BPM · Business process management

Your processes, the way you actually run them

The processes that today live in Excel, in email or in one person's head become defined, measured and auditable. It's BPM (Business Process Management) without the jargon: you model, measure and improve the process, and you change it — not your vendor.

What it is and what it solves

A business process management (BPM) tool is where an organisation models its internal procedures, runs them with rules and deadlines, and measures how they are doing using the data the process itself produces. Kimobox does this in low-code mode: the person who owns the process designs the form and the flow by dragging, publishes it, and corrects it themselves when the process changes — without raising a ticket with development.

Content reviewed on 25 August 2026

Discipline: BPM (Business Process Management) A cycle of design, execution, measurement and improvement on the same process
Standard notation: BPMN 2.0 Published by the OMG and adopted as ISO/IEC 19510:2013
Standards fit: ISO 9001:2015, clause 4.4 Requires determining processes, their sequence, criteria and indicators
Working model: Low-code, no bespoke development The process owner configures it; IT only handles integrations
Evidence: Tamper-evident record per step Date, author and reason for every approval, rejection or change

No-code forms

Fields, validations, calculations and attachments, all by dragging. Published in minutes.

Approval workflows

Who reviews, who approves, and what happens if nobody responds in three days.

Alerts and deadlines

The platform chases the dates so you don't have to chase anyone.

Dashboards

Indicators calculated from the process data itself, not a monthly report.

Full BPM cycle

Design, publish, run, measure and improve the same process without leaving the platform.

Automatic escalation

If nobody responds in time, the process alerts the next owner on its own.

Full traceability

Every step, every approval and every change is logged with date, author and reason.

AI generation

Describe the process in plain language and AI proposes the flow, the fields and the approvals.

Event and deadline tracking

Vehicle inspections, document expiry, contracts, certifications or any important date, on a calendar with advance notice.

Document manager with versioning

Publish documents with version control, connected to OneDrive, Google Drive and SharePoint.

What's included

From paper to a controlled process

Form and table designer with profile-based permissions, which you can align with job positions in the company
Workflows with states, deadlines and automatic escalation
Full history of every change and who made it
Electronic signature built into any step
Reports exportable to Excel and PDF
API for reading and writing from other systems
Full cycle: design, publication, execution, measurement and improvement
Automatic escalation when nobody responds in time
Reusable process templates across departments and sites
Version and change control for every published process
Calendar of events and deadlines: vehicle inspections, documents, contracts and critical dates
Document manager with versioning, connected to OneDrive, Google Drive and SharePoint

How it works

A cycle, not a one-off project

Designing a process isn't a project you close out: it's a cycle that repeats. You publish it, the team uses it, you measure it with real data and adjust what isn't working, without rebuilding the process from scratch.

Visual design with no custom development
Immediate publishing, used from day one
Measured with real process data, not a separate report
Continual improvement on the same process, without rewriting it

A real example

From request to record, with automatic escalation

A typical approval flow: the request reaches the owner, who approves or rejects it with a reason. If nobody responds within the defined deadline, the process escalates on its own to the next owner, with no one having to chase anyone.

Approval or rejection with a documented reason
Automatic escalation if there's no response in time
Final record with the flow's full history

Real examples

Three processes that are almost always broken

Metalworking

Purchase approval by amount

Before An email to the plant manager, another to the board above 3,000 euros, and a spreadsheet somebody updates on Fridays. Nobody knows how many requests are stuck, or since when.

After A form with the amount validated against the budget line, automatic dual approval above the threshold, and escalation to the next approver if nobody replies within 72 hours. Average approval time shows up on the dashboard itself.

Food industry

Onboarding a new supplier

Before Purchasing asks for the paperwork, Quality reviews it separately, and the food safety certificate expires without anyone noticing until the audit.

After A single flow with the supplier record, the list of mandatory documents and the expiry date of each. If a certificate lapses, the supplier moves to blocked and Purchasing sees it before issuing the order.

Field service

On-site work report

Before Paper report, a photo over WhatsApp and manual transcription the next morning. The customer signature, when there is one, is on a crumpled sheet in the van.

