For 2009, entries were judged based on excellence demonstrated in all three categories of the Metastorm Enterprise portfolio for Highest Return on Investment, Greatest Strategic Advantage, and Most Mission Critical Use. Nominations for the awards were received from Metastorm’s customer base, employees and partners.

Congratulations to all the winners!

To read more about the award winners, please click here.

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In Microsoft Office 2007, business users can participate in Metastorm BPM® governed processes without leaving the Microsoft Office environment – the tool adds a Metastorm BPM ribbon bar to the Microsoft Office 2007 suite, giving access to process data through tools like Microsoft Office and Microsoft Excel. Users can seamlessly link Metastorm BPM content, or process data, to documents and data generated using Microsoft Office and Microsoft Excel through a process binding feature. This allows business users to generate their own reports and charts using both process data and line of business data collected by the Metastorm process engine – all through familiar Microsoft desktop applications.

In Microsoft SharePoint 2007, sets of portal pages can be designed for different users, or groups of users, that are customized to their specific role within the organization. Users can then fully participate in Metastorm BPM-based processes through that single portal environment. These pages are built using the configurable suite of web parts that are available for Metastorm BPM and can display to-do lists, watch lists, key performance indicators (KPIs), charts, reports, etc. For document-centric processes, Metastorm BPM can take advantage of Microsoft SharePoint’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) capabilities for better knowledge sharing, collaboration and communication and increased process efficiency.

By allowing Metastorm BPM users to take full advantage of popular Microsoft applications, Metastorm is enabling greater distribution of business process management capabilities to business users within their existing work environments. Just one more step toward process-centric thinking as a way of life!

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The pharmaceutical company was experiencing challenges with its current process for several reasons. First, employees were situated globally so it was difficult for work to be distributed. At the time, work was being distributed via email and tracked with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets so there was no precise or reportable audit history. There was also poor visibility into the status of the task, low management insight, and tedious administrative reporting.

The company wanted to improve this process and listed the following items as some of its project goals:

• Standardize and streamline processes
• Reduce manual entry of administrative informatio
• Automate assignment and delivery of wor
• Automate notification
• Ensure appropriate authorizations /approvals of outputs of advancement to next step
• Increase visibility to work status and issue
• Enhance reporting and metrics

They decided on Metastorm BPM to automate the clinical document process for a number of reasons including its ability to automate complex business processes and its speed of implementation and delivery. Using BPM, they implemented a new process where it intelligently routes and tracks tasks defined by business processes, rules, standards, and deliverables. It provides more than 3,000 users with the capability to automatically select and initiate processes based on document type, task, and resource availability; along with providing the capability to prioritize tasks.

The organization has been using this new process for about a year and has seen visible business results. With Metastorm BPM, it now has the ability to categorize work priorities; ensure that work is being completed by the right person; enhance visibility into the request for all users; define and enforce consistent processes; and automate email notifications.

Just another example of BPM excellence at work.

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The customer, a Canadian credit agency, needed to address a business need to deliver improved service to its customers as well as a technology challenge to improve a disjointed and siloed IT application portfolio.

To begin addressing these issues, the EA Group defined a core value chain (CVC), mapped applications to it and identified points of redundancy. They realized they needed to reframe their IT in a business context – with the goal of aligning its business and application architectures and improving access to customer data. The customer used Metastorm ProVision EA software to decompose its architectures to the lowest function level, define discrete business services along with associated inputs, outputs, data elements and deliverables.

By taking a more agile approach to its architecture, the customer was able to align its IT investment with its business goals. Through integrated EA modeling, the customer was able to achieve:

Line of sight from corporate strategies to the lowest level of IT: they use an SOA approach to collapse duplicate functionality in various systems into a single instance for maintenance and upgrade.

Application portfolio management and component infrastructure roadmaps: IT infrastructure stays “one step ahead” of the business and ensures that effective applications and systems are in place when they are needed.

Strategic resource planning: Every new initiative is quickly placed within the IT framework. By analyzing Metastorm ProVision models, the customer knows which functions support which strategy and which systems and platforms are related to them.

With a new customer-centric focus and effectively integrated systems, the customer established a business-oriented IT investment strategy, reduced administrative overhead associated with IT project portfolio management, streamlined its systems—and clearly translated EA modeling into true business value.

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Actionable EA enables you to:

• Create EA models that are ready for execution
• Align business and IT by integrating strategy, process, and systems
• Achieve business agility through service oriented architecture
• Realize concept to code through seamless integration between modeling and execution platforms
• Reduce implementation cycle times and improve time to market
• Utilize visual tools to increase communication and consensus thereby reducing risks

Here’s a brief overview of how to go from modeling to execution. First, you build a workflow model in ProVision. Use this model as your model of record. Then you add integration details and define relations to your workflow model. Have ProVision connect to MIM and you can go straight to execution without any intermediate modeling necessary. Once your workflow is published in MIM, you can audit every step in your process. You’ll be able to view how the system is performing, the time it took on each step, and you can even see which step has failed in the process.

