To help business analysts, system analysts and those alike visualize business processes, Ravenflow introduced today RAVEN Cloud, a Silverlight-based solution that turns plain-English text into business process diagrams.

Users that need to analyze and visualize their processes can “simply write their own process narratives or select from a library of template examples,” the company said. RAVEN Cloud will then instantly transform the text into a “high-fidelity, error-free” process diagram.

In addition to generating diagrams from plain text, a natural-language analysis engine examines the process narrative text and indicates any logical errors, gaps or ambiguities that could lead to flawed requirements, Ravenflow said. And to ensure consistent terminology is used, RAVEN Cloud identifies process actors, functions and business objects that are referenced in the process.

According a company statement, the solution also organizes, classifies and stores business processes in user-defined categories, such as “as-is” and “to-be” processes.

“Process discovery has become an important part of the project life cycle because you need to have a solid understanding of how things work today before making changes or pursuing new innovations,” said Susan Boers, president and CEO of Ravenflow. “Process models are one of the best ways to convey and validate that understanding, and RAVEN Cloud transforms the way those models are created.”

Users can export RAVEN-generated business process diagrams to Microsoft Visio 2007 or 2010 (a diagramming program), as well as export in either XPDL or XMI formats for importation into other process modeling or system engineering tools.

Both individual and multi-user subscriptions are available in addition to a free, limited-feature version.