The article goes on to describe in some specific detail how BPM has helped Norfolk, VA maintain, and often enhance, service levels, meeting increased citizen expecations despite budget cuts.

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A little over 2 years after the first Earth Day in 1969, the single chip microprocessor was introduced to the world. In great part this invention catapulted us into a technological revolution.

To put things into perspective, the crew of the Apollo 13 mission – another 40^th anniversary celebrated this month – were working with a computer that had about as much memory as a pocket calculator; and today, in less than a minute, my cell phone can assess highway traffic, propose a new route, and then provide me with real time instructions as I navigate (I’m sure the crew would have had a much easier trip had they had their smart phones on them).

Our attitude towards technology and its Green capabilities has also changed dramatically.

During the era when “Going Green” was still a grass roots movement it would have been laughable to suggest that computers could help clean up the environment – and the phrase “Green Technology” would have been considered an oxymoron!

Today we have only begun to explore the benefits of green technology.

A few months ago I wrote a post, Lean process agility breeds green viability, which examines the relationship between the business attitudes that make up the New Normal – “we need to ‘Lean out’ and eliminate excess waste; being bulky causes us to operate ineffectively” – and the longstanding mantra of the Green Movement – “we need to change our wasteful ways.”

For businesses, the Green Movement isn’t just a moral choice, but it also makes a lot of sense. In a recent article about pharmaceuticals employing green practices, Mike Whaley, senior director of environmental health and safety at Allergan Inc. noted the business value of being Green – “The more efficient you are the more profitable you are,” he stated.

It’s true – when it comes to “Getting Lean,” and when it comes to “Going Green,” efficiency is the name of the game. At Metastorm we are proud that our software solutions can help organizations do both.

Through the use of our Enterprise Architecture (EA), Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Process Analysis (BPA) software, organizations have been able to identify “Fat” in their organization – or areas where they are wasting resources, and running inefficiently – and adjust their processes to eliminate unnecessary overhead and accelerate their performance; minimizing impact on the environment while maximizing their bottom line and competitive advantage.

And it keeps getting better! With new technologies (like the ones we will be unveiling at the 2010 Metastorm Global User Conference) that enable employees to collaborate more effectively without necessitating as much travel, organizations will also be able to further reduce fuel consumption and other associated costs.

To learn more about how we can help you “Get Lean” and “Go Green,” check out this complimentary eBook, Green BPM- The Best Kept Secret for Meeting Your Company’s Green Mandates. This eBook is absolutely a must-read whether you are looking to Lean out your enterprise for greater business value, to “Go Green,” or both!

Happy Earth Day everyone!

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The lives of many organizations have similar, humble beginnings.

But in order to survive and thrive in their environments both the caterpillar and the business have to grow – and for both parties, growing is essentially an input, output scenario.

For the business to grow, it needs to collect resources – people, materials, technology, infrastructure, etc. in order to produce its deliverables or provide its services, which will ultimately enable it to generate profits and expand.

The caterpillar on the other hand, needs to consume food to provide its body with energy - this enables the caterpillar to utilize food resources to increase its size.

Undoubtedly both the caterpillar and the business need resources to grow. But just like the caterpillar in a much beloved and well known children’s book, a business can become fat as it consumes more resources than necessary – or even the wrong resources altogether. Imagine your organization eating through 5 million sheets of paper, 40 thousand dollars in fines from a compliance violation, 150 hours of employee productivity because of duplication of effort, and so on.

Luckily for the caterpillar, it instinctively builds a cocoon that transforms it into a beautiful butterfly – eliminating its excess bulk, and allowing it to soar to new levels of prosperity.

But what’s a business to do? For businesses, overconsumption and poor management is a major problem that can lead to significant losses. Being too fat can be fatal to an enterprise – causing it to waste the profits that it needs to survive and thrive, and to become so sluggish that it is unable to effectively compete in the marketplace.

Unfortunately, no organization can wrap itself up in a cocoon and triumphantly emerge months later as a new and improved version of its former self. But if it were possible, I think it’s a safe bet that many would retract for a brief period and allow such a change to happen.

But there are technologies that can act like a cocoon to facilitate business transformation – and, even better than a cocoon, these technologies enable organizations to realize real, measurable improvements without ever requiring them to pull away from the marketplace. This means organizations can serve their customers and drive results while transforming to be Leaner, more agile and competitive than ever before.

