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BPM And SOA Are Not A Panacea
Integration Complexity
This business of running a business has become a lot more complicated and much of it can be attributed to the use of information technology. Technology has indeed fueled growth through automation and increased efficiency, but it has also added a management nightmare in the form of disparate systems that are unable to talk to each other. Now we have whole new specialties (like ITIL and COBIT) devoted to managing IT services, assets and infrastructures. How did we end up in this quagmire?
BPMS Watch: Fulfilling the Promise of Process Simulation
A central promise of BPMS is that process improvement can be projected and optimized in advance of implementation, using process modeling’s simulation capability. By including simulation analysis, process modeling tools can not only define the structure of the proposed to-be process but project its expected ROI. For that reason, nearly all BPMS offerings today include some form of simulation tool. But are these tools really fulfilling the promise? Not yet, in my view. Let’s look at what they do, and what’s still missing.
First, let’s deconstruct the promise.
From Specifications to Implementation: the Importance of Workflow Patterns
In the early stages of a BPM project a business might create a written specification and planning level diagram of the project target process. Yet there is much work that must happen to translate these into a functioning business process. The challenge to the process implementer is to see the shape of the business processes based on an oral or written description of the process. An able implementer should perform a lexical analysis of the business requirement to develop a technically accurate assessment. A process solution can break when there is a weak implementation of requirements.
The Time Lens
Time is a critical dimension of customer satisfaction and cost reduction. Getting products and services to customers in a speedy fashion is a value-adding activity. By beating your competitors to market, you gain sales and market share.
As a cost-reduction strategy, time reduction can be very effective. Inspection, moving, setup, rework, and waiting all add costs. The amount of time in these areas can be staggering.
Best Practices for Reducing the Business Strategy to Execution Gap with BPM
According to a recent survey in The Economist, CEOs and CIOs from over 1,000 companies worldwide agree that innovation in business processes is a greater source of competitive advantage than innovation in particular products or services.
Sustainable Business Rules: An Introduction – Part 2 of 3
In part one of this article, I provided an introduction to applying the concept of sustainability to business rules.
Business Architecture: Creation and Application
Business Architecture is not an intuitively obvious concept. It does not conjure up an immediate vision of what it is, or what it comprises. With this inherent disadvantage – the business can’t articulate it easily – how can it be used to align IT with the business?
Business Architecture includes three components: the Functional Architecture, the Process Architecture and the Information Architecture. There are well documented methodologies for developing each component.
The Elusive Missing Link
As one website puts it, history is a puzzle made up of a million different pieces. For business history, the pieces tend to be automation artifacts. You may be translating pieces of history into BPM and BR technology. At times, you operate as a historian, studying...
Achieving True Business Agility: Using Service Oriented Architecture to put control back into the hands of the business
The pressure on enterprises to improve operational efficiency and response times to new competitive threats and market opportunities has never been greater.
This pressure is forcing businesses to reevaluate the way they operate, the way IT supports their existing operations and the opportunities for current IT systems to be adapted to support longer term business evolution.
Suggested Treatment, BPM: Geisinger Health System uses BPM to Improve Service, Compliance and Operations
It’s happening in every industry: increasing regulations, demand for better, faster customer service and ever-fiercer competition. The healthcare industry is not immune to these same forces, and often these challenges are exacerbated by greater requirements and expectations of an industry that is nonetheless expected not to profit excessively from its “customers.” But, no one is lessening the strictures of HIPAA, and patients continue to ask why it is that Americans are paying more than any other country for their healthcare and getting less.
The Business Rule Revolution
The Business Rule Revolution is happening everywhere, even if it seems invisible. In fact, the business rules that are unseen or unknown are precisely the ones that can do the most damage. Invisible rules lurk behind a lack of proper business rule management—creating a precarious business climate for these times.
