That's a pretty big, open question. There's a ton of literature out there that you could (and probably should) read, and no simple HN post can do justice to the scope of process automation / BPM / workflow, etc.
For some background on business process / workflow automation, a few good books to review would include:
That said... for starters, I'd back up to the issue of truly understanding the business need you're trying to address, and figure out a methodology for mapping the technological capabilities you will implement, to the business strategy. To that end, I'm a fan of a technique called "capability cases", and actually wrote a series of blog posts on that topic a while back. I'll refer you there for more on that topic:
The other positive thing about the Capability Cases methodology is that it helps IT people learn to "speak the language" of LOB executives (and, to some extent, vice versa, if everybody buys in), and helps bridge that gap between "the business side of things" and "the IT side of things".
Anyway, if you get through all that and decide that some sort of BPM system is for you, there are a handful of high quality, popular, Open Source BPM engines out there that you could consider. If nothing else, they could enable you to get to a good POC quickly and without spending a bazillion dollars. One popular option is Activiti:
It uses the industry standing BPMN2 notation. Stay away from anything that mentions BPEL, and stay away from Oracle products. Especially Oracle products that involve BPEL.
Depending on how complex your needs are, you might not actually need a dedicated BPM / workflow engine. In that case, you could certainly code up automation code in any general purpose language of choice. But be careful of going down the path where you wind up rebuilding the wheel.
I'd also advocate taking a careful look at the idea of "Social BPM", which focuses on making BPM systems more flexible and less rigid, and introducing aspects involving social connections between humans.
I'm not trying to be overly self-promotional here, but I will refer you again to a couple of posts I have previously written on this subject, which may be of use to you:
For some background on business process / workflow automation, a few good books to review would include:
http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Business-Process-Modeling-Mi...
http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Business-Process-Manageme...
http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Enough-Systems-Competitive-Autom...
http://www.amazon.com/Social-BPM-Bpm-Workflow-Handbook/dp/14...
http://www.amazon.com/iBPMS-Intelligent-Systems-Workflow-Han...
http://www.amazon.com/Real-Life-BPMN-Analyze-Automate-Proces...
That said... for starters, I'd back up to the issue of truly understanding the business need you're trying to address, and figure out a methodology for mapping the technological capabilities you will implement, to the business strategy. To that end, I'm a fan of a technique called "capability cases", and actually wrote a series of blog posts on that topic a while back. I'll refer you there for more on that topic:
http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-capability-cases-are...
http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/02/so-what-is-capability-ca...
http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/05/capability-cases-part-th...
The other positive thing about the Capability Cases methodology is that it helps IT people learn to "speak the language" of LOB executives (and, to some extent, vice versa, if everybody buys in), and helps bridge that gap between "the business side of things" and "the IT side of things".
Anyway, if you get through all that and decide that some sort of BPM system is for you, there are a handful of high quality, popular, Open Source BPM engines out there that you could consider. If nothing else, they could enable you to get to a good POC quickly and without spending a bazillion dollars. One popular option is Activiti:
http://www.activiti.org
It uses the industry standing BPMN2 notation. Stay away from anything that mentions BPEL, and stay away from Oracle products. Especially Oracle products that involve BPEL.
Depending on how complex your needs are, you might not actually need a dedicated BPM / workflow engine. In that case, you could certainly code up automation code in any general purpose language of choice. But be careful of going down the path where you wind up rebuilding the wheel.
I'd also advocate taking a careful look at the idea of "Social BPM", which focuses on making BPM systems more flexible and less rigid, and introducing aspects involving social connections between humans.
I'm not trying to be overly self-promotional here, but I will refer you again to a couple of posts I have previously written on this subject, which may be of use to you:
http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/05/social-events-bpm-oh-my-...
http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2014/02/on-solving-social-aspect...
Like I said, this is a big topic. I could talk about this stuff for days on end, or until you died from boredom. :-)
Seriously though, if I can be of any further assistance, feel free to drop me an email.