Are you navigating the challenges of outdated internal systems? You’re not alone. Many mid-sized and large companies still rely on fragmented legacy architectures. These systems are difficult to document, automate, and migrate. And what is worse, they create a disconnect between stakeholders. As a result, misunderstandings of processes lead to costly errors that impact internal operations and growth.
BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) is an essential tool that brings clarity. From process visibility to automation-readiness, BPMN helps companies plan, modernize, and execute digital transformation strategies with confidence.
Let’s explore how BPMN supports digital transformation, technology consulting, app migration to cloud, and business process management, especially when legacy systems stand in the way of modernization.
How process visualization helps business and IT speak the same language
IBM and Oracle were among the first to adopt BPMN to formalize business processes. BPMN helped align business and IT teams through visual, standardized workflows.
BPMN includes four levels of abstraction to cover various process perspectives:
- Process: inspanidual workflows
- Collaboration: interactions between roles or systems
- Choreography: step-by-step behavior in multi-party interactions
- Conversation: higher-level communication structure
And three diagram types to represent them visually:
- Process diagrams (internal flows)
- Collaboration diagrams (participants and message flow)
- Choreography diagrams (interaction patterns)
Each diagram shows a different perspective of the system behavior and communication. This allows business and technical teams to collaborate around the same visual model. As a result, they benefit from faster alignment, better planning, and fewer misunderstandings during system design and execution.
What’s new in BPMN 2.0
Earlier versions of BPMN focused mainly on documentation. BPMN 2.0 introduces a much broader set of features for designing, simulating, and automating business logic, especially in modern, cloud-based environments.
Previous version:
- Flow Objects: Events, Activities, and Gateways to define workflow steps
- Connectors: Sequence Flows, Message Flows, and Associations between elements
- Artifacts: Data Objects, Groups, Annotations for added context
- Swimlanes: Visual separation of roles, departments, or systems
BPMN 2.0 introduced:
- Export/import of diagrams across tools — useful in cross-team environments and toolchains.
- Defining of how each element behaves in runtime — critical for automation, cloud execution, simulation.
- More event types (e.g. escalation, error, signal, compensation) — help model complex real-world logic.
- Support modeling of interactions between independent participants — such as legacy system + new cloud module.
- Mixed-process modeling with both user input and automated service calls — important in hybrid cloud.
- Data object, data store, and data association — useful for ETL and integration logic.
- Correctness of models before automation — useful in enterprise/regulated environments.
What BPMN 2.0 kept from the old, proven standard
While BPMN 2.0 brought significant technical improvements, it preserved the simplicity that made the original BPMN so effective:
- Clear flowcharts — you can still show a process step-by-step in a visual way.
- Standard shapes — the same circles, diamonds, and rectangles are used, so everyone can read diagrams easily.
- Pools and lanes — still help organize roles and responsibilities clearly.
- Events, gateways, tasks — core elements are still there to describe actions and decisions.
This balance makes BPMN 2.0 ideal for organizations transitioning from legacy complexity to future-proof cloud architecture.
Why BPMN 2.0 fits modern cloud solutions for business
BPMN 2.0 makes complex business processes easy to understand and follow, readily available on cloud. It gives everyone in the team a clear, centralized view of the workflow. If something new pops up, all the parties involved will get it timely.
For instance, in logistics and inventory management, teams can immediately receive information about stock across multiple warehouses. Clearly visualized real-time data ensures everyone knows relevant updates, which impact efficiency and decision-making.
Running process visualization cloud migration also means better security of your business data. Your processes are safe, scalable, and accessible from anywhere. Remote teams can collaborate smoothly without barriers.
What departments is BPMN suitable for?
BPMN is a powerful tool that’s transforming how businesses of all sizes and industries operate. It supports business process clarity across departments, enabling structured transformation throughout the enterprise. BPMN helps teams in different sectors visualize how work gets done, identify inefficiencies, and find smarter ways to automate and optimize.
Finance: Bringing clarity to complex workflows
Invoicing, budgeting, and financial reporting aren’t just spreadsheets. Behind the scenes, they often involve multiple people, approval layers, and interactions with IT systems. BPMN lets you map these processes step by step, helping finance teams pinpoint delays, eliminate bottlenecks, and ensure systems are working in sync.
Logistics: Streamlining supply chain
Efficient logistics are make-or-break for customer satisfaction. By visualizing how goods and information flow from one point to another, companies can spot gaps, reduce delivery times, and cut costs. BPMN makes it easier to see where delays occur and where automation or restructuring could make a real difference.
Marketing and sales: Building smarter campaigns
Automation is reshaping how marketing and sales teams work, but only if your processes are clear. BPMN diagrams help teams map customer journeys, lead nurturing flows, and sales funnels, creating a visual foundation for optimizing campaigns and making data-driven decisions.
HR: Simplifying recruitment and employee management
HR touches every part of the employee lifecycle. With BPMN, HR teams can document these processes clearly, identify pain points, and build smoother workflows that boost employee satisfaction and reduce administrative burden.