For example, with Metastorm Enterprise, Metastorm’s integrated software suite of Business Process Management (BPM), Business Process Analysis (BPA) and Enterprise Architecture (EA), organizations can achieve business transformation in 3 easy steps:

Step 1: SEE the breadth of the enterprise including goals, resources and key process relationships with Metastorm ProVision®.

Step 2: THINK through and analyze possible organizational changes and process improvements with Metastorm ProVision for BPA – ensuring that the right changes are made.

Step 3: DO the right things with Metastorm BPM® – and quickly and cost effectively realize desired changes and results.

With Metastorm’s “See. Think. Do” capabilities, organizations can identify time and resource wasters, test and implement improvements, and then execute new processes to metamorphose from fat and sluggish to harmonious, well-balanced and resource efficient – enabling them to soar above the competition and achieve unprecedented levels of success.

With Metastorm Enterprise, business transformation truly is elementary – after all, it’s as easy as counting to 3!

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The podcast, “The USAF, Six Sigma, and BPM,” discusses how the US Air Force utilized Metastorm ProVision® and Metastorm BPM® to achieve a 200% increase in automation to gain more efficiency, productivity, and control.

According to Chaney, the project began when the Department of Defense (DoD) mandated that, in order for DoD organizations to continue receiving funding, their IT investments had to include an Enterprise Architecture (EA) tool.

As part of its new EA initiative, the US Air Force wanted to identify how its IT infrastructure was supporting its business processes, and how well the processes were performing in the supported environments. To meet the goals of an existing initiative, Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century (AFSO21), which aims to streamline processes and optimize resource consumption – the US Air Force also wanted to “Lean out” its business processes to do more with less.

Listen to this podcast and read this customer success story to learn how the team used Metastorm ProVision to see and analyze its processes, and to identify time wasters and other areas of inefficiency, how it subsequently used Metastorm BPM to execute the Leaner, more agile processes across the entire enterprise, and how it utilized the power of the Metastorm Enterprise software suite to realize greater efficiency, and meet the goals of AFSO21.

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In order to achieve the most success with a Lean BPM initiative, Chaney recommended that teams be small and agile. He said that it is important to ensure that a team has the right combination of skill sets, and that all members have a well-defined role. Make sure that the team has the correct mindset to work well with the business analysts and developers, and that everyone is brought into an executable environment. As usual, communication is a key factor in making a team successful, as is supporting the team and development cycles with the right tool sets and skills so that the project can move quickly and effectively.

Chaney also recommended that project managers time box the analysis phase so that the project doesn’t fall into analysis paralysis, because this will diminish its overall value. Setting a limit to the amount of time spent on analysis will help everybody on the team focus on what’s important for the project. With an end goal and a specific date, everyone can be better focused. BPM by nature should be  flexible and agile, so it is important to ensure that the team doesn’t get so caught up in analysis that they lose sight of that fact.

Prioritization of requirements is also critical. Make sure the team works on the most important things first. Chaney commented that 20% of processes are used 80% of the time, so if a team can get that core 20% “Leaned,” then they’ve addressed 80% of inefficiencies. He suggested prototyping the top 5 processes to show significant improvement early on, and to get everyone on board to expand the project across the enterprise.

Finally, Chaney encouraged rewarding the team if they have done a good job and are tracking ahead of schedule. Morale is very important to any process improvement initiative. If the team is not productively moving, they’re not really adding value.  So, if they’ve achieved their goal for a particular day, tell them to take the rest of the day off, and they will ultimately be more productive in the future.

Want to watch this webinar? Check it out as an onDemand webcast .

And don’t forget to sign up for the final webinar in Metastorm’s Lean Webinar Series, Lean to the Power of Three, which will run twice on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 9:00 AM EST and 1:00 PM EST.

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The modern day Lean does not have to be about formal methodologies – the new Lean is about productivity, efficiency and competitive advantage. It is about doing business smarter and faster by squeezing out underutilized resources and eliminating time wasters. The new Lean applies to every industry, and it is becoming a top agenda item for CIOs everywhere. Metastorm’s Lean webinar series is designed to empower organizations to “get Lean” with enterprise architecture (EA), business process analysis (BPA) and business process management (BPM) to help cut costs, improve productivity and lower risk in smart ways that will enable them to gain a competitive advantage now, and to accelerate success in the future.

