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There are plenty of business process management (BPM) software options that claim they can improve your business processes, but only a few have what it takes to genuinely increase productivity. The challenge is finding an all-in-one solution that’s powerful and fully featured without being overly complicated or expensive.
Some have steep learning curves, while others suffer from buggy integrations or lack essential tools to manage projects, optimize workflows, and foster collaboration. What’s more, not all offer a free plan or free trial, which can make you question if they’re worth the investment.
To help you pick the right tool for your business, I tested popular BPM software on features, ease of use, integration quality, and price.
While all my top BPM platform recommendations have what you’ll need to enhance work processes, I found monday.com offers the most impressive features for a variety of businesses. It’s a versatile all-in-one BPM, project management, and business process automation (BPA) solution that’s intuitive and easy to use, something few competitors can match.
monday.com is my top choice, but you may want to check out my other top picks to learn if one might be a better fit for your unique needs.
What We Look For in the Best Business Process Management (BPM) Software
When I was evaluating BPM software for this list, I focused on features that would maximize productivity and efficiency for different business industries, sizes, and budgets.
Process design and visualization tools. These BPM platforms offer intuitive tools to model your business processes, as well as robust monitoring, analysis, and reporting capabilities. This can help you identify bottlenecks and improve performance.
AI-powered and automated functions. I’ve only included software with AI support and built-in automations to help you improve process efficiency. These AI tools will even take over complex tasks, which frees up your time to focus on strategic initiatives.
Ease of use. When BPM software is user-friendly, like my recommendations, you and your team will achieve faster productivity gains and minimal downtime.
Free or affordable pricing. Productivity gains shouldn’t come at an exorbitant cost, however. I looked for BPM software that balances functionality with affordability, ensuring a good return on investment. Most of these platforms even offer free-forever plans suitable for startups and smaller businesses.
Strong security features. The BPM solutions I’ve chosen offer encryption, role-based access controls, and compliance features that will keep your sensitive information secure and reduce your risk of data leaks.
Visualize, execute, and evaluate business processes with monday.com’s comprehensive tools
monday.com is the best choice if you want a comprehensive BPM suite. Its powerful software helps you eliminate redundancy, enhance efficiency, and achieve organizational goals. Despite these impressive features, monday.com is intuitive and easy to use.
No other software I tested offers as many ways to visualize and monitor processes, workflows, and resources, allowing you to work with whatever system you prefer. There are 16 options, including popular Gantt, Kanban, Timeline, and Workload views, as well as the Velocity view for sprints. Roadmaps are ideal for modeling work scope1, objectives, milestones, and risks.
monday.com’s customizable reports leverage data from your boards, dashboards, and integrations to provide valuable performance insights. This can help you analyze and redesign procedures for optimal results. It’s yet another reason I recommend monday.com for any business that wants to enhance operational efficiency. Though there is a free plan, you’ll want to experience all monday.com offers with a 14-day free trial.
Features
Real-time process monitoring. monday.com gives you tools for real-time tracking of business processes. This allows you to monitor progress, identify roadblocks and inefficiencies, and make quick adjustments to optimize performance.
Process templates. Well-structured templates help you standardize processes across departments by providing checklists, workflows, and guidelines for process documenting. You can adapt all templates to your organization’s specific needs.
Advanced automation tools. You can automate complex workflows to ensure tasks flow smoothly across all departments. You can even track the frequency and types of automations your teams use to understand where processes have been optimized.
Financial management tools. monday.com’s comprehensive BPM system includes time tracking budgeting, expense tracking, and forecasting tools. It also integrates with financial software like QuickBooks and Stripe for invoice/payment management and supports detailed financial reporting and KPI tracking.
ClickUp has tools for planning, mapping, and optimizing processes and procedures
ClickUp is a highly flexible BPM tool that adapts to different industries. A standout feature is its customizable workspaces that allow you to design, model, and execute business processes. Comprehensive reports also provide data-driven insights into workflow completion rates, time spent, and workflow efficiency.
ClickUp’s templates are especially helpful for planning and executing BPM systems. You can map out your process strategies and give your team a clear and shared understanding of the overall structure. It simplifies what would otherwise be difficult and time-consuming to explain using just text.
