OpenText adds personnel directories to BPM

As part of an update to its Metastorm BPM software, content management software provider OpenText has added a personnel directory to its Metastorm Smart Business Workspace product, reports InfoWorld.

“The primary focus of this release is taking what we have learned from social media,” says Sandra Moran, OpenText senior director of product marketing.

The company has also updated its Metastorm BPM suite and released a dashboard that can be used to track the health of business processes. BPM software provides the mechanism to automate many common business routines, or processes, so they can be completed more quickly and with more oversight.

According to IT Business Edge, Moran says too many companies deploy social networking software only to discover they are duplicating business processes that already exist.

In some instances, those business processes are better handled within the context of a social networking environment.

But more often than not, they just double the amount of work that needs to be processed. By integrating social networking software within the context of a BPM environment, IT organisations give employees the tools they need to extend rather than duplicate certain processes, says Moran.

She says BPM, as a whole, is still in its infancy. In fact, she adds, it may very well be the rise of social networking that pulls BPM into the mainstream simply because there needs to be structure to the workflow surrounding any social networking environment in the enterprise.