2006 - Volume 1

Gartner Research Group predicted: “by 2005, at least 90% of large enterprises will have BPM in their enterprise nervous system.”

It comes as no surprise that this envisioned trend is also supported by various other analysts. After all, Business Process Management (BPM) has become the key element to providing organizations with the operational agility and adaptability they need to succeed in the 21st-century global market. The push for information transparency and security, the desire to become an adaptive and on-demand enterprise, and the improvement culture that exists with Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, ISO and BPR, are all triggers that have contributed to the current emergence of BPM. In addition, organizations that grew through mergers & acquisitions are faced with the challenge of unifying their procedures and controls globally, in addition to being asked to comply with new and tighter market regulations.

Although Document/Content Mgmt systems have helped organize and deploy process knowledge, and even if the Business Modeling tools & techniques allowed to define business processes graphically, they are not enough to meet the broad BPM objectives. Beyond the goal of making business processes explicit, BPM aims to make them “executable, controlled and adaptable”. This is where BPM delivers its true value.

Workflow Management

Key to the BPM mission is the automation of enterprise processes, also called Workflow Management. Orchestrating all the components that play a role in the operations and behavior of your organization, Workflow introduces several innovative paradigms.

First, Workflow brings the focus back to the process activity, rather than the business applications (software) used to perform the task. Application menus, mostly IT driven, are replaced by an easy-to-use “User Worklist”. Real-time task notifications, sent to user’s desktop / wireless PDA / mobile phone / email / etc., ensure an efficient flow of work and remove the burden from the user’s shoulders to navigate increasingly complex ERP software to locate the transaction needing attention. The ability to automate the distribution of business tasks and to provide a single interface to users collaborating on tasks that involve cross-application transactions is, by itself, a key evolution from the standpoint of end-to-end EAI integration and operations.

In addition, Workflow Management enables companies to cross company borders and facilitates a smoother and more efficient supply-chain. In his recent bestseller, Thomas L. Friedman states that:

“Workflow platforms are enabling us to do for the service industry what Henry Ford did for manufacturing”.

“We’re taking apart each task and sending it around to whomever can do it best, and because we are doing it in a virtual environment, people need not be physically adjacent to each other, and then we are reassembling all the pieces back together (…). This is not a trivial revolution. This is a major one.” (1)

Workflow is rapidly becoming a crucial element for global organizations to operate efficiently in a world without borders, a global village where the work can be done at the location that is best equipped and where costs are lowest.

BPM: the key enabler to Compliance Mgmt

The mandate of BPM has recently grown to respond to today's global business climate, with its increasing compliance mandates and organizational risks. Market analysts all agree that compliancy certification such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) should not be managed outside the scope of BPM. Embedding compliance controls in business processes enables an organization to go beyond documenting and evaluating SOX controls to actually remedying deficient controls. Organizations adopting BPM-based SOX compliance solutions not only will meet their initial regulatory needs, but will also inherit a long-term framework for strategic risk management and process control.

BPM is also a key stepping-stone to performing Business Activity Monitoring (BAM). Because of BPM’s extensive process knowledge and integration with corporate applications and data, those BPM solutions that incorporate comprehensive rules-based Workflow capabilities are well positioned to also provide dynamic transactions monitoring, flexible statistical reporting and corporate KPI Dashboard alerts. All of these tools allowing your organization to carry out efficient Continuous Process Improvement (CPI).

EZ-Process BPM Suite

With over a decade experience in BPM, DynaFlow specialists are strong believers that the true power of BPM lies not only within each of the above disciplines (Content Mgmt, Workflow Mgmt, BAM, CPI, KPI, SOX, etc.), but rather within their thigh integration into one seamless solution. To meet all extended BPM requirements, DynaFlow’s EZ-Process BPM Suite provides components such as:

EZ-Modeler: to perform stand-alone Business Modeling while providing a central BPM corporate repository;

EZ-Librarian: to support comprehensive Document /Content Mgmt;

EZ-Book: to support extended Knowledge Mgmt by generating dynamically user-role driven manuals for training and other KM objectives;

EZ-Publisher: to provide organizations with a user-role driven BPM Portal to deploy their fully documented processes;

EZ-Compliance: to support SOX (and other) compliance certification via processes/controls integration, employees/applications access controls and  a dynamic conflicts identification engine;

EZ-Workflow: to support state-of-the-art Production and Ad Hoc Workflow capabilities, involving a rules-based engine, KPI Dashboard monitoring and PDA capabilities;

EZ-BPR-Analyzer: to support Business Process Optimization by providing quantitative analysis and simulation capabilities;

EZ-ISO: to support quality certification such as ISO, QS, TS, OHSAS, etc…

EZ-Process users include organizations such as Comcast Cable (largest US cable provider), Siemens PTD, Fujitsu, MD Robotics (Manufacturer of the Space Shuttle Remote Manipulator under contract with NASA), Solar Turbines/Caterpillar, Herman Miller, and others.

Making sure your enterprise is process-aware, -focused, and –driven is a must in today’s business world. Unlike IT implementations such as Y2K and ERP that required significant budgets, BPM involves assets you already have: your process knowledge. Proven benefits and a faster ROI, don’t miss out on the BPM opportunity…

For more information, visit
www.EZ-Process.com

Reference: 1.Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat, p. 80.

Biography

Pierre Beaulieu is the founder and President of DynaFlow Workflow Solutions Inc., with offices in North America and Europe. Engineer in Manufacturing Automation for the last 20 years, Mr. Beaulieu has been involved in the global BPM/Workflow rollout in several countries of the Americas and in development & innovation projects of several BPM solutions.