PERT Diagrams: These are applied to improve project management by visualizing, organizing and coordinating tasks and activities..
7. Functional flow block diagrams: These represent a system’s functional flow.
8. Swimlane diagram: These diagrams divide a greater process flow into smaller flows to identify inefficient units. These diagrams are mostly recommended to complex process analysis. 
9. SIPOC Diagrams: A specific type of swimlane diagram to portray a process with supply, customer, input and outcome aspects. 
10. UML Diagrams: Unified Modeling language diagrams analyze, design and implement software programs. Some UML diagrams are applicable to business process modeling.  
11. Gantt Charts: Gantt charts are an outdated methodology for process modeling which shows the time allocated for each task by indicating:
    • Start time
    • End time 
    • Time it takes until completed 
12. Business process management notations (BPMN): It offers a set of notations to streamline collaboration and communication across different departments. 
13. Value Stream Mapping:  Value stream mapping identifies points the process requires improvement. 

Read our comprehensive list of process visualization techniques and diagrams for more.

Increasing process control and consistency: Processes and rules can be clearly identified by process modeling tools. These help organizations identify and correct inconsistencies and inefficiencies.

Standardization of best practices: Identification and standardization of best practices among multiple versions of business applications in business units is an advantage of using process modeling software. Organizations design their business processes by adopting the models that work best and increase their efficiency by standardizing their processes.

Improvements in corporate communication: One of the easiest ways to help employees understand processes is to visualize them and clearly indicate the work to be done in a sequence. Business modeling software accelerates the business modeling process by facilitating model creation and modification.

Improved corporate alignment: Incompatibility between processes and strategies often results in application failure. Using process modeling software enables managers and executives to better understand processes and evaluate them in light of the overall strategy of the enterprise.

Technical features: Important features are:

• Supported export and import formats: Other companies in joint projects or different departments may have different business modeling process software. There may be software that supports different import and export formats such as XPDL or BPEL to connect different models. It is necessary to know the formats supported by the software to be used in advance.
• User-Defined Functionalities: It is an important factor to consider if the software supports reusable user-defined functionality such as model comparison and specific queries on process models
• Integration: Integration of process modeling software to other tools such as process management software is a factor that enables process automation. It is important for process modelling software to be integrated to process mining or other software to observe the differences between modelled process and the actual process.

Technical support: Technical support of the software to be used should be considered. Providing technical support for the tools used in the design of complex processes speeds up the process modeling process.

Graphical User Interface: In order to make the process faster, the software used to facilitate process modeling should also be easy to use. Graphical user interfaces of different products can be a major factor to compare the usability. The most suitable tool in terms of usability can be selected by asking for a demo from different vendors.

Cost: If the complexity of processes that will be modeled by using process modeling are well defined, the price of the software can be optimized accordingly. It will be inefficient to purchase the most complex management tools to manage relatively simple processes.

There are two main reasons why process modeling tools are important:

• operational complexity increases over time,
• processes need to be modeled in order to be automated.

Growing enterprises have increasingly complex processes as they serve more diverse customers and as their customers demand more customized products and services. Complexity slows down decision making and hides inefficiencies. Process modeling allows complex operational structures to be modeled. These models help businesses understand, improve and automate their processes.

Detailed process models are necessary for successful solutions that automate a high ratio of the manual workload. This is because they cover process variations and anomalies in detail, helping developers automate these cases as well.

Creating flowcharts and workflows: To visualize and model processes, it is necessary to create clear flow charts and workflows. Inputs, outputs and control mechanisms are clarified by process modeling tools. Creating these diagrams is one of the main features of these tools.

Creating a process model from fragments: Process modeling tools are used to create a general model using work flow charts and all other visual components. Process modeling software helps to combine small parts and identify missing points.

Hierarchical representations of process models: Hierarchical representations of business process models are an effective representation of the process.

Automated Compliance Management: Manual compliance checking is time-consuming and error-prone for complex processes. Process modeling tools enable users to automated compliance checks and management.

Today, process technologies automatically generate some of these maps and diagrams. These tools collect data from company systems and analyze it to produce a process flow diagram and reports on this diagram. In the latest BPM trends and statistics, 70% of business leaders reported that their businesses benefit from software to model their processes. However, 40% of process analysts stated an increasing willingness to replace their current BPM tool with a more intelligent one in the following years. 

Such technologies include: 

1. Business process management (BPM) software

Business process management (BPM) software is a tool to automatically measure and manage processes and workflows to ensure compliance and standardization. 

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Process Street is a process and workflow management tool that allows businesses to create customizable workflows, visually mapping out processes step-by-step. With its collaborative features, teams can streamline process modeling, identify bottlenecks, and implement improvement.

Learn more on BPM by reading:

• Process management benefits 
• Best practices 
• BPM trends
• BPM challenges 
• BPM statistics

2. Process Intelligence

Process intelligence consists of different technologies that can gather and analyze process data to discover process workflow, parties involved, and several other performance metrics, such as the time and cost. 

2.1 Process mining

Process mining is an analytical discipline and technology that collects and analyzes process data recorded in IT systems to discover and model business processes. 

Learn more on process mining use cases, case studies, and benefits.

Learn more on the tool by checking our benchmark on process mining software comparison. 

2.2 Task mining

Task mining, also known as task intelligence, monitors and captures user actions on desktops and applications, such as spreadsheets and email. It provides users insights on how certain tasks are handled by employees.

Explore task mining benefits and 3 differences between task mining and process mining. 

2.3 Process modeling software

Process modeling software is any kind of capability that is used to model processes and execute these models.

Discover what are the differences between process modeling software vs. process mining. 

2.4 A digital twin of an organization 

A digital twin of an organization (DTO) refers to virtual models of the processes, services, or organizational structures. DTOs are mostly applied to simulate scenarios in process improvement and automation. 

Check out DTO use cases to find out 9 more DTO applications.  

3. Other management tools

These tools help manage workflows and tasks within large processes. Such solutions include:

• Workflow management software
• Business process management software
• Low-code/No-code development platform
• Onboarding software