The AI-powered ClickUp Brain further enhances productivity1 by offering suggestions on how to improve workflows and business functions. Impressive AI tools coupled with ClickUp’s generous free plan is why it’s my top pick for small businesses looking for a BPM platform that will scale with them as their needs grow. If you need more spaces, ClickUp’s paid plans remain affordable for SMBs.
Features
Visual aids and diagrams. Templates for BPM include diagrams, flowcharts, and mind maps to illustrate the workflow, making it easier for your teams to understand and execute complex processes.
Process mapping software. Collaborative whiteboards allow you to conceptualize processes, plan strategies, and brainstorm. This can help identify inefficiencies and redundancies so you can improve overall productivity and reduce costs.
Automation tools. You can reduce inefficiency, save time, and improve accuracy with ClickUp’s easy-to-use automations. Automations can also provide real-time performance updates.
Full-featured free plan. The free plan includes basic and advanced features that other BPM software platforms reserve for paid users. These include automations, integrations, time-tracking, and process documentation.
Smartsheet’s dynamic reports give a real-time picture of your business performance
Smartsheet takes an organization-wide approach to BPM, giving you tools to standardize processes and integrate data across every department. Its dynamic spreadsheets, reports, and dashboards update automatically, so you can track KPIs and workflow performance without having to bother with manual updates and data collection.
Its Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) software provides a centralized view of every project. You can monitor progress, allocate resources, and make data-driven decisions to optimize workflows. By integrating PPM with Smartsheet’s other BPM tools, you can ensure your project execution and business operations align with optimized processes.
I’d recommend Smartsheet for businesses with dynamic or evolving processes that require frequent updates, such as engineering and healthcare. It’s especially well-suited to large organizations that want a BPM suite that offers cross-collaboration1 and visibility into multiple processes. There’s no free plan but a 30-day free trial should give you ample time to decide if Smartsheet is a fit for your needs.
Features
Predictive analytics. Smartsheet uses historical data and performance trends to provide insights into potential risks and forecast future outcomes. This can help process managers identify issues before they arise and make proactive decisions to keep workflows aligned with business objectives.
Document builder with automation. Based on your workflows, automation tools use sheet data to create customized documents such as contracts, invoices, proposal agreements, and reports. This ensures documents are accurate and up to date.
AI assistant. AI tools speed up process management by generating formulas, analyzing data, and creating charts with useful metrics. Smartsheet AI will also make suggestions for improving workflow efficiency.
Advanced security. Enterprise-level security features, including data encryption and multi-factor authentication, protect sensitive information and ensure compliance with industry standards.
HubSpot’s data modeling can help you identify issues with your team’s sales processesHubSpot is my top pick if you’re looking for a powerful CRM to manage sales and marketing processes so you can identify inefficiencies and adapt to changing customer needs. It offers useful features for productivity, including customizable templates and tools for predicting and evaluating progress and performance.
There are several ways you can create accessible, data-rich reports that provide a single source of truth for cross-departmental operations. Simply connect your CRM data to your marketing, sales, and service data, or integrate data from third-party platforms, including Google, Microsoft, and thousands more.
HubSpot also offers powerful AI tools that can increase productivity and help you grow your business. AI-powered Breeze Agents (in Beta) plan, automate, and execute workflows for sales, content creation, social media, and customer service teams, improving efficiency. However, if you’re not already familiar with HubSpot’s ecosystem, you may find it a little hard to navigate – and live support is only available for paid plans.
Features
Business forecasting tools. HubSpot analyzes historical data and creates predictive models to forecast future trends and help you manage sales and marketing operations more effectively.
Sales pipeline management. Pipeline visualizations give you a clear picture of your sales processes. This allows you to track each rep’s performance, identify needed improvements, forecast estimated revenue, and set priorities.
Marketing automations. You can automate email campaigns, social media posting, and SMS and chatbot messaging to save time and improve efficiency. This is particularly useful for managing large-scale outreach.
1500+ verified integrations. HubSpot integrates with a wide variety of tools and platforms, including free options like Brevo, Zoho, and Square.
