Gartner Glossary

Business Process Analysis Tools

Business process analysis tools are primarily intended for use by business end users looking to document, analyze and streamline complex processes, thereby improving productivity, increasing quality, and becoming more agile and effective. These tools also support the roles of business process architect and business process analyst, and enable them to better understand business processes, events, workflows and data using proven modeling techniques. BPA tools permit users to diagram their processes, noting (generally abstracted) rules or specifications to promote understanding, validate this information using standard methodologies and best practices enabled by the software, and ideally, automate the models into deployable applications that leverage their analytical efforts and comply with the business process rules. BPA tools feature the following functionality:

• Business model drawing and development
• Ease of use in operation, development and administration
• Business model analysis
• Integration and automation
• Multiuser support/versioning and extensibility
• Methodology and use
• Performance and scalability
• Vertical-industry and horizontal cross-industry template support

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