Because Process Matters » Business Process Management (BPM)

Fall 2011 Survey: SharePoint and BPM

Derek Weeks — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:52:57 +0000

Every six months we run a survey about how people are using SharePoint. Some surprising results have been revealed. For instance, in the survey running now through October 1^st, we see that BPM/workflow is the #1 third-party app being considered for running on top of the SharePoint platform. In the last survey from Winter 2011, we found that SharePoint 2010 deployments had grown from 8% to 42% of enterprises in just six months.

The survey covers topics about SharePoint and BPM, user challenges, plans for cloud, strategies for training, BPM maturity, levels of mission-critical content stored, and more. If you have 2 minutes, we invite you to participate in the current survey HERE. The survey results are free and will be mailed to everyone who participates.

As with all surveys, we remind everyone that it is not the stats that count. It is what you do with the stats. For example, if BPM is the top 3^rd party app being considered for deployment on top of SharePoint, we want you to consider – should we be doing the same thing, or does this validate BPM plans we are already executing. When the survey reveals that few companies put a training plan in place for SharePoint, should you organization be doing the same? Or when a trend is showing that more and more businesses are adding mission-critical content to SharePoint, we want you to ask – would our organization feel comfortable doing the same.

Surveys provide great opportunity to think about, validate, and challenge our current thinking. We invite you to participate and when the free results are published – to learn from others in the SharePoint and BPM community.

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Uncovering Process Excellence

Sandra Moran — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:19:35 +0000

Achieving process excellence is possible. To do it you can start by bringing together the top performers within your organization to capture what it is that makes them good at what they do. This isn’t always easy because many top performers can’t always easily articulate the underlying reason for their success.

We see these top performers in every organization. One division consistently outperforms other divisions. One customer service representative handles more calls per day, producing better customer satisfaction outcomes than their counterparts. One department handles transactions at a 10% lower cost than industry averages.

But why does this happen?

Drawing from the disciplines of Enterprise Architecture, EA practitioners can help organizations not only discover but standardize their best practices to increase overall business performance. If you leverage an EA solution during the business process design phase of your business process management (BPM) projects, you can better discover what your best practices are. More specifically, exactly what the things are that a top performer or department consistently does well that helps them achieve better results. Oftentimes what is really working is not necessarily what the company thinks is working.

What EA disciplines can help draw out best practices? EA practitioners know to sometimes move out of the conference room to observe workers, to see work as it unfolds and inquire about why a particular action was carried out. This observation creates a more detailed picture of actions and interactions that may not be thought of by an expert as they describe their work in a more structured setting. A second technique is to explore the interrelationships of roles that depend on each other to complete work items. In bringing these roles together and developing a better understanding between the teams of each other’s work you can bring more visibility to the entire process. Finally, applying consistency and structure to the definitions of business processes will begin to lay a foundation for how work is understood by the organization.

In addition to approaching the discovery phase with a proven EA methodology, bringing visibility into the process is another critical part of uncovering excellence. For many groups, it isn’t until the current process is fully understood that opportunities for improvement can be identified and shared with other groups. Visibility can often reveal immediate differences and opportunities for better practices. Once processes are visible, additional opportunities for improvement can be discovered through a collaborative process with top performers and departments. During this discovery and design phase it is very important that you include the business users that will be impacted by the proposed changes. In doing this you will have the ability to capture and leverage how these business user’s ideas build upon each other to answer the “what if” questions, like: Why are we doing work this way? What are the best ideas for doing this work in a smarter way?

Uncovering what makes you excellent is the first step in making process excellence possible in your organization.

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Power of EA + BPM: Thoughts from Gartner EA Summit

Wendy Werve — Wed, 11 May 2011 13:55:03 +0000

The Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit in London came to a close yesterday. After two days of insightful keynotes, analyst presentations, workshops and networking, it was clear that business processes and EA are inherently and necessarily linked to one another. In a recent Gartner survey, improving and aligning business processes was cited as an EA priority as well as a key business and IT priority for CIOs. As Gartner analyst Elise Olding discussed, in her session, “BPM – The Catalyst to Deliver outcomes,” when EA and BPM join forces, the results are much more than either can achieve alone.

