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Business Rules and Resisting the Commoditization of Process
As companies and their software suppliers focus on the processes that control their business, the potential for the “commoditization” of processes is growing. How can companies differentiate themselves, yet still take advantage of the new technologies and approaches in process management?
Let’s start by considering why processes are becoming commoditized.
Pick the Right Type of BPMS Solution
There is a great deal of confusion in the business process management suite (BPMS) market.
It Takes Two to Tango: SOA and BPM – Part I
SOA and BPM are two buzzwords you hear or read about in every magazine (well almost all) you open, IT conference you go to, analyst or vendor you talk to. Also, a lot of discussions (or should we say gossip) are focused on the relationship between BPM and SOA. People are curious to know more on their relationship, on how long it would last, etc, the usual stuff you get to hear in the start of any romantic relationship. In order for us to understand the extent of their relationship lets take a closer look at their nature and characteristics and predict if they are meant for each other.
Collaboration for Innovation: Making Innovation Happen
There seem to be two roads to innovation; a high road and a low road, if you like.
The high road is to transform your organization into a learning, nurturing force that uses Systems Thinking to synthesize disparate ideas into what Fritjof Capra calls “emergent forms” – new ways forward that emerge from a primordial sea of barely restrained creativity.
The low road is to follow the example of such Empires as the Mandarin Chinese and Victorian British.
There seem to be two roads to innovation; a high road and a low road, if you like.
Business Architecture and SOA
To understand the relationship between Business Architecture and SOA, we first need to ask the question what are these two types of architecture? For a description of SOA, see my July SOAInstitute article “Key Components of SOA” at http://www.soainstitute.org/articles/article/article/key-components-of-soa.html. So the next question is “What is Business Architecture”? While there are many available definitions, here are a few that I found useful.
BPMS Watch: Go Beyond Checklists to Pick a BPMS
I’ve just finished up four new reports in my 2006 BPMS Report series: Lombardi TeamWorks, BEA AquaLogic BPM, EMC Documentum Process Suite, and Cordys Composite Application Framework.
The BEA report replaces Fuego; the others are new, bringing the total to ten, plus an overview report that explains the common evaluation framework and report format.
Rhode Island Devises a Blueprint for Change
Founded in 1643, the State of Rhode Island was the thirteenth colony to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Now known as the “Ocean State,” Rhode Island has approximately one million citizens. With 140 state and quasi-public agencies including 15 to 20 major agencies, the state has approximately 15,000 employees, with 10,000 in the executive branch. The state’s annual budget is around $6.5 billion.
In 2003, the state was running a budget deficit of approximately $180 million.
Case Study: Using ISO 9001 Quality Management Standards to Achieve BPM Objectives
The Logistics Management Division for NASA includes the Wallops Island Facility, Goddard Space Flight Center, and NASA Headquarters. It has four branches, 50 civilian servants, and 225 contractor personnel. The division has 12,000 Civil Service and contractor personnel. The flight project support operations are ISO 9001 certified, with the processes fully documented. For the institutional support services, the processes are documented in Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). The goal was to be certified by August, 1999.
Gaining Competitive Advantage through BPM and The Service Oriented Enterprise
The Service Oriented Enterprise is a new approach in business. Each party or participant in service orientation sees themselves as a service provider and consumer, in an increasingly well connected global economy. This is not new: businesses have been serving their clientele since time immemorial. But service orientation is different in two essential ways. First, culturally organizations are realizing the best productivity could be achieved if they focus on serving the needs of their customers but also their employees, trading partners, shareholders, government, and communities.
BPM and Financial Services
This webcast – the fifth in a five-part series – will review the findings of BPMInstitute.org’s State of Business Process ManagementSM Research with a specific focus on the issues, challenges and solutions associated with BPM-applications in the Financial Services sector. It will explain how Financial Services companies are using business process management solutions to drive differentiation and business results by more effectively engaging with agents, brokers, customers and employees.
BPM and Government
This webcast – the fourth in a five-part series – will review the findings of BPMInstitute.org’s State of BPMSM Research with a specific focus on the issues, challenges and solutions associated with BPM applications in the Government sector. It will explore the government desires to streamline the “business of government” under ongoing challenges of budgetary constraints, policy changes and demanding citizen accountability.
