PLATINUM BPwin is a powerful modeling tool used to analyze, document, and improve complex business processes. A BPwin model lets you clearly document important factors such as what activities are needed, how they are performed, and what resources are needed. This provides an integrated picture of how your organization gets things done, from small department workflow models to complex node tree diagrams. And if you are building or purchasing software, business process models serve as excellent requirements documentation, helping to ensure that your IT investments fulfill business needs. A business's complex processes often require teams of analysts, and PLATINUM provides the environment to help. BPwin is scalable to support enterprise business models through its integration with PLATINUM ModelMart, the industry-leading model management system. And, BPwin process models can be synchronized with PLATINUM ERwin data models, allowing you to verify that your information resources optimally support your business processes.
 
Optimize Processes and Information with Business Strategy
BPwin models provide the framework for understanding your business processes, determining the impact of business events and defining how your processes interact with the data flowing through your organization. Inefficient, wasteful, or redundant activities can be easily detected and subsequently improved, replaced, or eliminated n accordance with your corporate objectives.
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
An external force on an organization often causes change. The impact of the change must be fully understood and communicated before a system can be designed to accommodate it. BPwin can help you throughout this cycle by allowing you to design the optimized business process that encompasses the change.
 
 
Enjoy Powerful, Easy-to-Use Process Modeling
With BPwin, you can be productive almost immediately. Activities and other common objects can be created with a few mouse clicks, and relocated with drag-and-drop ease. BPwin's "explorer" facility makes navigating and editing complex hierarchical process models easier than ever. Enhanced zooming capabilities allow a user to quickly focus on the portion of a process model on which they need to work.
 
BPwin automates many of the housekeeping tasks usually associated with building process models and provides the logical rigor needed to ensure correct and consistent results. BPwin maintains arrow associations across diagrams, so they remain consistent as your model changes. Dynamic object highlighting guides you as you build your model, and prevents you from making many common modeling mistakes. In addition, BPwin supports User Defined Properties that let you capture information relevant to your needs.
 
In addition, flexible font, color, and other presentation options give your documents more impact. You can view and print an overview of your model using node tree diagrams. Variations in design or problem areas can be explored without committing changes to the core model using For Exposition Only (FEO) diagrams. User-defined color palettes offer you the ability to easily fine-tune your output to match the capabilities of your printer or projection system without changing the model.
 

 
Using BPwin, you build a diagram that clearly shows business activities, their results, and the resources needed to support them.
 
Understand Your Business from Multiple Perspectives
BPwin supports function, dataflow, and workflow modeling in one tool, integrating three key business perspectives to serve the needs of both business and technology analysts. With function modeling, you can systematically analyze your business, focusing on the tasks (functions) that are performed regularly, the controls that exist to ensure they are performed properly, the resources needed to perform a task, the results of a task and the inputs (raw materials) on which the task operates. Dataflow modeling, which is often used in software design, focuses on the flow of data between various tasks, including how data must be stored to maximize availability and minimize response times. Workflow modeling focuses on a particular process, analyzing the individual tasks involved, and the decisions that affect its progress.
 

 
BPwin supports function, dataflow and workflow modeling in one tool, integrating three key business perspectives to serve the needs of both business and technology analysts.
 
Benefit from Flexible Scoping of Models
Business process models can be very large if you're looking at an enterprise view of your organization. BPwin has facilities to assist you in incremental development and scoping of process models. Its merge capabilities allow multiple design groups to analyze separate parts of the business, so a global view can be easily created. Similarly, sometimes it is more efficient to look at a defined part of a larger view. BPwin allows you to split off pieces of the model, work on them, and then reintegrate them back into the whole.
 

 
BPwin provides numerous ways to represent business processes so that all involved with the modeling process can provide their unique perspective.
 
Analyze Cost and Performance Metrics
BPwin provides full support for activity-based costing (ABC), and is optimized for process analysis. Comprehensive reporting and a bi-directional interface with dedicated ABC tools makes it easier for companies to implement an activity-based management strategy.
 
Reuse Models with Simulation Interface for Dynamic Modeling
For complex operational environments, BPwin offers an interface to simulation software that lets you reuse your BPwin models to explore the time varying (dynamic) interactions of your business processes. Resource allocations and process flows can then be optimized to meet your target workloads. Simulation provides the ability to explore the effect of change dynamically. Different scenarios can be tested before change is implemented, ensuring an optimal solution to a business requirement.
 
Scale to the Enterprise with ModelMart
Designing processes that span the enterprise often requires teams of people working together. ModelMart supports BPwin designers by providing the ability to concurrently share and update the same models. It gives users security, check-in, check-out, versioning, and change management facilities that are critical to workgroup or enterprise-wide process modeling efforts.
 
ModelMart provides physical storage of BPwin model information in a variety of relational database management systems. Easy to set up and maintain, ModelMart is platform and network independent to easily integrate into your existing environment.
 

 
BPwin integrates with PLATINUM ModelMart, the industry-leading model management system. Among its many facilities, ModelMart provides change control management so that individuals can see the impact of their work.
 
Synchronize Process Models with Data Models
A unique aspect of BPwin is its ability to verify that your information architecture optimally supports your business processes. BPwin features a bi-directional synchronization with PLATINUM's award-winning ERwin database design tool. Use BPwin to further validate the quality and consistency of your ERwin data models, capture important detail about how and where the data is being used, and make sure that the right information is available when and where it is needed. This integration ensures that new distributed and data warehouse systems actually support your business requirements. The exchange of modeling information between BPwin and ERwin is further facilitated with ModelMart so that entity and attribute information can be synchronized as a dynamic part of business process modeling. Information introduced as part of this synchronization can be managed with ModelMart's comprehensive change management, impact analysis, and reporting capabilities.
 
Communicate Effectively Through Model Publishing
Developers, analysts, and end users can communicate effectively with PLATINUM Model Navigator, a companion product to BPwin and ERwin. Model Navigator provides dynamic, read-only access to models, as well as full reporting capabilities.
 
Meets U.S. Government FIPS Standards for IDEF
Used by successful Fortune 500 companies and Department of Defense agencies, BPwin is fully compliant with Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) for IDEF0 and also supports IDEF3 workflow diagramming. BPwin also provides support for dataflow diagrams (DFD), which are represented using the Gane & Sarson notational conventions.