Software tools

Functionalities

Rapid Application Development and BPM / HSEQ collaborative solutions :

Core functions permit to manage a number of central business objects (e.g. processes, workflows, forms, documents, actors, etc.), thus enabling the creation and support of ad hoc or ready to use functionalities (e.g. management of claims, certificates, incidents, Quality documents, indicators, etc.) that make business processes more agile and efficient.

Each of these functionalities often assumes new and improved practices that need to be properly designed and put in place (see Suitability: a must).

Technologies

The functionalities featured in the diagram above are made possible by four technologies that have appeared in recent years and for which the definition in Wikipedia are as follows:

Process modelling : ‘Business Process Modelling (BPM) in systems engineering and software engineering is the activity of representing processes of an enterprise, so that the current ("as is") process may be analysed and improved in future ("to be"). (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_modeling).
N.B. there is also the similar yet different notion of: ‘Business Process Management (BPM) is the process used by organisations to evaluate various aspects of how work is completed incorporating both technology based and non-technology based change. This term is also used by some vendors to describe new/updated products providing automated workflow technology’ (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Process_Management)
Enterprise Content Management : ECM is designed to manage all of a business’s content. This involves taking account of information in electronic form that is not structured in the same way as electronic documents, unlike data that is already structured in databases.’ (see http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestion_de_contenu).
Workflows : ‘A “workflow” is the modelling and IT management of all of the tasks to be carried out by the various players involved in a business process (also called an operatinal process). (see http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workflow)
Cubes : ‘Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) originally referred to multidimensional databases (also called cubes or hypercubes) designed for making complex analyses of data.’ (see http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLAP).

The software tools that we provide link the various technologies and add a functional layer which integrates the functionalities mentioned in the above image and makes them available to users according to their rights and pending tasks.

Platforms

Everyone knows that in IT, platforms are determining factors, because they affect the practical feasibility of installing a solution in a customer’s environment.

Our tools were first developed to operate on an IBM Lotus Notes Domino platform. For customers who have this particular platform, our IQUAL software, now in its 6.5 version, is more than ever an effective and functional well-served tool for supporting activities linked to management systems, in several languages when necessary (see IQUAL Platform in Domino Notes or intranet).
We then worked with our partner Audaxis to create the Open Source TOBFlow tool for J2EE platforms. Its main feature is to make it possible to create forms and associated workflows easily in the same modelling environment. This provides, at a low cost (the software is free), a simple and powerful tool that is unique as far as we know, for using workflows to manage a whole set of multiple, inter-related intranet or extranet forms (see Open Source document Workflows).
And finally, with all of the experience we have gained behind us, we created MICA which runs on SharePoint, the collaborative platform of Microsoft (see MICA Platform based on SharePoint). This tool provides the possibility to really integrate BPM into SharePoint (see BPM with SharePoint) and provides both end users and administrators of collaborative workspaces with the management functionalities featured in the diagram above. This is made possible thanks to various technical components that we have developed and the effect of which is to leverage the collaborative power of SharePoint (see The Full Power of SharePoint).