This echoes my experience with trying to leverage BPM tools to automate workflows. The biggest thing that the tools in this space neglect is how important data are. Typing is completely non-existent, and validation has to be bolted on and is invisible/non-configurable to the BA. Configuration-based rules are also incredibly difficult to implement, if not impossible through the UI without a lot of work that would be trivial to implement without the lock-in.

I think for one-off projects and workflows that aren't deeply integrated, tools like Node-RED are very interesting and something I'd definitely consider pursuing. But outside of modeling, BPM tools have been more of an obstacle than anything else.