In Ovum’s report, “Decision Matrix: Selecting a Business Process Management Vendor (Competitor Focus),” Metastorm is placed in the elite, “shortlist” category – “the vanguard of the BPM market” – because it “combine[s] excellence in core technologies with a clear articulated approach to BPM.”

Metastorm also receives accolades for its user satisfaction rating. The report states that “the best indicator” of Metastorm’s success “is its excellent performance in the end-user sentiment survey. Metastorm has achieved the highest overall user sentiment assessment score.” These results are similar to the findings of another recent report – industry analyst firm Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for Business Process Analysis Tools,” in which Metastorm receives one of the highest rankings in overall customer satisfaction.

In Ovum’s report, Metastorm is also featured among the market leaders in nearly all other assessment categories, has one of the highest overall technology assessment scores, and receives a nod for its “proven process integration layer” that serves customers “regardless of their technology landscape.”

According to the report, “the results of this study clearly demonstrate that Metastorm has the ability to compete at the very top-end of the BPM market.”

Our other recent credentials – being placed in the “Leaders” quadrant in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for Business Process Analysis Tools” report, as well as being named to KMWorld’s 100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management and eWeek’s Products to Watch, March, 2010 lists – have also strengthened Metastorm’s position as a top tier BPMS vendor, and a top competitor in the BPM market.

Still, the greatest testament to the power of Metastorm’s best-of-breed technology offering, and holistic approach to end-to-end process improvement is the overwhelming success of our customers. Ovum’s report comments that, “Clearly, [the] over 150 customer success stories published by Metastorm are ringing true.”

We’d like to second that. With these and countless other customers realizing significant ROI each day, Metastorm delivers real, measurable results to organizations all over the world. And that’s the most important credential of them all.

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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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A recent report by industry analyst firm, Gartner, positions Metastorm as one of the top business process analysis (BPA) vendors in the world. The Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Business Process Analysis Tools” report positions Metastorm ProVision for BPA as a leader in the business process analysis space, and explains several key differentiators for Metastorm.

The report states that “based on Gartner customer feedback, Metastorm has one of the highest customer satisfaction ratings in the BPA market.” It also recognizes Metastorm for its ease of use and process discovery capabilities, its pre-built connector to SAP, and its integrated market-leading EA and BPM capabilities.

Metastorm also recently released the newest version of its enterprise modeling, business architecture, and business process analysis tool – Metastorm ProVision Version 6.2. Key features of the new release include support for the latest modeling standards, improved ease of use, and extended support for enterprise collaboration, which includes sharing and reuse of models, objects and libraries, as well as enablers for Process Centers of Excellence.

Bill Aronson, founder of the Enterprise Designer Institute, has even authored a fully-illustrated, third party book entitled Metastorm ProVision Version 6.2 Made Easy, in which he shares tips and tricks about the newest release. To learn more visit Bill’s storefront.

For expert advice and instruction on Metastorm ProVision, we currently have several upcoming, hands on Metastorm ProVision training courses. These are offered in person in the United States and the United Kingdom, or via WebEx where they can be accessed from around the world.

And don’t miss our EA and our BPA boot camps. Both will be held in Baltimore, Maryland from May 20th-21st, 2010.

Still wondering what all the buzz is about? Visit our website to request a trial version of Metastorm ProVision (registration required), and see for yourself why industry analysts rank Metastorm ProVision as a leading tool for Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Modeling and Analysis.

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En route home from one of my latest trips, I received an email asking me to write a blog post about business process improvement projects.

As I sat on the airplane, and the pilot announced that we were next for takeoff, I thought, “This is all going just as planned. The process is working great, and in a few hours I will be home after a week of traveling.”

That’s when the engine and plane stopped. What had gone wrong?

Well, planning is the answer. The air traffic control out of Atlanta had stopped us on the taxiway because of some sort of congestion. Although there was undoubtedly a plan for us to take off at a certain time, some other factor had disrupted it.

That is when I started to think about how, to any business process improvement project, proper planning is just as important as process discovery. Planning out your work, goals, participants, and time helps tremendously in the entire process. And, just like the plane trip home, planning does not mean that there won’t be any turbulence or disruptions during the flight.

In fact, planning will help you be prepared for the turbulence.

The same way the airlines tell you to buckle up – there is some rough air ahead! – proper planning helps move you and your team members along your process modeling and improvement efforts, and helps you overcome and continue to move forward even if you do face turbulence.

