BPC Introduction

BPC is a versatile platform that can be used for almost any application where a contacts/partners/customers database is used. It allows users to create tasks that involve other people and notify them of those tasks. In this sense it is a workflow and a communicator. It's stength lies in its versatility and it's ability to communicate by email and SMSing.

The BPC exposes a Task Engine API which programmers can use to create customized User Interfaces that carry out a wide variety of operations.  The core features are:

• Workflow processing in the form of Tasks can be strug together into processes.
• Task alerts - by SMS or email.
• Escalation of tasks.

The BPC takes communication to a new level, where businesses, municipalities or an other entity can communicate with their customers by SMS.  SMSes can be personalized with the recipient's name, surname and if it is used to collect revenue, the person's outstanding balance can be shown.   SMSes can be saved and re-used.  

Any process can be triggered from an email or from an SMS and the subsequent computer generated responses can also be sent by SMS or email and even by Twitter.

Here is a list of some of the applications that were developed on the Task Engine platform, all of them use the contacts database and all of them need to create tasks and communicate the tasks to other people:

• Bulk SMS - see YouTube demo
• Bulk Email
• Business Processes - (workflow) see YouTube demos: Tasks, Creating Processes and Working with Processes
• Customer Relations Management
• Supplier Chain Management
• Contacts Management and customer lists
• Business License Application Process Management
• Staff Tasking and collaboration
• Software Issue Tracking
• Debt/Revenue Collection
• Call Centre
• Help Desk

It is also possible to create standard pre-defined processes that are triggered in some way, for example by a call center operator.  The task engine will interpret the process and log the tasks in the scheduler.   The Scheduler will then spawn tasks to the appropriate people and communicate the tasks to them by email or SMS.

An example of this is the Municipality's Water Services Call Center application. It receives a call from the community or an alert from Proficy Workflow, via SCADA, then it creates a task for the inspector to go out to the site. The inspector will submit a response which will trigger a new task for the engineers to go out and repair the lines. If they take too long to do it, the Task Engine will trigger an escalation task to alert the engineering manager that the engineer has not attended to the fault. This could be in the form of an email or an SMS to the engineering manager. Further escalation can take the task all the way up to the Mayor.