Organizations are looking to leverage enterprise architecture to develop a strong, detailed understanding of the operating model and supporting organization structures with clearly defined business rules and requirements. Adding a business process management layer to the mix allows you to actually apply and automate the business practice improvements defined during your modeling phase.

Think of enterprise architecture as your enterprise context or your value chain, which helps you define the larger, more complex business capabilities you perform every day. As you spend time improving the value chains, you naturally begin to understand, associate and define your business operations in greater detail – focusing on specific pieces of the whole. When you are ready to execute the processes you have mapped out, you have a complete map of both the micro and macro view of your business operations. Thus, you are able to keep the larger picture in mind as you are improving and automating specific pieces, but still have the ability to drill down deeper and analyze, reevaluate and improve your practices leveraging what you’ve learned at the enterprise level to drive operational excellence deeper into the organization.

According to Gartner analyst, Phil Allega, “Enterprise architecture is the process of transforming business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change.” Business processes are a critical part of this transformation and organizations can extract maximum value by leveraging EA and BPM tools in tandem. Together, these solutions can transform your business by allowing you to truly understand, model, analyze and automate how the people, processes, systems and technology work together to deliver your business goals and improve your enterprise.

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The Dynamic Side of BPM

Alison Cooley — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:09:47 +0000

One goal of business process management (BPM) is to automate and streamline human-centric business processes with the intent of benefiting from lower costs, increased productivity, greater control and better response times. However, not all processes are easily automated and governed. Many organizational processes are often unstructured in their nature and simply cannot be mapped out by a specific set of rules. These ad hoc processes require collaboration and knowledge from multiple users within various departments that are located across several geographic locations.

For these unpredictable and difficult to model processes, workflow and basic BPM will not do – organizations need a dynamic BPM solution that helps them improve, manage and monitor both their structured and unstructured processes. In contrast to a more traditional, rigid workflow offering, dynamic BPM offers the ability to handle these unstructured, rapidly changing processes that require collaborative interaction from people. Supply chain management and case management are both great examples of how organizations leverage dynamic BPM capabilities to track and audit processes that require a great deal of ad hoc collaboration and flexibility.

Supply Chain Management
Modeling, analyzing, understanding, and optimizing the activities and processes within a supply chain is crucial to the growth and success of companies in the manufacturing, retail and distribution industries. For example, Blue Rhino, a division of Ferrellgas, distributes and refills propane cylinders to over 27,000 retail locations in 48 states and Puerto Rico. Given the nature of its products and industry, Blue Rhino has a very seasonal business, with multiple locations across the United States, and a huge customer base. They needed a BPM technology suite that was designed to support constant change. Challenges include fluctuations in supply and demand for propane tanks, unpredicted disruption within the supply chain, regulatory compliance shifts, and changing customer service demands. These challenges necessitated that Blue Rhino implement a BPM offering dynamic enough to allow them collaborate with distributors and retailers and restructure process models based on changing conditions. By investing in Metastorm’s BPM offering, Blue Rhino was able to increase its collaborative interactions with distributors to gain greater visibility and more accurate information, while also achieving better structure and automation across these dynamic business processes.

Case Management
Legal case management is another scenario where an organization needs to respond to unpredictable events and adapt to a changing business environment. To be more specific, the Department of Justice, Office of the Federal Detention Trustee (OFDT) is responsible for providing safe, secure and humane confinement of persons in federal custody awaiting trial or immigration proceedings. With a population of some 55,000 detainees across 94 federal judicial districts, collaborative and dynamic interactions must occur. While the process of detaining a prisoner is modeled out to the specific requirements of the federal government, there are numerous documents controlled by several federal agencies needed for each step of the process and unexpected events can occur for individual prisoners depending on their case. The OFDT turned to Metastorm BPM because of its security and flexibility, which allowed them to break away from the structured process of detaining prisoners, respond to the situational change, and go back and complete the process. Now, they can easily receive and process or check on the status of any prisoner’s detention designation document in real-time.

Unstructured processes exist throughout organizations. To gain better control and grow effectively, organizations need the flexibility to easily collaborate on and adjust business models and processes. BPM is not just about workflow. Dynamic BPM offers the ability for organizations to track, manage and audit not only structured, well-defined processes but also the unruly, unstructured, ad hoc processes – the processes that are often the most critical to organizational success.

