No BPMN diagrams. No swimlanes. No software.

We don’t hate BPMN.

We just think it has a time and place. And that time is NOT when business users are trying to map high level end to end processes. Using a simplified notation means that everyone, across the different departments and at every level, is talking the same language.  BPMN is a great notation when you are down in the detail thinking about how to automate a task.

We don’t hate swimlanes.

They certainly make it very clear who does what and the handoffs. But we think that they can force users into drawing overly complicated diagrams because of the positioning of the activity boxes in the swimlanes. Our layout with the resource in the activity box achieves the same level of visibility, and we believe enables simpler, elegant, and more easily understood diagrams. Particularly when combined with powerful resource reports.

We don’t hate software.

But we know that everyone would rather just start using elegant cloud software and not have to talk to IT about installing and configuring software on a server somewhere. Just sign up and start delivering results. This is a great deal for users. But it puts a lot of the risk and cost on us. We need to deliver great software and wait to get paid. If we do a fantastic job and users keep renewing every year, then the risk and cost was worth it. Which is why Elements is 100% cloud.