As much as we throw around the term "process management", you'd think everyone has implemented some form of a business process management (BPM) solution. Yeah, there's a lot of companies that see benefits in building better equipped processes, but in my experience there's no tool that's ever fixed an inherently bad business process. It's takes the people, process, and technology trio to make real impact. To quote Bruce Silver from this story,"BPM is both a management philosophy and a software tool." The article lists five reasons for investing in process management. There's a few CIOs who agree.
As usual, Sandy Kemsley beat me to the punch. She was in our office this week presenting her BPM Workshop, which is getting good press from the Imagine Solutions Delivery team!
Meeting Sandy was one of the times when the blogosphere all of a sudden felt really, really small. It's pretty amazing when a person's blog persona literally precedes them. I felt like I could complete a few of her sentences from months of reading her BPM insight. Scary, but way cool.
SOA has taken hold in Financial Services, according to a report released Monday by BearingPoint and Datamonitor.
Five dimensions of change that will characterize the industry over the next five to ten years include:
And on an ECM note, capture and document management crept into the survey in a Check 21 context.
"Several large U.S. banks have begun the process of capturing images at the branch or ATM, and will begin exchanging images as soon as a critical mass of banks begins doing so. Workflow and document management technologies are being used to streamline the credit approval process.
In a recent Intelligent Enterprise poll on business process management, 36 percent of 1,700 respondents said they were actively considering the use of BPM technology. BPM Analyst Connie Moore of Forrester Research details what companies should be thinking about as they define their BPM strategy. Some of what's driving BPM deployments is echoed below.
"It's about efficiency and productivity, streamlining processes, reducing cycle time, getting work done faster, getting work done with fewer resources and freeing up people to do value-added work as opposed to the mundane work. Compliance is another driver. Within government, compliance could be the need to comply with freedom-of-information acts. In the corporate realm, it could be Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX); a lot of folks seized on the document dimension of SOX, but there's a very heavy process dimension as well. In healthcare it's HIPAA—each industry has its own list of compliance requirements."
The BPM vendors are getting a lot of mindshare these days..especially from the Rules Engine and BI guys -- a pretty obvious marriage. This time it's Cognos that's aligning with the process management providers on the heels of its Cognos 8 release.
FileNet's quotes on their Cognos support...
“The ability to leverage Business Intelligence in support of Business Process Management has become a strategic priority for FileNet’s customers. With the launch of Cognos 8 BI, Cognos has effectively set a new standard for excellence in performance management, due in large part to the solution’s advanced services-oriented architecture and open data strategy,” said Martyn Christian, chief marketing officer at FileNet. “Cognos’ single, modern BI platform combined with FileNet P8’s BPM capabilities help organizations optimize their business by providing in process business intelligence data to knowledge workers that leverage BI’s analysis and monitoring capabilities to optimize and streamline business processes in real time. Together, these capabilities allow us to offer up-to-date business intelligence data when it matters most, during key decision points of the business process.”
Web Content Management (WCM) got a boost today with FileNet's new release of WCM 3.0, a solution geared for companies managing large websites and intranets. FileNet bought eGrail a few years back ( CMSwatch comments) but didn't seem to play up its WCM capabilities until recently.
We think you'll see more companies embracing WCM 3.0 as more ECM back-ends get put into place. From a technology perspective, WCM doesn't drive large ECM projects, it's the content engine, image repository,or BPM capabilities.
The other takeaway from the release is how the ECM vendors are stressing the importance of usability in ECM applications. I challenge you to find an ECM press release that doesn't lead with the an end-user slant. But isn't that the way it should be?
"Among the new and enhanced features of FileNet Web Content Manager is integration with FileNet's industry-leading Business Process Management capabilities and support for clustering for improved scalability. WCM 3.0 also features a new FileNet P8 integrated, user interface that provides intuitive, easy-to-use content entry templates, and a component level architecture, which supports versioning and the revision of content at the object level, rather than the page level."
Starter-kit approaches to BPM continue to be popular with users. This time the notion is backed up by Delphi Group's survey of more than 100 companies.
"Among all 111 users surveyed, about a third said they would "definitely" be more likely to purchase a solution accompanied by a template than a purely horizontal solution lacking any vertical or domain orientation. This camp jumps to over two thirds when adding those who said they would "sometimes" be more likely to opt for a solution with templates."
| Which Process Templates Would Be of Most Interest to Your Company? | |
| 13% | Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance |
| 12% | General A/P (billing disputes) |
| 12% | New customer or service provisioning |
| 11% | Procure-to-Pay (supplier) |
| 10% | New hire/employee provisioning |
| 10% | Software development |
| 9% | Expense reimbursement |
| 9% | Order-to-cash (customer) |
| 9% | Underwriting or claims processing |
| 5% | Other |
FinanceTech asked industry experts to comment on ECM solutions in Financial Services.
