Finding software can be overwhelming. Software Advice has helped dozens of companies find BPM software to streamline common and repetitive processes and increase their efficiency.
Showing 1-20 of 86 products

Wrike
Wrike
Wrike is a cloud-based project management platform for teams of 20+ and is suitable for both enterprise and SMB. It comes with Gantt charts, calendars, workload view for resource management, custom dashboards and real-time updates.... Read more

monday.com FrontRunners 2021
monday.com FrontRunners 2021
monday.com is a cloud-based project management solution that caters to small to midsize businesses across various industry verticals. The solution helps them manage different projects and facilitate knowledge-sharing among team members. monday.com... Read more

Promapp FrontRunners 2021
Promapp FrontRunners 2021
Promapp is a cloud-based business process management solution that enables large and midsize businesses to create and share process knowledge using a centralized repository. The solution is suitable for various industries including... Read more

airSlate
airSlate
airSlate is a SaaS platform for no-code automation of business workflows. Using its intuitively easy drag-and-drop tools, users can set up and configure automated workflows for contract negotiations, quoting & invoicing, customer surveys,... Read more

Jira
Jira
Jira Software is a business process management tool used by agile teams to plan, track and release software. Jira Software supports Scrum, Kanban, a hybrid model or another unique workflow. Jira enables users to create project roadmaps... Read more

Lucidchart FrontRunners 2021
Lucidchart FrontRunners 2021
Lucidchart is a cloud-based solution that helps small to large enterprises manage projects, data visualization, and diagramming processes. The centralized platform enables users to create visual diagrams of business processes and... Read more

Kissflow Workflow Suite
Kissflow Workflow Suite
Kissflow is a cloud-based forms automation solution offered by OrangeScape Technologies that automate business processes and tracks performance. It is suitable for business of all sizes and industries. Kissflow helps initiate process... Read more

Asana
Asana
Asana is a cloud-based project and task management solution that enables teams to collaborate, communicate, and manage several tasks and projects. It can help teams meet project deadlines while tracking the completion of all tasks.... Read more

Process Street FrontRunners 2021
Process Street FrontRunners 2021
Process Street is a cloud-based business process management (BPM) solution that enables organizations to create checklists and process documents for recurring projects. The solution is used in business functions such as client setup,... Read more

Digital Business Transformation Suite
Digital Business Transformation Suite
Digital Business Transformation Suite is a business process management (BPM) suite that provides businesses several digitization and management programs within a single platform. The solution can be deployed either on-premise or hosted... Read more

Miro FrontRunners 2021
Miro FrontRunners 2021
Miro is a cloud-based collaboration tool for small to midsize businesses. The solution features a digital whiteboard that can be used for research, ideation, building customer journeys and user story maps, wireframing and a range of... Read more

TouchStone Business System
TouchStone Business System
Touch Stone Business System is a business management software that caters to small scale businesses. It helps businesses organize, manage, document and implement their transformation strategies to gain greater profitability. Securing... Read more

Decisions
Decisions
Decisions is cloud-based rule automation and workflow management solution that can also be deployed on-premise. The platform helps small to medium size enterprises automate processes, data handling and business rule execution. Decisions... Read more

Aha!
Aha!
Aha! is a cloud-based project management solution for small, midsize and large enterprises. It caters to industries including education, energy, finance, government, legal, IT services, marketing, medical, non-profit and others. Primary... Read more

Bitrix24 FrontRunners 2021
Bitrix24 FrontRunners 2021
Bitrix24 is a client management solution that provides a platform for businesses to organize and track interactions with potential or existing clients and partners. The software allows users to log and manage client interactions, capture... Read more

Smartsheet FrontRunners 2021
Smartsheet FrontRunners 2021
Smartsheet is a work execution platform and collaboration tool with a familiar spreadsheet-like interface that helps teams plan, track, and manage projects in real-time. Smartsheet features include a range of project management tools,... Read more

Omnidek
Omnidek
Omnidek is a web-based digital workspace platform that allows businesses to build collaborative environments that empower employees, vendors, and customers to communicate in one place. Best suited for medium or enterprise-sized businesses... Read more

Intellect eQMS FrontRunners 2021
Intellect eQMS FrontRunners 2021
Intellect eQMS is a configurable cloud-based enterprise quality management solution that helps organizations across various industries to manage the quality and compliance of critical business procedures. Features include document... Read more

