This is where business process management software comes in. But business process automation is expensive and complicated with traditional on-premises workflow software. You have to purchase hardware, deploy and periodically upgrade environments, install and integrate workflow software … and that’s just the beginning. All in all, the expense and complexity weigh heavily against the advantages of business process automation. But now, the Force.com Visual Process Manager—true workflow software in the cloud—takes the high cost and complexity out of the equation.

Business process automation with the Visual Process Manager

The Force.com Visual Process Manager combines the ease and speed of visual process design with the power and infrastructure-free deployment in the cloud. It’s truly a revolution in business process software.

The Visual Process Manager enables business process automation without code, making it the first workflow software tool that is business-user focused. In contrast, conventional workflow software requires programming and the customary long wait times for IT resources. Plus, for all their skills, software developers aren’t experts in business process automation.

Our workflow software in the cloud tells a very different story. With Visual Process Manager, the people who know your processes best—line-of-business professionals—can quickly design and implement improvements. Their solutions then become deeply embedded within routine operations, automating otherwise time-consuming activities such as CRM data entry or post-call dispositioning.

Another advantage of Visual Process Manager over traditional workflow management software: Improvements created with our workflow software tool are pre-integrated with salesforce.com applications and run on the same Force.com platform for immediate, effortless deployment.

The advantages of our business process management software tool

Unlike conventional workflow software, the Force.com Visual Process Manager lets business people build scripts, processes, and guides that include sophisticated business rules—without any help from IT.

Common use cases include call center scripting for sales and customer service, technical support troubleshooting, and Web self-service portals. Our workflow software solution makes all these interactions more productive and efficient by automating administrative tasks such email and document production.

With Visual Process Manager workflow software in the cloud, a business expert illustrates the flow of a process or script using intuitive point-and-click visual design tools and wizards. These graphical workflow software “maps” can contain input fields, dynamic text, choices, and calculations as well as embedded pictures, videos, or URLs.

You can design process maps to kick off workflows, produce PDF documents, and send out emails. Our workflow software tool can even orchestrate other applications as required by the process flow.

A typical workflow software application might include the creation of contacts, leads, and opportunities. With on-premises CRM and ordinary business process management software, this would be a complex, error-prone, and time-consuming undertaking. But with the Visual Process Manager, all it takes is a couple of mouse clicks, and the process map becomes a live application running inside salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud. The newly streamlined process can be operational in your call center or on your Web site in minutes: quite a contrast in terms of speed and simplicity with traditional workflow software.

Business process automation at work

Using our cloud-based workflow software solution, you can specify the retrieval, creation, update, or deletion of any object in a salesforce.com application or any Force.com object (including custom objects). You can also call any Force.com API. In practice, this functionality means that sales and service agents can work with simple, easy-to-follow scripts—while underneath, embedded business rules and salesforce.com data drive what the agent sees and automatically update CRM records. These are textbook examples of successful workflow software applications.

After you’ve optimized a specific process using the Visual Process Manager workflow software tool and the process is running inside your salesforce.com application, operations become much more efficient. The newly automated workflow carries out all the administration work behind the scenes. It may control the interaction of an agent in a call center or a customer on a Web site, as it silently interacts with other systems, processes, and Web services to deliver the required actions.

Because our workflow software tool is designed with integration in mind, you can link to databases, dialers, and IVRs; initiate workflows; control exceptional events or surge conditions; and handle the “stop and save” process required to manage escalations and call transfers. All in all, our workflow software frees sales reps and support agents from administrative grunt work, quickly giving them the situation-specific information they need for effective selling and top-notch customer service.

Using workflow software for rapid change

Enhancement, automation, and change make up the mission statement of workflow software. The Force.com Visual Process Manager achieves all three at a level and in a timeframe that conventional business process management software simply can’t. The Visual Process Manager is designed for use by non-technical business staff, so workflow changes and extensions can be rolled out in minutes. As a result, customer service call times and administrative overhead decrease the same day. With the complexity and wait times of IT-based business process automation, in comparison, months often go by before users realize any practical results.

Workflow software as business rules engine

Unlike ordinary business process management software, the Visual Process Manager lets you create and enforce business rules without assistance from IT personnel. Line-of-business professionals can build sophisticated rules-based applications using nothing more complex than our workflow software solution’s drag-and-drop tools. You can create rules-enforcing processes for your Web site, intranet, or call center and automate the creation of defined interfaces for easy plug-in to existing systems. Web site calculators, product configurators, credit checkers, and quotation engines are among the typical applications you can easily build with the Visual Process Manager workflow software tool.