So often we are having a pain in a particular area and just jump into buying, fixing, or even changing the business process and technology without properly planning or asking the important questions first. What solution do we need, and how will we use it? What solution best enables us to understand and improve our business processes and subsequently execute improved processes? How can we make use of our existing technologies, and does this solution aid us in doing so?

If you don’t take the time to plan properly, your team may initially be successful in spite of itself, which in turn creates a false sense that your success can be repeated again and again without “wasting time” to plan out your work. I have seen this attitude fail at the most inconvenient time – when things are the most critical to the business.

So, where do you start planning? This goes back to an acronym that I live by, and that is KISS, or Keep It Simple, Silly – or any other way that you have heard is stated. There are two simple questions that you need to answer:

1. Why are you starting the project? Without this simple, two line mantra you will wander all over the place never knowing whether or not you are headed toward the Promised Land.

2. What is the end objective? What I mean by that is – get an agreement or understanding from the project sponsors of what the definition of success is to them.

So, by now you will know where you are going, and how to recognize when you get there. But between Alpha and Omega, or the beginning and the end, there is something in between, and a time box that you should identify. Identifying key dates and milestones will help to ensure that the tasks are going according to plan. This allows for a redirection of resources if the milestones are not being met.

Finally, time box your entire effort. Analysis is integral, but make sure you avoid Analysis Paralysis by ensuring you keep it on a schedule, and that the project continues to move forward. Keeping things to a shorter time frame motivates the team to get things done – this prevents you from falling victim to the dreaded “never-ending project.”

To conclude I want to reiterate the high importance of planning your project out. Keeping things time boxed, and keeping your goals in mind will help to ensure a successful project. And don’t forget, keeping your sanity during the entire process should be one of your goals too.

Happy planning and Good Luck!

==========================

Brian Chaney is the Director of IT Strategy & Architecture at Copper River IT where he is responsible for Enterprise Architecture, BPM development, CMMI compliance and other process-centered areas. Brian has guided Six Sigma projects, more than 50 Enterprise Architecture initiatives, and successfully completed the life-cycle of Six Sigma and Enterprise Architecture into BPM.

Brian is a Six Sigma Black Belt with a proven track record of structuring and implementing projects that yield measurable results including reduced customer wait time, productivity gains through multiple change and improvement initiatives, and cost savings.

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Gartner, the top industry analyst firm in the world, also recently positioned Metastorm in the Leaders Quadrant in the “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools” report (November 2009) and in the “Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Tools” report (February 2009).

With Metastorm’s established leadership in these three areas, the most recent report states that “Metastorm BPM® and Metastorm ProVision® [are] a strong combination for organizations looking for a single integrated BPA/BPM supplier,” and that Metastorm offers “a good solution for organizations looking for a single tool able to support both EA and BPA.”

“Metastorm is pleased with our position in the Leaders quadrant in three Gartner Magic Quadrant reports – EA, BPA and BPMS – and believe it is a testament to our ongoing commitment to helping our customers better align strategy with analysis and execution to deliver real business results,” stated Bob Farrell, chairman & CEO of Metastorm. “Metastorm will continue to provide best-of-breed capabilities across these three disciplines. Our recent release of Metastorm ProVision Version 6.2 will further help our customers obtain the understanding, visibility and governance necessary to achieve a competitive advantage in today’s challenging business environment.”

In Gartner’s recent report Metastorm ProVision receives accolades for its ease of use, process discovery capabilities, and pre-built connector to SAP, and integrated market-leading EA and BPM capabilities. And, according to the report, “Based on Gartner customer feedback, Metastorm has one of the highest customer satisfaction ratings in the BPA market.”

Metastorm ProVision® for BPA provides a comprehensive solution that allows organizations to discover, model, analyze and optimize their business processes. Metastorm ProVision’s ease of use, built in methodologies, wide array of industry reference models, and integrated user guides provide rapid time to value; and its rich simulation and analysis capabilities help organizations achieve continuous process improvements.

Unlike other BPA software products, Metastorm ProVision also provides deep enterprise and business architecture functionality to allow organizations to better understand the relationship of business processes to the broader enterprise. And paired with Metastorm BPM, an organization can execute process improvement initiatives with great speed and agility at minimal cost.

Learn how one Metastorm customer used Metastorm ProVision in conjunction with Metastorm BPM to achieve greater than 700% annual ROI as well as many other benefits.

To learn more about Metastorm and the Gartner Magic Quadrants, check out the industry analyst credentials page of our website.

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But what exactly is knowledge? How can a company manage its knowledge?