The following are featured in Metastorm’s Lean webinar series:

Lean Enterprise Architecture: EA Can Be Fast & Agile
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Session1: 6:00am PT/9:00am ET/2:00pm GMT
Session 2: 10:00am PT/ 1:00pm ET/ 6:00pm GMT

In the “new normal” of today’s operating environment, it is more important than ever to make the most of your enterprise resources. Well targeted enterprise architecture initiatives can help you achieve more, better and faster, with the same or fewer resources. Productivity, efficiency, optimal use of assets both in-house and in the “cloud” – that’s what Lean EA can deliver. Learn from a hands-on EA and BPM practitioner who has successfully implemented Lean EA techniques tied directly into business process management for fast, practical results. To register, visit http://www.metastorm.com/news/webinars.asp

Business Process Analysis: Identify & Eliminate the Fat in Your Processes
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Session1: 6:00am PT/9:00am ET/2:00pm GMT
Session 2: 10:00am PT/ 1:00pm ET/ 6:00pm GMT

To get Lean, you need to know where the fat is, and therefore where you have opportunities to be more efficient and productive. But where do you start when your organization is comprised of literally hundreds or thousands of business processes? Business process analysis software provides built-in expertise and algorithms to zero in on the best and worst areas of your processes and simulate changes that will deliver better results – no PhD required! This webinar will explore how packaged BPA software can give you the insight you need to make effective process changes that take into account all dependencies and a variety of objectives – including cost, time and profit. To register, visit http://www.metastorm.com/news/webinars.asp

Getting Leaner Faster with Business Process Management
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Session1: 6:00am PT/9:00am ET/2:00pm GMT
Session 2: 10:00am PT/ 1:00pm ET/ 6:00pm GMT
BPM has been hailed as one of the best and fastest ways to operate in a leaner, more optimized manner. But a critical question is what BPM approaches can allow you to get lean the fastest, with the greatest certainty and with the largest business results? Get advice from a hands-on CMMI, Six Sigma and Lean practitioner who has successfully implemented roundtrip process improvements complete with metrics and significant, quantifiable benefits to productivity and efficiency. To register, visit http://www.metastorm.com/news/webinars.asp

Lean to the Power of 3
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Session1: 6:00am PT/9:00am ET/2:00pm GMT
Session 2: 10:00am PT/ 1:00pm ET/ 6:00pm GMT
Are your goals out of sync with reality? Is the business out of sync with IT? Failing to align strategy with execution and difficulty aligning business and IT are two of the most fundamental issues standing in the way of optimizing organizational productivity, efficiency and performance. To truly “get Lean,” you need greater visibility into and collaboration on what matters most. Learn from industry experts who have successfully used EA, BPA and BPM software together to bridge these gaps – with significant improvements in the business. To register, visit http://www.metastorm.com/news/webinars.asp

For more Lean resources, visit http://www.metastorm.com/solutions/horizontal/lean-solutions.asp

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Of course this new, unwavering display of willpower and drive usually lasts until around March when gym attendance slowly trickles back to its normal, pre-resolution-season numbers. But there are always those dedicated few who come out on top – leaner, more agile and energized, and of course, healthier and more resilient than ever before.

A recent Financial Times post outlines ways that we can increase our chances of being successful with our fitness resolutions – one being to enlist a personal trainer. Another important element to a successful resolution season (and beyond!) is of course, to evaluate the way we treat our bodies – Are we drinking enough water? Are we wasting calories on poor food choices? Are we getting enough sleep, or spending too much time watching television?

This really comes down to one essential question— Are we allocating our time and resources to ensure that our bodies are running at optimal efficiency?

A few months ago I explained that businesses are just like the human body – living, growing and continually changing. So shouldn’t you pay attention to how you allocate your time and resources within your organization? Just like your body, your business can also get Lean to become more agile and productive, and healthier and more resilient than ever!

Set a fitness resolution for your business in the New Year, and let us be your personal trainer! You can fast track your efforts to get Lean in 2010 with help from Metastorm’s Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management software. Using Metastorm as your platform for getting Lean will enable you to:

• Analyze your operations and infrastructure to identify underutilized resources,
• Run process scenarios to figure out how to accelerate cycle times and improve results,
• Identify where time is wasted and improve on those business processes,
• Automate processes to increase efficiency, save money, and become more agile – do more with less, and
• Give your employees a toolset that will make them more productive from Day One.

With Metastorm’s help your organization can lose the ‘fat,’ accelerate results and rev up the corporate metabolism!

