Articles

What role should SaaS play in your BPM strategy?

Author(s):

Neil Ward-Dutton

Research Director, MWD Advisors

Driven by the continued success of companies like Salesforce.com, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model has become an increasingly important element of the mix of technology sourcing options available to enterprises over the past two years. Recently, a number of vendors have introduced SaaS-based BPM technology tools and platforms, eager to “surf the wave” and ensure that they don’t miss out on any opportunities, should enterprises start to shift wholesale to using the SaaS model for their IT capabilities.

Business / IT Collaboration Model: A Practical Approach

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

The collaboration between the business department and IT department of an organization has been subject to research by many organizational professionals. Some companies manage things very well, others have their problems. This article will not provide you with a silver bullet for business & IT alignment, but provides some practical directions for establishing a business driven collaboration.

Enterprise Architecture Works Best as a Roadmap – Not a Blueprint

Author(s):

Ken Mullins

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

Ever heard the old saw – perhaps in a crowded sports arena or while standing in front of the TV on game day –, “You’d make a better door than a window?” The idea, of course, is that one can see through a window but not a door.

Managing the Less Visible Processes

Author(s):

Ope Onibokun

MBA Student at Fuqua School of Business, Duke

Introduction

Many business process improvement initiatives seem to focus mainly on the very high visibility processes of the enterprise such as the supply chain, order fulfilment or customer service management, while negelecting the smaller but supporting everyday processes, including travel authorizations, expense filing and timesheets. These smaller processes, when poorly designed or designed without considerable care in the business rules and policies enforced, could mount in cost over a period of time.

Transforming an Enterprise – an Effective Approach for Implementing Change

Author(s):

Izabela Waglay

President, EELI Group Inc.

‘The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order’

Alfred North Whitehead

(b.1861 – d.1947), British mathematician and philosopher.

SOA Repository Best Practice

Author(s):

John Moe

Principal Consultant, J Moe Associates

For those of us who have been developing applications for many years (think COBOL & Assembler from the 70s and 80s), the idea of having a code library (programs and routines) is nothing new. However for the Web Services generation, this concept has taken a while to re-emerge, but has now been packaged in the form of a services registry and/or repository.

Unlocking the Door to Web Service Security

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

Many companies have embraced the concepts of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) at least to the point of creating a few Web Services that are consumed by different applications. Embracing the use of SOA often comes about when an Enterprise Architect is sitting in a kickoff meeting and the need to reuse some critical data foundation functionality, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Master Data Management (MDM)—through the use of a service interface rather than replication of a nightly batch feed—arises.

Converging Business Architecture (BA) Approaches

Author(s):

Ralph Whittle

Enterprise Business Architect, Independent Consultant

Business Architecture approaches and methods are improving, becoming more formal and standardized as evidenced by the Business Architecture Working Group (BAWG)(1) under the auspices of the Object Management Group (OMG). As with any developing approach or method, a variety of ideas, techniques, terms, expressions and definitions, some old and some new, will emerge. This is most assuredly true for the Business Architecture (BA), as well!

Leaning Your Organization – Does that Mean Cutting Jobs?

Author(s):

Shelley Sweet

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

Lean is not about cutting jobs to the bone. Rather it is about getting your operation “svelte and fit”, doing more with less, being in the ‘flow’ zone and delivering what the customer values.

Lean is a term coined by James Womack and Daniel Jones in their book Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation. Lean is the term they gave to the principles they observed at Toyota. These principles enabled employees to eliminate wastes, minimize variation through standardization, and increase value in the eyes of the customer.

Decisions and Complex Event Processing

Author(s):

Claye Greene

Managing Director, Technology Blue, Inc.

Complex event processing (CEP) continually evolves as a technology to help organizations react to various business conditions such as threats and market opportunities. CEP technologies excel at taking raw, voluminous amounts of event data, accumulating it, correlating it and aggregating it in forms that facilitate critical decision-making.