SmartProcess
SmartProcess
SmartProcess is a cloud-based business process management (BPM) suite that helps companies to manage the workflow of their employees. The software provides tools for resource modelling, process optimization and publication of processes... Read more

Gluu
Gluu
Gluu is a cloud-based process management solution suited for a variety of industries. The solution helps users understand and execute their processes. Key features include process mapping, work instructions, task and case management,... Read more
Popular Comparisons
Business process management: At first glance, this term seems to be a simple description of what bosses, managers and department heads do; they manage the processes of business. The term’s unstated implication is that processes are managed with the aim of increasing efficiency, profitability and/or competitiveness.
But business process management (BPM) is actually a technical term. It still carries some of the same implications noted above—the aim of BPM is to increase a company’s efficiency, profitability and/or competitiveness—but, as a technical term, it focuses specifically on the digitization of business processes. Software and application development play a central role.
(If you're looking for more generic software to simply manage a business, without the technical implications of BPM, that would just be business management software—not at all confusing, right? Don't worry, we'll clear things up.)
What Is BPM?
The 3 Types of BPM Software
Trends in, Direction of BPM Software Market
What Is BPM?
BPM is defined by Gartner as “a discipline that uses various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve and optimize business processes. A business process coordinates the behavior of people, systems, information and things to produce business outcomes in support of a business strategy. Processes can be structured and repeatable or unstructured and variable. Though not required, technologies are often used with BPM. BPM is key to align IT/OT [information/operational technologies] investments to business strategy.”
With the definition out of the way, let’s see what BPM looks like in practice. Compare the following two scenarios to understand what distinguishes BPM from the ordinary and expected activities of running a business.
Over two-year period | Result | |
Business A (Without BPM) |
|
|
Business B (With BPM) |
|
|
The 3 Types of BPM Software
As you might expect, BPM takes different forms and is shaped by a business’s size, segment and strategy. As a result, software used for BPM is available in many different forms.
You can focus your approach to the BPM software market by looking at it in terms of three general categories outlined by Gartner in a report by analysts Michele Cantara and Rob Dunie: “Select the Right Type of BPM Platform to Achieve Your Application Development, Business Transformation or Digital Business Goals” (content available to Gartner clients).

- Basic BPM Platforms: As the name implies, these are the most elementary platforms for BPM. They contain tools designed to ensure that new IT applications will lead to the desired business outcomes. These can include basic, user-friendly interfaces—for example, to help test and model workflows—as well as tools supporting the development of applications which increase efficiency.
- Basic BPM platforms are often chosen by smaller organizations, and many are intended to be used by staff outside the IT department.
- BPM Suites (BPMS): BPMSs have a wider scope and include tools used by both IT and non-IT staff. (At this level, BPM initiatives typically require coordination between IT and other business units and departments.) They’re useful for organizations seeking continuous (as opposed to one-off) process refinement and improvement and include options to increase process agility and flexibility.
- BPM suites are best for organizations that, in order to achieve their BPM goals, need deeper integration with their existing IT architecture.
- Intelligent BPM Suites (iBPMS): This category is the most advanced, adding advanced analytics, operational intelligence and rapid application development tools to the BPM and BPMS mix of tools. iBPMSs can increase the speed with which a company goes from insight to action, often with the creation of automated self-adapting, goal-directed processes.
- iBPMSs are used by organizations that need to incorporate complex, real-time operational intelligence, both internal and external (from partners or customers), in order to effect significant process improvements.
Trends in, Direction of BPM Software Market
If we knew specifically which processes businesses would be managing tomorrow, we’d have retired yesterday… and we wouldn’t have written this Buyer’s Guide today. We can’t predict the future, but we have been observing BPM long enough to understand that these general trends in BPM technology and strategy are likely to continue.
- Some businesses will fail with one or more aspect of their digital transformation strategies, not because the strategy or IT selection was misguided, but because BPM was not included in the planning. It takes a concerted effort between IT and departmental stakeholders to ensure that the dividends of digital transformation projects are distributed in the form of improved business processes.
- Creation and exploration of deliberately unstable processes will increase, as companies strive to adapt their workflows and processes to changing customer needs and to a greater variety of more granular customer interaction scenarios.
- Companies with strict organizational structures will have more difficulty realizing BPM gains and improvements, while more agile companies and those more comfortable with iterative process improvement will get the best return on investment from their BPM improvement initiatives.
Your Guide to Top Business Process Management Software, February 2021
Software Advice uses reviews from real software users to highlight the top-rated BPM Software products in North America.
Learn how products are chosen