If your processes are purely commandline and/or terminal based programs then I suggest you also take a look at the Expect module in the CPAN archive.
It is a perl "derivate" of the expect program by Don Libes.

With Expect you can:
- spawn processes
- pass arguments to them
- ask the user for input
- search for certain output, and act on it
- set timeouts on actions and responses

The ability to check on any error messages that your processes may generate, makes for _FAR_ more robust scripts

Expect::Simple is a wrapper around the Expect module that simplifies the syntax somewhat ;-)

For further (heavy) reading:
"Exploring Expect" Don Libes 1st ed. 1995 O'Reilly & Associates 566 p.