Four Typical Starting Points from the Field
Over the past years, we’ve spoken with hundreds of organisations—from fast-scaling digital players to large, established enterprises in industries like telecom, energy, retail, construction, finance, and manufacturing.
While every modernisation story is unique, the starting points often look surprisingly similar.
Based on these real-world experiences, we’ve simplified them into four common situations where adopting a business process engine can unlock agility, transparency, and automation within existing architectures.
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1. Starting from Scratch—The B-Brand Approach
Launching a completely new operation is every architect’s dream—but for established businesses, it’s rarely an option. When it is, it often takes the form of a B-Brand strategy: a fresh, independent brand built on modern technology and agile processes. At the same time, the parent company continues to operate the existing business.
This approach allows experimentation without disrupting core operations—a strategy we’ve explored in more depth in our blog AI and Hyper-Automation: How B-Brands Can Ride the Wave.
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2. When the Old ERP Starts to Crack
Most modernisation projects begin with a simple realisation: the ERP no longer supports the business’s workflows. Replacing the system outright can be daunting, but it’s not necessary to do everything at once.
A smarter approach is to separate business processes into their own layer—a process engine that orchestrates workflows across systems. This enables gradual replacement and continuous modernisation, an approach we’ve detailed in Upgrading Legacy Systems Iteratively.
By isolating and digitizing processes, organizations gain the freedom to renew parts of their architecture step by step without halting operations.
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3. The “Best-of-Breed” Landscape
Many organizations already live in a multi-system reality: finance, HR, logistics, and sales are each handled by a specialized tool. Gartner calls this a Postmodern ERP. It offers flexibilitybut also complexity.
When processes span several systems, manual instructions quickly appear. Do you have documents explaining “Enter data in System A, trigger the integration by clicking button B, then continue in System C”?
The solution is to model and automate those cross-system processes in a unified layer.
A process engine handles orchestration, visibility, and exception management, while lightweight UIs make remaining manual tasks smooth for end users. Step by step, processes can then be automated—transparently and systematically.
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4. When the ERP Is “Good Enough”
It may come as a surprise, but the existing ERP still does its job in many organisations. It’s stable, familiar, and supports most of the company’s core processes. Yet even when the ERP works fine, there’s still room for improvement.
A process engine can complement the ERP rather than replace it, bringing agility and transparency to areas where the ERP alone cannot. The same applies if, for example, you operate under a group-wide ERP setup but need to introduce business-specific extensions or innovations without altering the core system.
When new products, services, or business models emerge—especially those that cut across system boundaries—they can be modeled and executed in the process layer, leaving the ERP untouched. Integrations may be required, but the ERP remains stable and compliant while the process layer drives innovation and automation on top.
This approach preserves governance and compliance but also opens the door to AI integration and hyper-automation without the cost and risk of heavy ERP customisation. (We’ve explored this perspective further in AI Needs a Backbone: The Process Engine as the Architectural Foundation.)
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How to Get Started
The beauty of a process-driven approach lies in its modularity. Each process modelled with BPMN 2.0 creates a living, up-to-date representation of business operations. This transparency lets teams focus on quick wins first—automating the most repetitive or error-prone tasks—while keeping sight of the bigger picture.
Typical goals for early initiatives include:
- Reducing manual work
- Resolving integration pain points
- Launching a new product, service, or workflow
- Increasing operational transparency
- Cutting license or maintenance costs
- Break a vendor lock
Over time, these individual wins form a coherent, agile architecture—a digital operating system for the business.
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Under the Hood: Technology with Flexibility
Modern process engines, such as Operaton, Camunda, and Flowable, support BPMN 2.0 and integrate seamlessly with legacy and modern systems. They can run on-premises, in the cloud, or as a managed service by TX (Processes-as-a-Service).
By decoupling business processes from IT systems, organisations gain:
- Freedom from vendor lock-in
- Faster change cycles
- A foundation for AI-driven innovation
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The Bottom Line
Whether you’re replacing a monolithic ERP, untangling a best-of-breed environment, or enhancing a stable core system, the destination is the same:
A process-driven architecture that delivers visibility, agility, and control.
It’s not about building everything anew but building the right layer on top.