Want to know more about your organization’s connection to the human body? Read this recent article by Laura Mooney, Vice President of Corporate Communications at Metastorm.

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Coinciding with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, IDC released a buzz-generating report that found that 5.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions could be eliminated by 2020 with the help of certain green technologies.

The report examined four major economic sectors including the transport sector, which, according to the findings, needs to focus on supply chain logistics and private transport optimization for emissions reductions, and placed IT investments that enhance supply chain logistics among the most important to CO2 emissions reduction within this sector.

Streamlining supply chains is more than just a green initiative, however. In the new normal economy, technology is making the world smaller while greatly increasing the scope of business operations. Organizations who invest in IT to achieve the most agile and cost and resource effective supply chain will realize exponential ROI to outperform their competition.

Emphasizing this importance, respondents in another recent report Greater Innovation through Closer Collaboration said that it is critical for their corporation to respond to “competitive pressures to improve productivity and performance and customer demands for greater speed and visibility into supply and delivery chains” in order for them to survive in today’s fast-paced global marketplace.

The good news is that innovative technology solutions like business process management (BPM), business process analysis (BPA) and enterprise architecture (EA) can help you holistically model and analyze your supply chain and your entire enterprise, test the effects of potential change, and then execute leaner, meaner, and yes, even greener processes across your organization to achieve overall enterprise optimization by eliminating waste and accelerating performance.

Want to know more?

Metastorm’s complimentary eBook Green BPM- The Best Kept Secret for Meeting Your Company’s Green Mandates explains how BPM can help organizations:

• Reduce paper consumption,
• Reduce fuel and transport costs,
• And, of course achieve greater efficiency in their manufacturing and supply chain processes.

This eBook is absolutely a must-read whether you are looking to purify your enterprise for greater business value, to go green, or both!

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On the fence about a BPM investment?

A recent research report from AIIM,“Business Process Management- are we making the most of content-driven processes?” reported that 72% of organizations using BPM received a 100% payback in their BPM investment within 2 years, with 50% of those surveyed receiving a full payback within 18 months.

Ok, so you’re a believer—but what about the rest of your organization?

After nearly a decade of market research on what drives successful BPM implementations, the answer for what prevents them is consistently “lack of sponsorship” by upper management. In other words, the single largest hurdle to BPM implementation is cited as finding someone (an executive or a department) to pay for and champion it.

Want to build a business case for your BPM investment to get that upper management support that your project needs? Check out our complimentary whitepaper, “Building a Business Case for BPM- a Fast Path to Real Results.”

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A recent article from Society for Computers & Law features Laura Mooney, vice president of corporate communications for Metastorm, discussing how firms such as Allen & Overy, DLA, Duane Morris, Eversheds, Foley & Lardner, Freshfields, Hogan & Hartson, and Jones Day are increasingly implementing business process management (BPM) technology to help drive business efficiencies.

Many firms, prior to implementing a BPM solution, encounter problems that inhibit their overall performance in areas like productivity and revenue, regulatory compliance and customer service. However, with the help of innovative solutions like BPM, practices can strategically automate core processes—like new business intake, for example— which can dramatically reduce time, labor and supply costs across the firm.

Firms can leverage BPM software to achieve regulatory compliance and reduce risk to save hundreds of thousands of pounds on annual liability insurance premiums. Because BPM automates human-centric processes, it ensures repeatability and consistency in processes and enforces business rules and levels of authority in all actions. Every action taken in a process is captured into an online audit trail that can be viewed, analyzed and used during an auditing period, which helps firms maintain regulatory compliance.

With the functionality created through BPM firms can quickly achieve measurable results such as a decrease in duplicate data entry, errors and omissions and administrative overhead while centralizing reuse of existing data, systems and technologies through seamless integration.

BPM technology helps law firms achieve a competitive advantage by increasing efficiency and reducing costs while enabling superior client service, all of which are critical to success.

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Some states, however, are proactively turning toward innovative IT initiatives to achieve greater efficiency in their tax collection process– with the goal of extracting the greatest value possible from their underfunded budgets.

For example, one of Metastorm’s state government customers used Metastorm BPM® as a foundation for developing a streamlined, simplified and centralized system for managing liens and tax information within its Department of Revenue—the department that is responsible for collecting personal income tax, sales and use tax, all corporate taxes, inheritance tax and all other state taxes. The department used BPM to develop a single system that houses all tax data—allowing employees to easily access taxpayer information in real-time, and more accurately enforce the collection of delinquent accounts. Prior to implementation, it took the department up to 4 weeks to research and gather information on particular tax liens. Now it takes less than a day.

