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Fuego's business process management suite bested eight competitors in our NWC Inc. testing, thanks to its extensive simulation capabilities and standards support BY LORI MACVITTIE
The object: Automate at least one business process that enhances productivity, provides participants with visibility into the process and can be monitored in near and real time by experts who'll optimize the procedure to reduce the operational and financial impact.
To play: Choose your business process experts (they're over there) and IT staff (hiding in the basement), as well as the right tool for the job (telephone operators are standing by).
Ready? Go.
What, you're not ready? We don't blame you. Business process management is the newest game in town, and there's much to learn before you master it. In "How To Win at BPM," page 32, we explain BPM and map out the vendor landscape. Now let's evaluate the tools.
The Players
In our Green Bay, Wis., NWC Inc. business applications lab, we put together a dream team of nine BPM software vendors: Bluespring Software, Computer Associates, Fuego, Lombardi Software, Oracle, Pegasystems, Savvion, Tibco Software and Ultimus. We had invited nearly 20 to play, but many didn't meet our qualifications. BEA Systems, FileNet and Microsoft declined; Fujitsu and Metastorm came too late; and Appian, Chordiant Software and Vitria Technology expressed interest by never sent us their software.
We automated NWC Inc.'s order-entry and fulfillment process with each software package, requiring the products to integrate with our Oracle9i database of customers and orders, and interact with customer service representatives and customers through both e-mail and interactive Web requests for order information (see "Order Entry and Fulfillment Process," page 46). This scenario let us evaluate a variety of feature sets and functionality across what appeared to be disparate technologies (see "How We Tested," page 44, for more details).
During our evaluation, we acted as both IT staffer and business analyst: For you IT pros, we evaluated features such as platform support, architecture, administrative capabilities, and integration with application infrastructure and identity-management systems. For you business analysts, we examined reporting and analysis features and the ease with which process owners might model and simulate processes. We collaborated with our sister publication INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISE on each product tested. For a more business-analyst...