EMC continued its push into the business process management market earlier this week, announcing availability of a new suite designed to analyse, model, automate and optimise a wide range of business processes.

Unveiled at the Gartner BPM Summit in San Diego, EMC Documentum Process Suite integrates process management functionality from EMC's content management arm, Documentum, with business process analysis and business activity monitoring functionality that the company gained through its acquisition last year of BPM specialist ProActivity.

Amotz Maimon, general manager for BPM at EMC, said the integrated suite provides customers with full BPM functionality, covering both human- and information-based processes and allowing users to "discover what processes need changing and how that needs to be done, execute the new process, and then monitor their performance".

EMC said that the suite also boasts tight integration with the rest of the Documentum content management portfolio, such as front-end input and capture of paper-based content, in-process management of structured and unstructured content, and back-end records management, archiving and storage. According to EMC, this makes it easier to automate business processes that stretch across the business.

Maimon said that several companies were already using the technology in order to lower costs, enhance productivity and meet compliance requirements. "We have one large bank that is using the system to accept loan requests and automatically process them based on an internal rules engine," he said. "It fully automates as much of the process as possible and also enhances the human steps through electronic forms and queue and workflow management."