Let’s pretend I don’t know anything about Major League Baseball—

If I heard a statistic – a piece of data – like, “Player X has a .298 batting average,” it wouldn’t really mean anything to me. Actually, .300 – if I were rounding up – would sound pretty low. Without understanding batting averages, or knowing anything about Player X, I would think he was a terrible batter.

Or, if somebody told me that a particular MLB team won 64 games in the 2009 season, I would probably think, “Wow, that team is great! They won a ton of games last year!” –totally missing the point that winning only 64 games is very bad. That team had the worst record in the entire league.

My point is that data without context is useless, and can be easily misunderstood.

For businesses, data is relatively easy to collect and store, but without knowledge, it really isn’t very valuable.

One very important type of knowledge that businesses must manage is the knowledge from their people. The type of knowledge that organizations rely on comes from experience and is often referred to as intellectual capital. It provides human insight and know-how to teach organizations how their best people do their jobs – how work gets done, and the best way to do it.

Unfortunately, this type of knowledge is fleeting – no employee is going to stay at a company forever, and a new, less experienced worker may very well take his or her place – and this knowledge, which is often abstract – is difficult to collect.

Collaborative technologies are the solution to this problem. By getting knowledge workers involved in documenting day-to-day activities now, companies can capture, and even expand, their intellectual capital, and provide new workers with the context to understand data and business processes and how to do their jobs more effectively.

Enterprise/business architecture (EA) and modeling software like Metastorm ProVision® and business process management (BPM) software like Metastorm BPM® provide this functionality. Using these tools, you can document existing business processes, understand how your best people do their jobs, and capture those best practices in process models that can then be automated and deployed as operating business processes. And with data capture tools like Metastorm Discovery™, it’s easy to get knowledge workers involved in the process so that you don’t miss out on their valuable insights.

Leveraging these software technologies will provide your next generation of workers with the valuable knowledge of their predecessors, as well as with a means to put data – price fluctuations, costs, market changes, etc. – into context while enabling them to better understand the environment in which they are operating. It will also shorten the learning curve, and enable new workers to avoid costly mistakes. This new generation will also be able to leverage the collaborative technology platform that these solutions provide to share ideas and find ways to improve the business.

With technologies like Metastorm ProVision, Metastorm ProVision for BPA and Metastorm BPM, companies can truly go beyond managing, and truly expand their human knowledge to ensure that they continue to move forward without forgetting the lessons learned from past generations.

Perhaps this is why Metastorm ranks as one of the Top 100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management.

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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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 Gartner Prediction: “By 2014, 40% of business managers and knowledge workers in Global 2000 enterprises will use comprehensive business process models to support their daily work, up from 6% in 2009.”

 Not only do we see this as being true, we see that business process models as we know them today are just the tip of the iceberg.

 Recently we were working on a visualization tool and new UI proof of concept that took information from our process integration engine and used a map of the continental US to display process activity meshed with business metrics (dollar values in this case) and system status information. We started talking about other forms of visualization and which models we should use – I thought the map was a bit passé. But deeper thinkers pointed out that the map is one of the oldest forms of models, and one that is almost universally understood – thus it is a great way to add context to information. I had not really thought of a map as model, but it surely is, and a very effective model at that.

 For example, in San Francisco you receive a call from the manager at the account servicing center in Richmond who is very concerned because there are 20 inches of snow due at the same time that mid-month renewals are being processed. From your portal do you open up a bunch of spreadsheets to try and figure out the possible effects? Nope.

 Instead, you locate the Richmond office in your locations and facilities model, drill into the different processes that run at that office – renewals, closings, automatic billings. You quickly navigate to other locations that also provide those services – in Phoenix – and begin to formulate a plan to relocate the work to another site. From the process you can jump to a systems model that shows all the supporting services. Are they available in Phoenix? Yes. Suddenly those 20 inches of snow are not a huge deal.

 As we uncover more and more of the modeling ‘iceberg’ I think we’ll discover that the possibilities for modeling technology are endless. So far the BPM community has failed to really tap into its true potential, but we are getting there. However, while reading Gartner’s prediction it struck me once again how narrow and limiting the view of models is today.

 At Metastorm we are broadening this view, and would instead say that by 2014 managers will not be using just process models, but all different kinds of models as well– information flows, communication models, strategic planning models, etc., to understand and control processes and to capture, plan, and execute on a daily basis – and we’re working hard to make this a reality.

 Gartner Prediction: By 2013, dynamic BPM will be an imperative for companies seeking process efficiencies in increasingly chaotic environments.