Sandy Kemsley over on Column 2 comments on the Compliance software market in the context of a recent webinar she attended with a slew of ECM / BPM vendors. "Chaotic " is a description we'd agree with. I'd be interested in her comments on FileNet's Records Management strategy.
From her post:
"If, like 1/3 of Doculabs' current customers, compliance is one of your highest priorities for 2005, it's worth your time to check out compliance solutions like this from ECM/BPM vendors. The whole compliance field is still chaotic; a Gartner report on compliance management software lists 26 vendors and clearly states that the compliance market is not mature:"
A key finding of our research is that there is no comprehensive compliance management application. Whether buying from one or many vendors to get a solution, you will need significant services for implementation and integration.
"At FileNet, where software revenues rose 24 percent in the last quarter, CMO Martyn Christian recently said that more than half the company's deals now involve business process management (BPM) technologies (not counting basic workflow and routing). Citing company research, Christian said the ECM market is growing 13 percent per year while BPM is growing 27 to 32 percent annually, so it's easy to guess what's leading FileNet's growth."
From the Intelligent Enterprise article "In Focus: What's Hot and Not-So-Hot in ECM"
There's no lack of BPM activity over the airwaves. And since BPM is an important component of the larger ECM suites, you'll find us posting quite a bit of information on ways you can use BPM to create better processes and increase "enterprise visibility". As one of the Imagine employees likes to say, "Everything is a process".
And to that extent, we noticed Information Week has a nice piece on BPM, with some stats and metrics related to the forces driving BPM and some typical ROI scenarios.
"While the first waves of BPM adoption were about automation and integration, the focus today is increasingly on regulatory compliance, business and application agility, and optimization. Driven by mandates such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Basel II, companies are turning to BPM to enforce policies and procedures in financial reporting and other core processes that are material to company results. This is a natural for BPM because the systems are designed to document and model processes, apply explicit policies and procedures (as enforced by rules), execute in a consistent hands-off fashion, and track results."
On the heels of the last story, comes another example of how BPM (a component within an enterprise content management platform) is creating a single customer view and aiding compliance.
"Sumitomo began a search in January 2003 for an automated, Web-based business process management (BPM) solution that could integrate with its existing Oracle (Redwood Shores, Calif.) database platform, centralize customer data and electronically deliver it to account officers during transactions. "Our ideal solution would capture our customer information, create a unique user code and automate the fact-checking process.."
An excellent example of how companies are gaining critical visibility into their operations with the use of BPM and "dashboard" appplications. And with the adoption of BPM and integration technologies increasing within the financial services sector, these types of solutions seem like a no-brainer. Dashboard applications are taking the best slices of analytics, business intelligence, and other data and serving it right up to execs, with blinking lights and colors no less.
"The process incorporates two dashboards, one of which monitors technology systems and verifies that systems are connected and that processes are being carried out at defined intervals. The second dashboard is for back-office operations staff, and it displays green, yellow and red condition monitors reflecting progress toward the 9:00 pm deadline."
We're back from the AIIM OnDemand show in Philly and in case you missed it we participated in FileNet's BPM Pavilion, featuring some of FileNet's top partners delivering P8-powered BPM services. And to that extent, Imagine launched BPM eXpress, a set of services aimed at helping customers jumpstart a BPM initiative. It was clear at the show that companies have latched on to BPM and are starting to see real results. Of course, that's a heck of lot easier when you have a proven BPM suite.
We came across this story after some hallway discussions about the use of online forms. Typically, the ROI is pretty straightforward. And the implementation tends to be easier, as the architecture supports Web services and uses XML to move the information. Our guess is you'll be seeing more eForms in the near future, and if the analysts are right about Web Content Management (WCM) resurfacing, that should only add fuel to the fire.
From the story ~
"Most customer-facing processes remain mired in paperwork. Document imaging can minimize paper-handling delays and data-entry labor, but Web-based forms offer a more cost-effective alternative that eliminates paperwork and secondary data entry. Built-in rules and data validation ensure accurate data entry and complete information, and integration with databases and back-end workflows speeds processing."
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