By uniting modeling and execution environments, you’ll be able to gain the broad view of certain processes within your enterprise architecture.

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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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Richardson prefaced his session with an article he recently read that stated the CFO is the new “king” in organizations. Essentially, any decision regardless of the nature of the project, now needs buy in from the CFO before it can ever come to fruition.

A number of CFOs – 64% according to recent research from Forrester – expect major cutbacks in capital spending. And though this same research indicated that demand for BPM is not slowing down, project budgets continue to be cut.

When it comes to proposing a BPM project, Richardson said IT managers need to adopt lean strategies. He says IT managers need to learn how to think like a CFO and follow three key strategies to keep their BPM initiative off the chopping block:

Break consensus log jams

BPM projects become ‘bloated’ when too many people are trying to agree on a single version of a process. Richardson says it is imperative to appoint a process analyst who knows how to bridge the divide between business and IT and:

Match Skills

The process analyst must make sure an IT employee’s skills are matched to their role within the organization.

Avoid a ‘waterfall mindset’

An IT department needs to move to an agile mindset and focus on working software, customer collaboration and responding to change. In other words, the department should prioritize value above anything else – determine what the customer truly wants and know how to measure the value derived from process features.

And, how can an organization implement these lean priorities?

Richardson offered advice for both the short and long term:

In the next 90 days:

Audit BPM roles to ensure proper alignment
Time-box process discovery to focus on what matters
Integrate some agile approaches into BPM delivery

Long term:

Promote BPM leaders that have a passion for process
Measure value derived from process features
Completely adopt the agile mindset

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Results of the survey are being shared this morning with attendees at Metastorm’s Global User Conference as part of a keynote presentation delivered by Metastorm Chairman and CEO, Robert Farrell.

The survey results show:

• The top business process improvement focus areas for organizations in 2009 are operational processes core to product or service delivery (64%), followed closely by improvement of internal processes – e.g. HR, accounting, purchasing, etc. (44%) and compliance and risk management projects (31%). Other areas receiving votes include customer service (29%) and value chain processes (24%).

• When asked specifically how Metastorm software is helping organizations survive the recession approximately 2/3 of the respondents (67%) said that it is helping them deliver increased employee productivity. Following closely behind was greater control and visibility (64%), as well as lower costs (46%). Over 30% also expect the use of Metastorm’s software to make them more agile so that they will be better positioned when the market rebounds, while 33% viewed Metastorm software as a solution that allows them to reduce risk.

• In a question that was more specific to the return on investment (ROI) delivered by Metastorm software, the majority of respondents cited an average ROI from each Metastorm software project to be between 16-30%, with some projects delivering a return of over 100%.

The second bullet is especially interesting as everyone continues to monitor the state of the economy and make the appropriate business decisions to ensure both short-term viability and long-term success.

Please email us at metastormpr@merrittgrp.com if you’re interested in learning more about the survey. We’ll continue to post additional news and information from the Metastorm User Conference throughout the day so be sure to check back soon!

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• Lean BPM trends
• Actionable EA
• How to Maximize Global Resources for Clinical Submission Activities
• From Enterprise Architecture Design to BPM Implementation
• Translating EA Modeling to Business Value
• BPM Testing – Why It’s Different
… and more!

We’ll also be filming video podcast interviews with key Metastorm executives that will be uploaded to the blog.

Don’t miss this great opportunity to gain insight into EA and BPM trends directly from an end-user event! Sign up to receive blog updates via email using the box on the right navigation, or simply add the “Because Process Matters” blog to your RSS feed.

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This popular annual event will bring together the expertise of hundreds of Metastorm customers, partners, and employees and is designed to educate attendees best practices related to the implementation of successful EA, BPA, BPM and Integration initiatives using the Metastorm Enterprise software. The event enables attendees to dive deeper into primary areas of interest and network with others who share similar challenges.

ME2009 has a packed agenda including thought-provoking keynote addresses, and both business and technical session tracks featuring customer success stories, roundtable discussions, and a partner solution pavilion.

Dates: Monday, April 27, 2009 – Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Location:
Hilton Baltimore
401 West Pratt Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21201

Learn additional information on the conference here – and be sure to stay tuned to the news blog as new information and exciting events are announced.

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They are looking for entries in the following categories:

• Most Innovative use of Metastorm ProVision®, Metastorm BPM®, or Metastorm Integration Manager

• Highest Return on Investment or Greatest Strategic Advantage from Metastorm Software

• Most Mission Critical Use of Metastorm ProVision, Metastorm BPM, or Metastorm Integration Manager

To submit an entry, all you need to do is tell us in 500 words or less how you or your customers have leveraged a Metastorm Enterprise application to drive efficiency, control, agility, and innovation across mission-critical areas to gain a strategic advantage.

Send your entries to award@metastorm.com. Information on award criteria, entry requirements, and past winners can be found here.

We look forward to receiving your entries!

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