Jira’s product roadmaps are useful for goal planning, timelines, and priorities
Jira meets the needs of Agile companies looking for a BPM system tailored to their unique needs. Its extensive toolset allows you to plan, develop, monitor, and troubleshoot workflows. Timelines, Scrum, and Kanban boards help you see every step of the product lifecycle, while burn-down and velocity charts provide clear performance insights for future Sprints.
Platform Experiences, a new Jira tool, includes features to connect teams and optimize performance across departments for maximum efficiency. It gives you the ability to track progress on organization-wide objectives, keeping disparate teams aligned and on track. Currently in Beta, you can opt in to get early access to this free BPM tool.
Jira integrates with other Atlassian software and 3000+ third-party tools. Jira does have a learning curve and setting up all its features can be challenging, but you can test the software with a free trial of the Premium plan. Jira also has a free forever plan that includes automations, multiple views, dashboards, and reports for up to 10 users.
Features
Collaborative roadmaps. Jira’s roadmaps help you visualize goals, timelines, and deliverables across multiple projects, adjust to shifting priorities, and deliver better value to customers. Roadmaps integrate with your boards, providing real-time updates and a customizable overview of work progress.
AI capabilities. Atlassian Intelligence handles AI tasks like content creation, but it will also provide useful insights about issues and dependencies, run complex queries, and summarize chart data. It searches and gathers data from your Jira, Atlassian, and third-party tools.
Workflow automation. By mapping existing processes, defining workflow rules, and using automations to set up triggers and conditions, you can minimize manual effort, reduce human error, and ensure standardized execution.
Issue tracking and resolution. Jira’s issue tracking system captures process-related problems, incidents, or requests, allowing teams to create custom issue types, track statuses, and apply standardized resolution procedures.
If you want to manage client-focused processes, Teamwork is a beginner-friendly option
Teamwork is an easy-to-use platform that gives client-focused businesses the tools they need to optimize processes, increase efficiency, and reduce costs. Its process mapping feature provides a consolidated workflow visual, helping you plan and optimize tasks to meet client needs. It’s a useful feature for agencies juggling multiple accounts.
When setting up workflows, Teamwork’s pre-built templates can save you time. A nice feature is the option to save customized workflow templates to replicate processes across different projects. Through a Board view, you can then manage and track cross-project tasks to ensure you’re meeting key deliverables.
A drawback to Teamwork is its pricing structure. While it offers a lot of different tools, the costs can add up, especially for smaller businesses that want advanced features like time-tracking. These are only included in higher-tier plans.
Features
KPI tracking. You can use custom fields to track key performance indicators (KPIs) in a process, such as a marketing campaign, to ensure goals are being met on time.
Progress reports. These reports allow you to easily track task progress, workload distribution, milestones, and project completion rates to get clear insights into the efficiency of business processes.
Recurring task automation. Teamwork lets you create automatically recurring tasks at set intervals (daily, weekly, or monthly) for ongoing processes.
Collaboration tools. Teamwork’s real-time communication features include discussions and file sharing to facilitate team collaboration and improve outcomes.
It takes minutes to create an app to manage business processes with Zoho Creator
Zoho Projects works well for small- to medium-sized businesses already using software from the Zoho ecosystem. Its smooth integration with Zoho Creator allows you to build personalized applications to manage your business processes, though you will have to pay for this software or upgrade to Zoho Projects Standard plan to use this tool.
The software’s Blueprints automation feature and customizable pre-built templates are a good option if you value flexibility. However, Zoho Projects has a steeper learning curve than its competitors, which can be challenging if you’re new to BPM. Still, its integration capabilities and low pricing make it a good pick for budget-conscious teams looking for effective management software.
Small businesses will appreciate Bonsai’s financial management features
Bonsai is a BPM tool that’s particularly suited to freelancers and startups. It combines project and client data and financial management into a single, accessible platform. There are pre-built templates for proposals, scope of work, NDAs, and contracts to streamline planning, making it easier to manage client-based work processes.
On the downside, Bonsai can feel too niche for larger teams that need more advanced collaboration and enterprise-level features, which limits its scalability. Despite these limitations, if you’re an independent contractor, solopreneur, or part of a small team that wants a unified management tool, Bonsai is a solid choice.