IT: Aligning systems with real business needs
IT is deeply involved in every digital process. BPMN gives IT teams a shared language to work with other departments, helping them model processes, implement automation, and keep systems aligned with evolving business needs.
Manufacturing: Optimizing production and quality control
In manufacturing, efficiency is everything. From production line scheduling to inventory management and quality assurance, BPMN helps teams design lean, repeatable workflows. Clear process diagrams support better coordination between teams, minimize downtime, and enable fast response to issues, even in highly dynamic environments.
One of the best ways to boost business performance is by combining BPM with Lean Six Sigma. Together, these tools help teams work smarter, faster, and with fewer errors. By mapping out each step clearly, it’s easier to find what slows things down and fix it fast. This way, teams keep improving and deliver better results with less effort.
On the production floor, the process often begins with creating a document that outlines new guidelines. Once this document is approved and signed off, all involved team members will receive a notification prompting them to review and acknowledge it. Then, they access a dedicated environment to take action on the tasks. Communication here is focused. A chat is usually linked to a specific line or batch. This way, team members can discuss issues and share updates without distractions.
How consultants use BPMN in cloud projects
BPMN model in consulting business process optimization is a core tool to understand and redesign enterprise workflows. It’s especially valuable during app migration to cloud or system re-architecture as artifacts.
By using BPMN in Azure consulting, teams can:
- Analyze complex workflows across departments and systems
- Find inconsistencies or inefficiencies in the current state
- Define a clean, executable model for the cloud
- Align development teams with stakeholders by clarifying the business problem and enabling the team to understand the desired outcome or propose an MVP to move toward a viable solution
- Understand primary and secondary business processes and approve the roadmap
- Reduce risk and increase delivery speed
Working with legacy systems
Most large organizations rely on systems that weren’t built with modern cloud or integration in mind. With BPMN for legacy system modernization:
- You have a common language for business and tech teams
- You can identify gaps and inefficiencies early
- You can plan gradual, well-planned migration strategies
- You benefit from simplified modernization by making invisible logic visible
Ultimately, BPMN helps untangle the complexity of legacy systems and gives teams a clear plan for modernizing them in the cloud.
What are the challenges of using BPMN for system architecture modeling?
- Challenging to learning. BPMN can take time to learn and adjust.
- Different understandings. BPMN doesn’t define specific business terms (like “customer” or “invoice”). Business and IT teams might interpret the same process differently. Without shared understanding, miscommunication can happen.
- Too much or too little detail. Business users prefer simple diagrams. IT needs detailed ones for automation. But BPMN aims to serve both, which often leads to a mismatch: either too technical for business, or too vague for developers.
- Compatibility. While BPMN supports sharing between tools, many vendors add custom elements. This can lead to compatibility problems and potential vendor lock-in.
- Complexity with large systems. Modeling complex, dynamic, or highly variable systems in BPMN can lead to overly detailed or hard-to-manage diagrams, reducing clarity and performance.
Business impact and transformation benefits
When BPMN is applied effectively, it becomes a foundation for scalable, repeatable success:
- Enables app migration with minimal disruption
- Builds better alignment between teams from day one
- Delivers transparent analytics via Power BI, Azure Monitor, and similar tools
- Supports continuous process improvement through clear models and real-time metrics
- Drives innovation forward
- Reduces risk and rework across transformation initiatives
Partner with NetLS to visualize, modernize, and scale your business architecture
Let cloud migration process modeling with BPMN be your first step toward structured modernization. With our technology consulting services, companies turn legacy complexity into cloud-ready clarity through our core methodologies:
- We do a detailed examination of the client’s current business processes to identify optimization opportunities and define areas for digital transformation.
- We automate routine tasks and processes to boost productivity and reduce the risk of human error.
- We develop tailored strategic transformation plans that align with the client’s unique business goals and priorities. For example, in our recent cooperation with an energy-sector client, they needed cloud freedom, and we offered code refactoring, which significantly enhanced scalability and agility.
- The implementation of data analytics tools and AI systems allows us to uncover insights, forecast trends, and support strategic decision-making.
- We understand that clients often have optimized processes in place. So, our goal is to seamlessly enhance, not replace, their IT ecosystem, preserving strengths while adding value. Therefore, we integrate new digital solutions with existing systems like CRM, ERP, and other platforms to improve data flow and operational efficiency.
- We always secure client data and IT infrastructure using up-to-date cybersecurity practices and technologies.
- Our team provides training programs for client teams and expert consulting to ensure digital tools are used to their full potential.
A BPMN model agreed upon by all stakeholders helps us accurately design enterprise architecture, develop a migration strategy, and build scalable microservices that can handle heavy workloads.
Start building modern architectures that scale with the business today. We’ve helped many businesses evolve — now it’s your turn to step into a new reality with NetLS.
Do you want to go beyond process modeling and explore a full-scale architectural transformation? Check out our publications: TOGAF Part 1 about preparation for enterprise development and TOGAF Part 2 that delves into the TOGAF's strengths in solving uncoordinated business processes. See how enterprise-level frameworks can guide your migration and modernization journey in more detail.
Yuliia Suprunenko