A Workflow Engine is a critical component of Business Process Management that manages and executes business processes. In simple terms, Workflow Engine facilitates transition of modeled process from design phase to execution phase.

Workflow Engine aims to minimize manual intervention in the process, thereby reducing probability of human error. Many a time, initiation of a particular activity in the process depends on the completion of other. Actors involved in handling such activities should have instant information about the status of others. This in turn facilitates rapid execution of process, which may otherwise prolong its completion time. Thus, Workflow Engine reduces the overall process time to the minimum possible extent.

Enterprises follow certain guidelines – statutory or framed – while performing operational processes. These guidelines are incorporated in Business Rules Engine, and implemented through workflow engine. Workflow Engine performs wide range of activities such as submitting process related documents, sending email notifications to stakeholders, talking to web services, and more. Furthermore, Workflow Engine coordinates in carrying out various process tasks in the sequential order as defined in the process logic, known as Process Orchestration.

jSonic BPM supports the Web Service-Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) for carrying out the process orchestration through its workflow engine.

In the Krawler jSonic BPM context, workflow engine coordinates among the Business Rules Engine, Task Manager, and Activity Monitoring for efficiently carrying the workflow automation of modeled processes. Business Rules Engine enables Business Owners to create, edit and delete governing rules for business processes. Through Task Manager, process owners can monitor, review, and update their workflow tasks. Activity Monitoring facilitates real time monitoring of the processes, events, and triggers.

In a nutshell, it can be said that Workflow Engine acts as the brain of Business Process Management.

The prospects of Business Process Management (BPM) have generated huge excitement among Enterprise Owners and IT Owners, alike. This is mainly due to the fact that BPM efficiently handles the most core component of Business – Process.

The most frequent and basic question asked by the stakeholders – What is the first step in BPM implementation? The answer is quite simple – Process Modeling.

Process Modeling refers to the set of activity for documenting the Business Process using a combination of graphical notations and text. Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is the most widely accepted and used language for Process Modeling. Krawler jSonic Process Modeler is a powerful web based process designing and modeling tool, which uses standard Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN).

Process Modeling enables process owners to analyze the current state of Business Process and perform the gap analysis for optimizing and improving the same. While carrying out the Process Modeling activity, participants can:
•    Learn the importance of each task in the process
•    Understand their role and responsibility in carrying out the process
•    Identify task that are comparatively more time consuming i.e. Bottleneck Identification

Once the process is modeled – roles, forms, and business rules – are assigned to individual tasks in the process.

In conclusion, Process Modeling provides the basic foundation on which further BPM activities – workflow automation, reporting, and more – are carried out.

In a true sense, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an approach for enhancing customer experience and satisfaction by serving their needs and requirements in the most efficient way. In achieving this objective, the importance of external (customer facing) and internal (cross functional) processes can hardly be overlooked. This is exactly the junction where significance of Business Process Management (BPM) is realized. In other words, the convergence of BPM and CRM results into a Process Driven CRM.

One of the most noticeable benefits that BPM offers is the capability of facing any dynamic business condition. This is enabled through efficient handling of process, right from designing phase to execution. Krawler jSonic BPM offers comprehensive capabilities for process management, workflow automation, collaboration, data management and reporting.

Most of the time, the processes managed and automated by BPM are cross-functional i.e. the processes are spread across various business domain of enterprise.  When this ability to efficiently handle the business process is incorporated in CRM, the effectiveness of CRM is increased many fold.

Consider the situation where a customer places a bulk order enquiry to the customer representative. In order to answer the customer query, information from inventory, quality and manufacturing division is required.  The CRM solution that doesn’t have a process centric approach is of no value in such scenario.

BPM enables CRM to collate the information and metrics across the enterprise that results in better customer service.

Workflow automation is another area where CRM can be benefited by incorporating BPM. The workflow engine in BPM enables stakeholders to define the automatic routing of tasks related to customer processes. Although in CRM, the Case Escalation functionality supports workflow automation, it is limited to CRM domain only. With BPM, tasks can be automatically routed among other enterprise domain such as inventory, whenever required.

In conclusion, CRM is all about acquiring, managing and serving customers. This can be done efficiently and effectively only by having a strong enterprise wide process framework that is delivered by BPM.

In simple terms, Case refers to a detailed description of customer’s query or problem. Case Management aims to handle cases in the most optimized and standardized manner.

In today’s complex business environment, customer acquisition and retention plays a critical role in generating and maintaining competitive advantage. In this context, Case Management goes a long way in achieving customer’s loyalty that results in higher customer retention. Case Management lays emphasis on attending to customer’s problem or query – mainly after product or service delivery.  Through Case Management, stakeholders can effectively track, manage and resolve all customer issues. It provides a comprehensive view of case information through a single point of contact.

Krawler CRM, part of its Deskera Enterprise Application suite, offers a complete Case Management solution. The Case Management functionality in Krawler CRM allows customer service teams to capture all the relevant details about each case such as case name, subject, contact name, product name, type, priority and status, among others. When a case is being registered, various related activities are initiated. These activities are recorded systematically in the Krawler CRM. The Escalation functionality enables stakeholders to escalate (move forward) the case to the next appropriate level whenever the issue is not resolved at their level. The Case Reporting functionality presents status (New case, Pending, Escalated) of case in a highly intuitive graphical manner.

Major Benefits of Case Management:
•High customer satisfaction due to effective handling of customer’s query and problems
•Quick resolving of cases due to centralized availability of case information
•Reduce waiting time for processing the case due to Case Escalation functionality