Striven dashboards give you a centralized view of your team’s KPIs
Striven’s comprehensive, cloud-based BPM software integrates multiple business functions into a single system. It offers tools to manage important business functions like accounting, human resources, and inventory tracking. Striven can help you automate repetitive processes, track progress, and improve overall operational efficiency.
After testing its features, I’d recommend Striven for SMBs that want an all-in-one solution without the hassle of piecing together separate software for each department. It’s important to note that Striven doesn’t support multiple languages, which limits its usability if you manage multilingual teams or have operations in non-English-speaking regions.
A TeamGantt roadmap is a useful tool for evaluating work processes and project health
Pre-built templates for modeling processes, workflows, and business rules make TeamGantt a solid option if you’re just getting started with BPM. Its Gantt charts are useful for conceptualizing and managing timelines and scheduling, while real-time collaboration, AI, and automation capabilities help to limit manual tasks. You can also generate reports to provide insights into productivity.
If you’re looking for a simple process management solution and are okay with limited integrations, TeamGantt balances ease and functionality. That said, the free plan is suitable for personal use only and paid plans are pricey. I would suggest you consider a more full-featured BPM solution like monday.com if you want to manage complex projects and processes.
The Best BPM Software Suits Your Business Needs and Goals
Deciding which is the best BPM solution for your business will depend on its type, size, and goals. What suits a small marketing company may not be appropriate for a large, multinational business that offers multiple services.
If you need an all-in-one BPM, project management, and business automation solution, monday.com is my top recommendation1. It’s a feature-rich platform suited to any business type that’s also remarkably easy to use.
Consider ClickUp if you’re an SMB1 looking for budget-friendly BPM software. It offers a generous free plan, ample features, and affordably priced plans that scale with you as your business grows.
For large-scale enterprises, Smartsheet is a good option1. Its dynamic spreadsheets, reports, and real-time collaboration tools help ensure smooth project execution.
For a quick overview of all my BPM recommendations, see the table below
Free Plan
Best Feature
Best For
Starting Price
monday.com
✔
User-friendly BPM software with AI, automation, and PM tools
Businesses that want an all-in-one process and work management software
This depends on your specific needs and preferences. For most businesses, monday.com’s software is best. Its BPM, PM, and BPA tools are highly customizable, intuitive and easy to use, and offers impressive features for designing, conceiving, monitoring, and optimizing work processes.
Are there any good BPM tools that are free?
Yes, some of the best BPM tools offer free plans together with affordable paid plans that deliver great value. ClickUp is a good free BPM solution. Its free forever plan includes features like automations, templates, integrations, reports and analytics, and collaborative documents/whiteboards to help with process planning, execution, and optimization.
How do BPM systems ensure the security and privacy of your data?
The BPM solutions I’ve chosen offer encryption, role-based access controls, and compliance features for regulated industries, which will keep your information secure and reduce your risk. monday.com also has a “panic mode” that locks out users (including admins) if it detects a data breach and Smartsheet offers threat modeling for additional insurance.
How do you choose the best BPM software for your specific needs?
Choose BPM software based on your business size, industry, and the complexity of your processes. Look for essential features like workflow automation, process illustration, collaboration, and integration with other tools. monday.com’s no-code platform lets you easily set these up, even if you don’t have technical skills. Free trials or free plans also help you test before committing to a paid plan.
Do I need BPM software and how can it benefit my business?
BPM software helps you design, visualize, analyze, automate, monitor, and improve your workflows and processes. It boosts efficiency and profitability by reducing manual tasks, eliminating bottlenecks, and ensuring all team members follow streamlined processes. Our roundup of the 10 best project management software in 2024 all offer comprehensive BPM tools.
Dawn specializes in writing about a range of software products, including website builders, backup services, credit card processing solutions, and project management platforms. She has 10+ year’s experience as a technical writer and has written a number of articles for CEOs and senior executives at client companies that have appeared under their bylines. When she’s not researching and testing digital services, she brainstorms with educators to ensure all students have access to enriching learning opportunities.
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