I think dynamic BPM is already very much here. Almost every process we see deployed has a significant dynamic aspect to it. We are not talking about automation, but allowing the managers and process owners to change the process in flight, adjusting operating parameters, building in new process elements, and creating collaboration groups on the fly.

Of course Metastorm is both a modeling and an execution company and we feel that the key to making all of this work without creating ‘chaos across the organization’ is to express all of the variables in these dynamic processes – the people, the capabilities, the integrations, the goals and measurements – as models. And for that matter, also making adjustments using models – simply seeing a chart or a report with someone’s workload is different than being able to see where a person sits in the organization, and to be able to drill down, connect to and see all the processes they participate in and what goals rely on their performance – enabling much more informed action, whether that action is taken by a person or by invoking a pre-defined business rule.

Gartner’s position is a valid assumption and is reflected in the plans of Metastorm and other BPM providers. Key to the developments and application of trendy discovery, social software, and mobile applications is making sure we focus on making these technologies relevant while ensuring that they help organize the chaos, not exacerbate it.

Take social software for example – how do we make this relevant to solving process problems?

We use the key attributes of social software – presence, capturing of interests (or skills and competencies), etc. –and then leverage these to accomplish skills-based routing, dynamically organizing communities of interest to solve problems, and assigning work to people online and in real time.

By incorporating our evolving attributes we can allow processes to adjust—dynamically generating dashboards and watch lists based on interest, or automatically suggesting who to talk to if there is a question at any step in a process. This work environment is reflective of the way people are communicating with each other today. In order for businesses to be successful, they need to adapt to the way systems and processes communicate with and through the employee – not vice versa.

After all, let’s face it – the drivers that caused BPM to be born – sluggish and inflexible response by traditional development approaches, too slow time to market, etc. – all still exist. The business will always be pushing for new areas of flexibility and self-modification to meet dynamic requirements, and communication will continually evolve and change – and since BPM is dynamic in nature, it is the perfect tool to respond and adapt to all of these things.

The way we define Business Process Management is expanding every day. Today other technologies like Business Process Analysis (BPA) and Enterprise Architecture (EA) are becoming synonymous with process management, and are an important part of any Business Process Management Suite (BPMS). Social networking and other internet capabilities are also becoming important to the holistic management of business processes. Metastorm is committed to being a leader in the BPMS space, and is excited to be at the forefront of these changes and trends as we discover more and more the awesome potential that these technologies really have to offer.

Learn more about Metastorm Enterprise, Metastorm’s integrated software suite of Business Process Management, Business Process Analysis and Enterprise Architecture here.

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Key features of the new release include support for the latest modeling standards, improved ease of use, and extended support for enterprise collaboration, which includes sharing and reuse of models, objects and libraries, as well as enablers for Process Centers of Excellence.   

Metastorm ProVision is recognized by the top industry analyst firms and by its customers as a leading technology for enterprise and business architecture due to the breadth and depth of its functionality. The software enables organizations to model, visualize and improve the entire enterprise – resulting in a thorough understanding of the cause-effect relationships between business strategy, business processes and the systems and technology that support them.

“Our newest release of Metastorm ProVision and its associated Knowledge Exchange repository introduces a range of enhancements that enable collaboration across multiple projects, provide interoperability at the enterprise level, and deliver enhanced capabilities to support enterprise alignment and agility,” stated Greg Carter, executive vice president of product development and CTO of Metastorm.

“Organizations are looking to enterprise-scale, web-based modeling and collaboration as a key to understanding the makeup of the enterprise and how to best leverage all of their people, system, information, infrastructure, product and process assets to meet strategic goals and objectives. Some of the biggest companies in the world have deployed Metastorm and rely on it for optimizing both business architecture and business processes. Metastorm is highly focused on ensuring that our software continues to meet our customer needs for modeling, analysis, collaboration and scalability as they grow and evolve.”

Want to know more? Check out the social media version of the release here.

Read a Metastorm ProVision success story here.

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The use of enterprise architecture and business process management software has grown rapidly over the past several years as a result of its ability to help organizations see the big picture of their operations, reduce costs, improve productivity, gain better visibility and control, and adapt more quickly to changing market conditions.

Organizations in Asia seeking tools for business process improvement and business transformation have been quick to recognize Metastorm as a valuable resource for addressing these challenges. Metastorm currently has many large customers in the region and is committed to expanding that presence.

“I am extremely enthusiastic about the opportunity we have in Asia, and I look forward to helping organizations in the region address their business challenges through the use of our software and our many years of BPM best practice experience,” stated Paul Watts, newly appointed Director of Asia Operations for Metastorm.

Read the official announcement here.

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