Published: 14 February 2006
Maximizing the Value of Business Process Management
Rashid Khan, CEO at Ultimus highlights the benefits and issues that are involved with the implementation of business process management (BPM).
The benefits of BPM can be remarkable. However, capturing the inherent complexities and dynamic nature of business processes is often a tremendous struggle as work processes tend to evolve iteratively in response to various situations.
Struggles often ensue when IT and business managers convene to apply BPM technology to these changing workflows. Business users feel penned in by seemingly rigid workflows, while IT managers are faced with supporting endless workflow “exceptions.”
To initiate BPM projects, organisations typically start out with detailed process maps that visually capture the flow of activities and business rules that cause different paths to be followed. While these maps prove valuable for promoting understanding of internal activities, they can quickly become complex as new rules are added. In many cases new rules get introduced often before the initial processes are ever deployed. Thus, process maps are never actually complete because change is always occurring.
To address these challenges, many organisations are adopting a new adaptive discovery approach, which allows automated processes to be deployed, without requiring complete process maps and definitions. Adaptive discovery compresses the scope of up-front discovery efforts.
Here’s how it works. The BPM team still includes business and IT representatives who define tangible aspects of a process. Business representatives provide detailed knowledge of the process, business environment, and the impact of the flows and rules being created, while IT creates the steps, forms, and integrations for the process.
A process expert is identified to ensure that process changes are addressed in q timely manner and that appropriate rules are applied so that the process adapts to support unique business needs.
This approach involves understanding the following components:
|
Roles |
The definitions of user responsibilities that enable work to be assigned in a flexible dynamic manner. |
|
Rules |
Logical expressions that define either the routing of work or the execution of specific activities within the process. |
|
Steps |
The discrete tasks that are performed in some sequence to execute the process. |
|
Forms |
The user interface that people use to complete their work activity within a process. |
|
Integration |
The system connections from within a process where work is performed in existing applications on behalf of a process (the growing trend is for process integration activities to be performed using Web Services or other similar software components). |
|
Data Model |
The core set of data that is used in the process |
From a development standpoint, the above components are ordered from the most volatile (roles) to least volatile (data model).
As a result, they also reflect the logical distribution of responsibility between IT and business:
· IT “owns” the infrastructure and develops, deploys and manages the consistent technical aspects of processes, such as data, steps, forms, and integration.
· Process experts “own” the dynamic business aspects of processes, such as flow, rules, exceptions, and roles.
Typical BPM development requires defining an exhaustive list of rules & decisions before any automation occurs.
An adaptive discovery approach requires much less time and effort spent on dynamic process details such as exception handling. IT can generally automate approximately 60 to 70% of processes up front by using this approach, while enabling the process experts to add and change rules within processes.
This gives business teams added flexibility, while freeing IT to focus on higher level activities instead of continuously modeling and changing processes.
Process experts simply adjust process flow and responsibilities dynamically, without requiring changes to the core process definition. This is a key capability of BPM that is powered by adaptive discovery. The BPM system can be programmed to adapt as new contingencies arise, proactively involving a process expert without requiring additional development resources from IT.
For example, as a process is followed, the system detects when the process does not have enough information to determine what should happen next or who should perform the next step. In these instances, a message is sent to the process expert who uses his knowledge about the business and context of the incident to create a rule that defines what happens next. Once the rule is entered, it is applied against the current incident. Now, any future incidents with the same characteristics will take advantage of the new rules.
As more exceptions are identified and rules are applied by process experts, the system continuously learns so that more and more incidents can flow smoothly without involvement from the process expert. In this way, complex processes are handled without impeding the process.
Most BPM suites require the type of changes mentioned above to be made by software developers where processes must be recompiled and redeployed as in a traditional custom software development model.
A large cellular company has greatly benefited from BPM by using a non-traditional approach.
The company created a process team that includes 10 people. The team has two or three traditional developers who focus on heavy lifting such as integration. The balance of the team is primarily composed of business analysts who manage rules, roles, process flows, and reporting outside of a programming environment.
In just over two years, the team has released more than 40 business critical processes to do everything from managing contract fulfillment to enhancing Sarbanes-Oxley compliance activities.
The company has a number of IT initiatives, including several new process requests; however, using the adaptive discovery approach, the IT department will not be encumbered with minor process change requests—now, these can be handled quickly by process experts. Nearly everyone in the company now uses BPM in some way and talks about it positively. It is clear that they feel they could never have done this with traditional application tools and approaches. The addition of the adaptive discovery approach will take the company’s productivity to a whole new level.
Instead of getting bogged down in the minutia of each work process, many businesses are utilizing this new approach to improve operational efficiencies. This adaptive discovery model enables organisations to achieve BPM benefits today and adapt process behaviors as needed.
By compressing process discovery and allowing non-programmatic process rules changes, organisations can derive maximum value from BPM technology in a more timely manner.
Further information
Ultimus UK
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