Consider the growing and painful awareness of questionable accounting practices by some corporate executives in some major organizations. What is at play here? Business rules are at play—good or bad, known or unknown. In these cases, rules were broken or secret. Some were improper rules applied to achieve improper objectives. Think of the Business Rule Revolution as appropriate parties knowing what the rules are, applying the rules in all the right places, and the organization therefore taking full responsibility for its rules and its integrity.
Implementing Process Change in State Government
DMV – Three letters that can strike fear in any man or woman’s heart, a term that all too often brings images of long lines and broken processes and red tape. State Departments of Motor Vehicles typically face many challenges: with lower budgets, staff reductions and increasing numbers of drivers and vehicles being registered. They face the challenge of continuing to provide quality services to the public while meeting increasingly challenging mandates from federal, state and local governments.
Applied Creativity and Value Discipline: The Innovation Cycle – Part 1
Part 1: Why innovation is such a challenge in a corporate setting
Next month, Part 2: A manager’s guide for application and implementation of the Innovation Cycle
Innovation is currently a hot topic in the executive suite and in business publications. Amid the buzz, managers are uncertain about how to reconcile the seemingly opposing calls for increased innovation and bottom-line productivity. As a result, when challenged to grow their businesses they often default to more familiar options, even if growth through innovation could be the best choice. We propose not only a truce between the creative and analytic sides of business, but also a highly valuable method for collaboration that builds upon the strengths of each to maximize the value of innovation investments.
Beyond SOA – Digital Business Networks
Join us to understand how using BPM within a Digital Business Network (DBN) can drive innovation and create a competitive advantage. Forrester describes ‘Digital Business Networks’ as collaborative value chains, comprised of companies focused on creating timely, customer-oriented and process-centric innovations. By breaking down siloed monolithic enterprises, DBN uses a services oriented approach to accommodate change without compromising security.
How can the concept of a DBN help BPM Suites evolve, and how can BPM help evolve the DBN?
Understanding “Services”
In the last column, I introduced the topic of services engineering and why it is going to be so important. The vast majority of the labor force is employed in services today, and nearly 80 percent of our GDP is from services industries.
Getting Team Involvement in Process Change
If you’ve worked in the corporate world for any length of time, you’ve probably experienced a merger or acquisition somewhere along the way. Personally, I’ve gone through five in 15 years (which may have been a contributing factor to starting my own business). Each time I’ve been bothered by the overlooked opportunities and communication snafu’s that have resulted in poor morale and decreased productivity. But does that really matter? After all, the company isn’t permanently damaged – gradually morale improves and the productivity gets back on track.
Improving Warehouse and Distribution Center Operational Performance
Many retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors are consistently faced with the prospect of shrinking margins. Ensuring profitability is a delicate blaancing act of inventory management, cost control, and customer satisfaction. Small improvements in warehouse and distribution center operational performance can result in large gains on the bottom line.
Organizational Governance: Key to Business/IT Architecture Alignment
When executives cannot see their way clear to address structural dysfunction within their organization, then attempts to align business architecture and IT architecture will see limited success. This does not imply that BPM, SOA and systems modernization cannot deliver tactical value. It does imply that these initiatives should be coupled with macro level efforts to recognize and address structural weaknesses across organizational infrastructures that impede business architecture and IT architecture alignment.
The Next BPM Solution – Intelligent Documents
Companies spend more than $200 billion per year in paper processing. Billions more are lost in profit and regulatory fines from poorly managed business processes. Learn how Intelligent Documents technology can help you find any document – any time.
Case Study: Managing Process Across the Enterprise
George Thomas is the Enterprise Chief Architect at GSA. He focuses on enterprise wide architecture using open standards based, process-centric, and service oriented modeling methodology and tools.
Thomas began his talk by covering grammar and modeling formalisms from selected GSA adopted industry standards. These were presented as a framework for developing the executable service oriented business process models, which can be automatically deployed.
The GSA uses a tool from Data Access Technologies that integrates CCA/FEA design and J2EE runtime environments.
George Thomas is the Enterprise Chief Architect at GSA. He focuses on enterprise wide architecture using open standards based, process-centric, and service oriented modeling methodology and tools.
