By Chris J. Jensen

Business is constantly seeking ways to improve performance, react to changing market demands, and achieve its annual goals. This constant searching results in a myriad of projects designed to improve the one constant in all business efforts: business process. There are so many process improvement projects going on in a company at any given time that it appears the company is in the business of creating and managing these projects, not producing consumer products or services.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert cartoons, has made a good living poking fun at how businesses oversee some of these process improvement projects and technology projects. However, you never really know the product or service Dilbert's company produces. It is irrelevant. The comedy is in the process of making it not happen.

What makes these process improvement projects so painfully funny at times, at least to the outsider? The challenge required to effectively manage a process from beginning to end. Companies are deploying an emerging technology solution to take some of the flubs, flops, and fumbles out of managing disjointed business processes across traditional spans of control (silos). The technology is now commonly referred to as Business Process Management (BPM).

In this article we will give an introduction of BPM, its history, and selected vendors. We will also give an example of a solution and its application. The example will also explain the value of using these applications to actively develop, manage, and improve business processes.

Background
The term business process management and the acronym BPM has been used for a number of years, representing everything from process modeling, to process re-engineering, enterprise application integration, workgroup systems, and workflow.

The fact is that managing by business process involves many tools and potential technology solutions. BPM refers to business systems that help develop and manage business processes end to end, from a business event to the ultimate business result. These systems seek to take elements of traditional business process solutions and bring them together so that they can be managed effectively and optimized end to end. These processes often include internal and external partners, systems, and people. 

Is BPM For Everyone?
All companies can benefit from a better understanding of their key business processes, analyzing them for areas of improvement and implementing improvements. BPM applications have been successfully developed to help improve complex business issues of some medium- to large-sized companies. Like many large scale implementation projects, BPM solutions are most successful in companies with a good understanding of their technology landscape and management willing to approach business in a new way. BPM solutions are truly driven by the business process and the company's owners. Effective BPM solutions allow business owners to manage many aspects of the technology through business rules they develop and maintain. Companies that cannot support or manage cultural and organizational changes should think carefully about investing in BPM if owners think it will solve all their business process problems.

Vendors and Their Solutions
Comprehensive BPM platforms help organizations model and define complete business processes, implement those processes integrated with existing systems, and provide business leaders with the ability to analyze, manage, and improve the execution of processes in real time. Many of the current market offerings use the term business process management, but they might only provide limited process workflow capabilities or functionality in a limited number of the key BPM elements, such as providing Web-based features, and improving functionality and integration.

BPM vendors are emerging with solutions based on some of their historical strengths such as document management and workflow. According to a February 2003 study published by the Forrester Research Group, the three vendors emerging as the early leaders in the BPM marketplace are FileNet, Savvion, and Staffware. Their rankings are based on the level of functionality of the solutions and the degree of market penetration of the vendor.

FileNet (www.filenet.com) maintains a strong base of users from the document management arena. It has been in the business of content and document management since 1982 and expanding into the BPM arena seems like a natural extension. Its BPM offering leverages this strength and client base to be a very strong player. FileNet offers Business Process Manager based on the FileNet P8 standards-based architecture, which provides enterprise-level scalability and flexibility to handle the content challenges, complex business processes, and integration to existing systems. The FileNet P8 architecture offers a scalable framework for functional expansion to manage enterprise content and Web publishing, and provide process control and consistency across your enterprise.

Savvion developed its product architecture in the late 90s specifically to deliver BPM in an Internet enabled world. As such, its system leverages current technologies and standards, integrates with existing systems, and is able to work with corporate portals. Savvion designed management visibility and monitoring at the core of the system to complement the comprehensive process modeling, automation, and event management capabilities. Coupled with a collaborative process design environment that brings together the business, IT, and systems people who manage process, Savvion addresses enterprise process management from workgroup to enterprise.