After The technician fills in the report on a phone, attaches photos, the customer signs on screen, and the sealed document reaches both the case file and the ERP before the van pulls away.

Vocabulary

BPM vocabulary, without the fog

BPM: Business Process Management. The management discipline that treats processes as an asset to be designed, executed, measured and continuously improved, rather than as an inherited habit.
BPMN: Business Process Model and Notation. The standard graphical language for drawing processes, maintained by the Object Management Group and also published as ISO/IEC 19510:2013. Its virtue is that business and IT read the same diagram.
Low-code: A development approach where the application is configured through visual interfaces with little or no programming. In practice, whoever knows the process can change it without an intermediary.
Process instance: Each concrete run of a published process: one particular purchase request, one particular work report. Every instance keeps its own history and can follow the process version it started with.
Escalation: A rule that automatically moves a task to the next owner when the deadline passes with no reply. It is what stops a process from stalling in the inbox of someone on holiday.
Traceability: The ability to reconstruct what happened, when, who did it and with what data. In a certified system this is not a convenience: it is the evidence the auditor asks for.

Frequently asked questions

What people ask us before getting started

Do I need IT staff?

Not for day-to-day use. The process owner does the setup; IT only steps in for integrations.

Can I start with just one department?

That's the usual approach. One area, one process, measurable results — then you expand.

What happens if a process changes mid-use?

The process adjusts, and instances already in progress follow either the version they started with or the new one, whichever you choose.

Can I generate a process with AI?

Yes, you describe the process in plain language and AI proposes the flow, the fields and the approvals; you review and publish it.

How does automatic escalation work?

Every step has a deadline; if nobody responds, the process alerts the next owner in the chain with no one having to chase it.

Can a process be reused across departments?

Yes, any published process can be cloned as a template and adapted to another department or site.

How long does the first process take to go live?

A simple process is usually published and in use within two or three weeks, including the design session, testing with real users and adjustments. The projects that drag on for months are the ones trying to digitise ten processes at once.

How is this different from an ERP?

The ERP governs the transaction: order, invoice, stock, ledger entry. BPM governs the procedure around that transaction: who requests, who approves, with what paperwork and within what deadline. They complement each other, which is why Kimobox integrates with the ERP instead of replacing it.

What if the process involves people outside the company?

That is handled with an external portal. The supplier, customer or contractor takes part in the flow with their own credentials and sees only their part, without becoming an internal user.

Can BPMN be used?

Yes. The visual designer works with BPMN 2.0 logic — tasks, decisions, events, deadlines — without forcing anyone to draw the full notation if they do not need to.

What about processes already documented for ISO 9001?

They are the best starting point. The written procedure describes the flow to model; the difference is that once published, the procedure stops being a document to read and becomes the path work travels along.

How do you know whether the process has improved?

From the data the process itself produces: average time per step, waiting time before each approval, share of instances escalated for lack of response, and volume by owner. These are calculated indicators, not perception surveys.

Show us your most chaotic process

We'll show you the module running with data similar to yours.

Request a demo

Keep exploring

Sources

Where each figure comes from

References to the official text in force. If a standard is revised, this page is updated and the review date says so.

ISO 9001:2015 — Quality management systems. Requirements ISO · 2015 ed., with Amd 1:2024
ISO/IEC 19510:2013 — Object Management Group Business Process Model and Notation ISO/IEC · 2013
Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), version 2.0.2 Object Management Group · Current specification

Low-code business process management (BPM) software

Kimobox is a business process management software that lets you model, automate and measure any internal procedure without custom development: forms, approval workflows, alerts, documents and dashboards, all configurable by the user.

By centralizing processes on a single platform with full traceability, digitizing your processes leaves automatic evidence for ISO audits and cuts the admin work tied to spreadsheets and email.

The full BPM cycle — design, publish, run, measure and improve — happens within the same platform: a published process isn't a closed project, it adjusts based on real usage data without needing to be rebuilt from scratch.

When a step in the flow goes unanswered, automatic escalation alerts the next owner with no manual intervention, and AI process generation lets you describe a procedure in plain language to get a first draft of the flow, fields and approvals ready to review and publish.