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 Metastorm ProVision Reference Model for Supply Chain provides a quick start for organizations seeking to understand, analyze and improve their supply chains. Building upon these pre-packaged reference models allows the rapid capture of current supply chains with the Metastorm ProVision enterprise architecture and business process analysis tool, the ability to compare supply chains across different organizations and the ability to identify and design improvements that will yield a more effective and efficient supply chain – getting you closer to achieving your cost reduction, time to market, customer service and supply chain visibility goals. 

Updates to the Metastorm reference model for SCOR include:

• Support for GreenScor, including new activities to manage waste disposal and the addition of a “Green” indicator metric
• The addition of best practices related to Environmental Management.
• The addition of a new layer of ENABLE activities for Risk Management.

To accelerate your success with the SCOR 9.0 reference models for Metastorm ProVision, the Metastorm Professional Services team provides assistance with the implementation and configuration of Metastorm’s reference models and methodologies. And of course, any processes that you model in Metastorm ProVision can be executed, managed and monitored in Metastorm BPM® for ongoing visibility and improvement.  

Learn more about the Metastorm Reference Model for Supply Chain and our Consulting Services.

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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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Green BPM: The Best Kept Secret for Meeting Your Company’s Green Mandate: Learn the best practices for making your organization greener with BPM. This eBook explains 3 key benefits of “Green BPM”— reducing paper usage, lowering fuel and transport costs, and creating more efficient manufacturing and supply chain processes. It also features a case study that highlights a real life example of these benefits in action.

BPM & EA: Two Smart Investments in a Recession: Released earlier this year, this eBook explains how a relatively small investment in BPM and/or EA solutions now can help your organization realize rapid cost savings, make the right restructuring decisions and increase the productivity of the people and systems you already own. Learn how BPM and EA can help your organization do more with less.

Oil & Gas Challenges: How to Prepare for the Next Generation of Business: This eBook examines how BPM, BPA & EA can help oil and gas firms address several major risk factors—uncertain energy policy, price volatility, failed cost containment, human capital deficit and the aging oil & gas infrastructure to survive in today’s turbulent marketplace.

Visit the Metastorm Library and explore its many resources related to the disciplines of Business Process Management, Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Analysis.

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The firm chose Metastorm BPM to streamline the New Business Intake procedure, and then to further automate its Conflict Approval procedure. Using Metastorm, the firm also is striving to become a more paperless practice, broadening its process capabilities, and enabling it to improve productivity and optimize resources.

The law firm’s business users immediately embraced the automated New Business Intake Process for its success as a green initiative, and soon afterward celebrated the new process as being infinitely more efficient and easier to execute than the previous cumbersome paper process.

The firm reports that since automating its New Matter Intake Process with Metastorm BPM, it has experienced a significant decrease in its overall paper usage–adding to the firm’s endeavor to ”go green” and reduce its hard costs. Users have benefited from the time-savings associated with automation, as cumbersome paperwork is no longer manually routed through the firm’s three locations. Furthermore, human error has been greatly reduced with the implementation of mandatory fields and data validation. The newly auditable and fully visible work environment has not only eliminated the problems associated with missing or incomplete paperwork, but has also expedited the entire process since any matter can be elevated if not addressed in a timely manner.

Ultimately, because of the agility created by using Metastorm BPM, the firm is serving its customers’ needs more quickly and efficiently–allowing attorneys to continually focus on their clients, not on paperwork. As it looks to the future, the firm plans to continue its endeavors to experience process improvement in other areas of its firm.

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However, when a business combines EA and BPM, it can truly see the benefits across the board because together these technologies enable organisations to take a broad view of enterprise assets, identify process interdependencies, and identify inefficient and redundant processes and underutilised equipment and storage sites that can be cut out to eliminate waste and improve sustainability.

The truth is that the hidden benefits of going green are actually not that hidden – you simply need a system in place that will support your business desire to implement a “greener” culture and this can be easily done with EA and BPM.

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An area of the exhibition floor is entirely dedicated to presenting the latest and most innovative Green IT solutions to help firms be more energy efficient as well as reduce their carbon footprint which is something that Metastorm has already been working on with its customers by consolidating their systems for example.

And as firms look to reduce inefficiencies and their internal resources in this challenging economic climate, it is natural that the event organisers are also focusing on BPM technology.

In lean times business process needs to be viewed as a long term strategic investment that ultimately will bring real ROI to a company.

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2. Green BPM: The environmental footprint of process In a recent post, Heather Clancy, who adeptly covers “green...
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