Pros and Cons of K2 BPM — with a K2 Alternative

This is about the strengths and weaknesses of K2 BPM and K2 Blackpearl along with a viable alternative for K2 (Tallyfy). Much of it is borrowed from Gartner, with some portions edited and cleaned up.

K2 offers Blackpearl, an iBPMS that features easy integration with Microsoft technologies, as well as other enterprise applications. Blackpearl allows citizen developers to build and run business applications, including forms, workflow, data and reports. Out of the box, K2 integrates with SharePoint, Box, DocuSign, Exchange, Office 365, Dynamics CRM, SQL Server, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and more. The following analysis refers to K2 blackpearl v.4.6.11.

Strengths of K2 Blackpearl BPM

• K2’s greatest differentiator is its high-productivity application authoring environment, which citizen developers and IT resources can use to create process-centric applications for process automation. This environment relies on K2’s extensible SmartObject framework to produce a nearly code-free solution.
• Using visual tools to build reusable data, form and workflow components that use line of business and web-based data, K2’s SmartObject technology provides a single view of business entities both in workflows and via their model-driven user interface experience (K2 SmartForms). K2 SmartObject is easily configured to integrate with other systems within an enterprise or on the web.
• K2 blackpearl is a natural choice for organizations that have a deep investment in Microsoft technologies such as Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics and Dynamics 365, as well as organizations that are actively using services available from Microsoft Azure.

Weaknesses of K2 Blackpearl BPM

• K2 blackpearl provides business activity monitoring capabilities, but customers who are looking for more advanced analytics and operational decision management for continuous process improvement, business transformation and intelligent business processes will need to also use other third-party tools to provide those capabilities.
• K2’s interaction management capabilities include little in the way of event management, and although the platform can integrate with social media tools, it does not treat social or collaboration interactions as first-class elements for orchestration or for context capture. These limitations curtail K2’s ability to provide dynamic advanced case management.
• In July 2016 (after the cutoff date for products evaluated in this research), K2 started offering a limited preview of its bpmPaaS that supports iBPMS capabilities. Up until that date, K2 had only made blackpearl available as a managed service hosted on mainstream IaaS cloud services. It also offers K2 Appit for SharePoint, a SaaS solution, built on the K2 blackpearl platform, to enable SharePoint and Office 365 customers to easily create comprehensive workflow and forms solutions without the need for any coding.

Alternative to K2 BPM — Tallyfy

Problem — BPMN makes modelling far too complicated

A great alternative to K2 BPM would be the ability to model processes simply. Just because you have some big BPMN model doesn’t make it clever or useful. In the end, people can/will still have to actually do the process, which comes down to email/spreadsheets (unless you want a 6-month IT project). It’s ridiculous to use BPMN in today’s age — where people collaborate and don’t follow flowcharts anyway.

Problem — only IT and business analysts can map processes

Tallyfy is the only tool that enables anyone to map out a process — since most people understand the simplicity of the tool in 60 seconds. The alternative to K2 is not really an alternative at all — it’s an inevitable switch that business users crave.

Problem — nobody looks at process maps while they work

Tallyfy provides self-service simplicity to workflows, along with the power you need.

Consider a beautiful alternative to K2 — Tallyfy

It integrates to everything, and it works for everyone. Take a look at Tallyfy – as a viable, user-friendly alternative to K2.

Is legacy BPM actually going to work for business users?

Tallyfy is the only process tool that anyone can understand in 60 seconds. Legacy BPM systems can take 6 months to deploy - if they work at all.

In the last 10 years - amazing changes happened to business software. "Old BPM" software is tired and broken. It never worked for business users. Here's why.

• Users are now deciding to buy software themselves. Old BPM was bought by your IT department, who didn't generally care about user experience - as long as it was made by a large/boring company.
• Cloud tools are now free to try by anyone, anytime. With Old BPM you had to call sales and wait for 50 questions just to look at it and finally decide it sucks.
• People want to share workflows with clients. With Old BPM you were stuck with trying to automate internal processes only. Your clients would be very scared and run a mile from it.
• People expect to integrate cloud tools without IT. With Old BPM you had get engineers to write code to make a simple integration. That's now become a drag-and-drop service.
• People expect to work on phones. This means giant, clunky flowcharts in Old BPM are dead - because they don't fit on your phone's screen - and only define "the perfect process".
• People are tired of flowcharts. Old BPM was all about the high priest telling you how a process can/will be done, and you would obey. Now - modern workers and teams are paid to collaborate.
• People expect all the benefits of the cloud. Old BPM was never cloud-born and was never designed for the cloud. And that creates a massive bunch of missed opportunities.
• Companies of all sizes need process management - and never had it. Since Old BPM was so expensive and complicated, only large companies could afford it. The rest of us were left out.
• People are excited about AI - but confused about where to begin. With Old BPM you have zero chance of using AI without an army of engineers. With cloud-born systems like Tallyfy - it's childs' play to use any AI you like to run amazing automations for photos, voice, video and more.
• The most important part is this - what does Tallyfy offer that BPMN (used by legacy BPM systems) does not? It's true - Tallyfy actually has things you need - that no BPM can offer. Read more about it here

See how to map BPMN to Tallyfy

Here's the life you don't want if you're an operations or IT leader!

Legacy BPM

1Learn how to use it in 60 seconds.

Legacy BPM

2Integrates natively into existing apps.

Legacy BPM

3Anyone can capture any kind of know-how.

Legacy BPM

4Built cloud-native and mobile-first.

Legacy BPM

5Captures non-process knowledge (snippets).

Legacy BPM

6Share processes with clients.

Legacy BPM

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Can you tolerate the pain and cost of each person in your company wasting ~2 hours a day on busywork?

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