Staffware (www.staffware.com) comes from a workflow background and its strength is directing work to the proper people and systems. Its solution, Staffware Process Suite, uses a layered approach to develop business processes, including a business process engine at the base to automate the processes. A modeling tool is used as a guide to help integrate the people, processes, and applications. A process monitor provides a view to manage the efficiencies and effectiveness of the process. The layers work together to provide the integrated approach to BPM that Staffware advertises.

Risks and Rewards
If your company is considering BPM, be aware of the risks involved in implementing this system. For instance, one factor that is sure to derail this kind of project has nothing to do with technology. Managing by process involves cultural and organizational changes that companies must make to support the new management approach required for success. Where ten area leaders once controlled ten pieces of an end to end process, there is now a new group involved in implementing a BPM solution across all these areas. Suddenly the span of control is consolidated and all are accountable to the process as at a whole, not just one piece of the puzzle.

But the added benefit of BPM is that it is not just a technology solution, it is a business solution. BPM is a new business architecture and approach to managing the process and enabling proactive, continuous improvement. The new organizational structure and roles created to support BPM helps maximize the continuous benefits to ensure success.

An IT director from a large financial services company gave this feedback when asked about his experience in using Savvion's BusinessManager solution to improve the company's application help desk process. Before BPM, the company's application help desk was a manual process, filled with inefficiencies, human error, and no personal accountability. In addition, the "old" process provided no visibility into the process. There was absolutely no way to track requests, since it was all based on paper. Since they served internal customers (business users), their satisfaction with the process was very low.

A BPM solution provided a way for the company to automate, execute, manage, and monitor the process in real time. The biggest technical challenge in implementation was ensuring that the user group was self-sufficient. While the company recognized that the IT organization is needed, it wanted to be able to maintain and implement any necessary "process changes" with little reliance on IT. It views process management as empowering the business users to maintain, control, and monitor the process. BPM goes a long way to enable this process.

The key consideration from a pure technical perspective was that it wanted to ensure this solution was within the IT standards mandated by the company. The IT director also wanted to make sure the solution was 100% Web deployed and leveraged existing tools common to the company's business users. For example, while it leveraged the BPM portal from the solution the company wanted to make sure BPM used every day tools like email. In many cases business users wanted email notification when they need to perform certain tasks. With regards to this simple example, an email with a URL to the BPM portal provided the "necessary" alert.

The other major objective was to ensure the system was "intuitive", that is a new user could walk through it with minimal training. The company wanted the Web application to be as intuitive as Yahoo. It wanted to encourage users and make it as non-intrusive as possible.

To ensure BPM addressed the technical issues, the company focused on vendor management. It made sure the vendor, in this case Savvion, provided the necessary guidance. The company found out BPM is more of an art and not a science from a design perspective. Therefore, managers made sure the vendors explained the pros and cons of certain process design issues.

To ensure users would be able to work with the system, the project team involved business users at the outset of the project. Users had an opportunity to review the application and offer comments on the user interface. This was as critical as making sure the IT community leveraged Web standards and assistance.

There were also non-technical challenges. A cultural revolution has occurred at the company. Now it changes processes when needed or when it wants to make an improvement. With the ability to rapidly deploy and modify the process, the company explained to users this couldn't be a static process especially up front. 

Once the process was "streamlined" it did eventually become more static. That it, the company doesn't need to make overhauls to the process. For example, it continually changes business rules when reviewing service level agreements. The business users can also create ad-hoc processes to manage exceptions to the exceptions. The point is that they can always manage and monitor the ongoing execution of the process. That part never stops.

Conclusion
BPM solutions apply technology to help overcome broken and ineffective business processes. Are businesses ready to optimize their processes to take full advantage of what the technology can offer? Time will tell. Since BPM is in the early adopters phase, the companies that meet the challenges effectively should have an advantage on the competition. Not only are they the first to implement BPM technology, these pioneers are the first to revolutionize the way they manage business.

In the next article about BPM, we will explore how companies have identified the need and met the challenge of business process management, implemented change, and have begun to reap the benefits of a new and innovative way of doing business. I will also discuss the technology behind the scenes that helps business managers ride to the rescue of floundering and ineffective business processes.

Jul2003, Digital Publishing Solutions