The reality is that states will continue to struggle with budget deficits as the country weathers the current economic storm. Fortunately, however, as governments reevaluate their IT spending to best utilize their resources through business process management and enterprise architecture initiatives, their overall efficiency will be greatly strengthened today and in years to come.

Because states cannot best utilize funds without perfecting their collecting process, a great starting point for these initiatives is leveraging BPM to create efficiencies in the area of tax revenue collection.

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The article titled, “How to Use Business Process Management and Enterprise Architecture Tools to Thrive in a Recession,” first outlines four ways BPM software can allow for cost savings. BPM software can:

• Increase efficiency
• Maximize current resources
• Lower risk
• Gain greater visibility into dead weight

While an EA software tool can help organizations evaluate and make critical infrastructure decisions that can dramatically reduce fixed-cost expenditures and ensure that any reductions are the right reductions to make. EA software can:

• Identify duplicate or underutilized overhead
• Optimize your value chain
• Quickly and effectively assimilate mergers and acquisitions

Investing in these types of tools will ensure that you are well-positioned when the economy rebounds.

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In a recently published eBook entitled “BPM and EA – two smart investments in a recession,” Laura Mooney, Vice President, Corporate Communications at Metastorm, highlights how EA helps firms achieve and balance these goals: it delivers operational efficiency by identifying duplicate or underutilized overhead, it optimizes your value chain, it quickly and effectively assimilates mergers and acquisitions and it drives cost savings. Metastorm’s clients have showed real ROI by adopting EA. For example, a retail franchisor consolidated its databases from 35 to just 4, saving significant time, money and energy resources.

The panellists who took part in the discussion at the Open Group’s 22^nd Annual Enterprise Architecture Practitioner Conference highlighted some further interesting points about the need of EA during times of recession: it becomes a tool for strategic business transformation, it should demonstrate a long-term path while creating short-term value for the business, it makes a business impact by working across silos, and across HR, Finance and Operations. Finally EA should be seen as a business tool that can add value rather than an IT tool.

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Bob further touched on the topic of productivity. Productivity and efficiency are key topics of business discussion for countries within the European Union, and Romania is no different. The country has strived to increase productivity levels to match their EU counterparts, and organizations there view BPM as a business technology that can help them achieve the efficiency goals.

During the broadcast, Bob also discussed the launch of Apertix, a new project process pod from BPMWave, a Romanian company dedicated to Business Process Management and Enterprise Architecture. Apertix is a very flexible project management tool that is based off of Metastorm BPM. The software can map human resources to project roles, report on tasks that have been completed, and facilitate a number of other project management tasks. Further, it goes beyond project management through constant monitoring, thus enabling project managers to focus on the quality of their work.

If you’re interested in learning more about Metastorm’s partner BPM Wave, please click here.

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The AIIM study surveyed 962 firms and revealed some interesting results related to the content challenges many organizations face today, as well as the business issues they prioritize most in regards to IT investments and specific technologies likely to boom in 2009.

John Mancini, president of AIIM said, “for many organizations, poorly managed and out of control information represents a huge potential source of bottom line savings in this tight economy — if only organizations would just take this cost saving seriously.”

Mancini continues to note that controlled content can be fed into business processes to speed them up, cut down travel via project collaboration, and form a knowledge base for the business. He says that uncontrolled content represents a lost opportunity.

With a pervasive concern to manage content for reasons related to cost savings, efficiency and compliance, the study revealed that BPM is likely to grow strongly in 2009 – a common thread that exists throughout the IT community. In fact, Jim Sinur, an analyst for Gartner, recently noted in his blog that in these economic times, “BPM is not considered a luxury but a necessity.”

More than 500 business executives attended the Gartner BPM conference to learn how to “survive, thrive and capitalize,” the theme of the event. Sinur says:

• “BPM helps organizations survive by bringing unnecessary shadow processes to light for potential savings.”

• “BPM can enable organizations to thrive by turning up the volume on process improvement.”

• “BPM allows selected organizations to capitalize by purposely facing strategic problems.”

The spotlight seems to be on BPM as a number of executives reevaluate their IT dollars to ensure that their organizations are poised for efficiency and growth.

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