Information Library
| OpsStream vs Excel | Excel is great for crunching numbers and even for quick manipulation of data. But when it comes to managing operational data that is needed for normal operations--lists of orders, projects, products, RMA's, engineering changes, suppliers, and the like--Excel is a poor choice because: 1) Data is not secure, 2) Data is integrity and accessibility is at risk, 3) Collaboration is limited, 4) Data cannot easily be integrated with other systems and automated processes. OpsStream is a superior way to manage non-financial data. |  |
| OpsStream vs Sharepoint | Sharepoint is Microsoft's platform for collaboration and intranet applications. The problem
with using Sharepoint is that it deals with unstructured data instead of structured data: word
processing documents, spreadsheets, and PDF's where the content and layout are determined by the
author are all unstructured data. Information that must be actionable and must drive business
execution deserves to be handled as structured data. Customer orders, RMA's, inspections, new
products, work orders, projects, are a few examples. OpsStream manages structured data, enabling good access control, data security, and logging. Additionally, OpsStream's business process engine is superior in a number of ways to the Microsoft Workflow Foundation used by Sharepoint. | |
| OpsStream vs BPMS | Business Process Management Suites are emerging as good tools for managing processes within organizations. Rooted in the modeling of processes, BPMS systems have begun helping with the execution of process. However, OpsStream is focused squarely on execution. As such, the data management capabilities of OpsStream are stronger than BPMS systems. Also, OpsStream provides advantages in the way in which processes are defined in the system: OpsStream makes it easy to manage both simple and large, complex processes more easily than diagram-centric approaches. What's more, OpsStream's process management engine supports many advanced features such as conditional branching, multi-threaded processes, data-centric operations, distributed data entry, due date calculations, and more, and does so in a way that is both more powerful and simpler than most BPMS systems. | |
| Sequencing of Work | Sequencing is important to many business processes. For example, in order fulfillment it is important
not only to move each order through the required steps of a process, but also to sequence the orders
correctly within each queue of work. Sequencing might be something other than FIFO (first in, first out)--
for example, sequencing may be based on promised delivery date, on type of customer, type of order, or
some other business rules. OpsStream provides a powerful and flexible means of allowing processes to be sequenced. This can support both ad-hoc escalation of priority work, as well as automatic process-centric prioritization based on defined rules. |
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| Financial vs Non-Financial | Financial information and transactions--debits, credits, inventory, and anything that appears on a
P&L statement or balance sheet, or that the financial auditor cares about--should be managed by a
reliable accounting system. | |
| Integration with Other Systems | OpsStream provides many ways to integrate and inter-operate with other systems. Examples: 1) Process-centric data exchange, where a business process causes data to be read from or written to an external system, 2) Batch-based data exchange, where a scheduled job can read from, write to, or synchronize with an external system, 3) Exposed OpsStream REST URL's can provide external applications with a very easy way to access data and processes manged by OpsStream, 4) SQL-based API can be used to access OpsStream-managed data, processes and functionality while automatically preserving the security and integrity of the OpsStream data. | |