BPM and Security: DRM & BPM
This webcast – the third in a five-part series – will review the findings of BPMInstitute.org’s State of Business Process ManagementSM Research with a specific focus on the security issues, challenges and solutions associated with BPM. It will explore the desired integration among Document Security services, Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Business Process Management (BPM). It will describe what strategies are common to enterprises currently achieving the greatest benefit from their Security and BPM initiatives.
The Changing Face of FBI IT
The mission for the FBI has evolved dramatically since 9/11. The FBI is transforming its IT systems to support counterterrorism, intelligence, law enforcement, and administrative missions. BPM is vital to the FBI’s continued transformation and evolution and provides the FBI with a cross-functional view of processes.
The Innovation Imperative Part 3 of 3
According to Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum, “There is, in fact, a whole new generation of innovation gurus. They are not the superstars of the ’90s, such as Clayton Christensen, who focused on what might be called macro-innovation – the impact of big, unexpected new technologies on companies. The new gurus focus more on micro-innovation – teaching companies how to connect with their customers’ emotions, linking research and development labs to consumer needs, recalibrating employee incentives to emphasize creativity, constructing maps showing opportunities for innovation.”
In Search of BPM Excellence
This chapter argues the use of BPM as the central tool to support next-generation business processes to transform the operations of manufacturers. Next-generation business processes? Dr. Max More, a strategic business futurist, postulates the process-driven enterprise, in the foreword to the book, The Real-Time Enterprise, “The ideal vision of the process-driven RTE is one of companies where information moves without hindrance, and business processes are continuously monitored and trigger rapid reactions, usually automated according to embedded business rules. RTEs also sense shifts in tastes and practices and respond by offering new products and services. Automated processes easily traverse corporate boundaries, time zones, media and systems. Batch processes and manual input are minimized by ensuring that real-time information among employees, customers, partners and suppliers is current and coherent.
Web 2.0 and Brokered Web Services
Web services were created around the notion that it’s easier to discover and leverage somebody else’s service, rather than write your own from scratch. Also, it is much easier to create applications made up of many services, allowing change to occur at a pace faster than anything we’ve seen in the industry thus far.
The idea of Web services was to create a standard interface, programming model, description language, and a directory which would allow this to happen in and between very different systems.
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Service Bus, Q2 2006
Cape Clear retains its leading position in Forrester’s latest review of the standalone ESB market. The vendor is one of the pioneers in the enterprise service bus (ESB) category and continues to be among the leaders in technology innovation and strategic vision in this space. Aggressive pursuit of emerging Web services standards and communication protocols, coupled with good tools for developing and deploying services, make Cape Clear a good choice for companies looking for an advanced ESB that can meet many service-oriented architecture (SOA) requirements.
Business Architecture: Where it fits in the Enterprise Architecture
Most organizations routinely overlook Business Architecture. Those organizations that do consider it seem to think of Business Architecture as something distinct and separate from Enterprise Architecture. It is not.
Enterprise Architecture is not about technology; it is about the enterprise—the whole enterprise. It is about the people: internal and external. It is about the business processes: strategic, core and support. And, it is about the technology that supports the people and enables the business.
The Foundation of a Business Architecture
During the past few years research firms have advocated the value and importance of a Business Architecture, and many companies have started building their own. The Business Architecture is found in just about every Enterprise Architecture (EA) framework and one of its many objectives is to better align IT with the business. In June 2006 the first Business Architecture event was successfully hosted by the BPMInstitute and BrainStorm Group in San Francisco.
Case Study: Enterprise-Wide Performance and Business Process Management of Government: Setting the Global Agenda for the Next 10 Years and Beyond
The Florida Department of Revenue has over 5000 employees and a $400M budget. It is the sixth largest agency in the state. The total taxes collected are over $35B for the fiscal year.
The goal of the Department of Revenue’s strategic initiative is to become competitive with world-class organizations in its results and be able to accomplish the mission better than anyone else could. The customers, stakeholders, beneficiaries and suppliers (tax payers) are:
- Policymakers (the Legislature)
- Federal Government