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A Bumpy Ride for Life Sciences in 2011?

Ethan Smith — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:57:50 +0000

As 2011 gets into full swing, I can’t help but think about the impending federal regulations forcing pharmaceutical companies to document, track and report payments to physician and physician owned entities, set to begin at the end of the year. In its annual Predicts 2011 series, Gartner recently published a list of predictions for the Life Science industry — Predicts 2011: Life Science Companies Will Need to Defend Their Base and Adapt to New Business Realities, by Steven Lefebure and Dale Hagemeyer, November 2010. After reading the report several times, two predictions stand out:

“By 2012, a major pharmaceutical company that downsized without transforming processes and technology will experience a major failure of control.”
“By 2012, a life science company will pay a $1 billion-plus fine for noncompliance with government contracting/rebating rules.”

What is most striking to me about the 2011 predictions is the disastrous nature of the consequences that Gartner cites – all of which can be tied back to a lack of focus on process. Over the past year, I have become concerned about the rapid pace at which companies in the industry have been consolidating. How does a company fully understand the value of a potential merger or acquisition – let alone realize its true value when events are happening this quickly? I agree with Gartner on this one. Without significant investment in technology to document, harmonize and optimize processes, a merger or acquisition is bound to fail.

What’s especially frustrating for me in particular is that software, services and industry expertise exist (from companies like Metastorm) to help in these situations, and far too often we find organizations either are not able or willing to listen and invest. Rather than ignoring the problem, what organizations should do, as Gartner clearly states, is “consider business process management tools to create agility and the rapid deployment of reorganized processes” and “evaluate processes together.” Not surprisingly, the analysts recommend strongly examining compliance and governance functions to “ensure scarce resources are focused on ‘material’ risks.”

In today’s era of heightened regulatory scrutiny and fines it is shocking that compliance seems to be both overlooked and understaffed. In addition to overall process improvement, solving compliance burdens is an area in which Metastorm has a long track record of client success.

Metastorm recommends that Life Sciences companies take a 3 pronged approach to process understanding and improvement:

Involve all key stakeholders up front by using cloud-based collaborative modeling and process discovery tools. Virtually anyone can access the tool and groups can work online together to come to consensus on goals, organizational roles, business rules and process flows.
Establish a central repository to house business models, strategy roadmaps and “as is” and “to be” models of the business so that all stakeholders have visibility and stay on the same page. An enterprise business architecture tool is best equipped to provide this along with critical process analysis capabilities.
Leverage process automation and business process management software to enforce and track behaviors for consistent process execution that meets business guidelines and supports business objectives. People will actually welcome an environment that takes the guesswork out of adhering to complex compliance regulations and that gives that instant access to the information they need to make better business decisions. It also serves to automate the documentation of and reporting on key processes and metrics.

Business processes not only drive company operations, but they also are a key element of compliance. Back to Gartner’s 2011 Predicts report – the other prediction I find almost equally compelling (given the hard dollars associated with it) is that, “By 2012, a life science company will pay a $1 billion-plus fine for noncompliance with government contracting/rebating rules.” I can’t tell you how often clients ask me for Return on Investment (ROI) models to justify process analysis and business process management software – while almost every day news headlines cite yet another pharmaceutical company paying a massive fine. There is the ROI right there – often hundreds of millions of dollars.

The numbers are no longer trivial in terms of fines, and the negative publicity can be even more damaging in a market that is becoming increasingly competitive.

The other side of this is pretty simple as well – fines are a source of income for the government. I don’t think that requires further explanation, but suffice it to say the industry is going to pay one way or another. I addressed the government contracting and rebating rules component of this prediction, in a blog post last year.

I don’t know any other area of Life Sciences where such complex, yet bottom-line-impacting processes, activities and controls are so far behind the curve. I understand this is a highly complicated process and area of regulation. My response (similar to Gartner’s recommendation) is simple – the impact is huge (to the tune of an $11B a year loss for the industry) so– this is where you should be investing heavily in controls, processes, and technology to ensure you are compliant and also agile enough to adapt to on-going changes. I also recommend taking it a step further, which some of our most mature clients have done, and layer process controls and automation through Metastorm BPM on top of the core infrastructure of revenue management. We have multiple clients who have taken this approach and literally saved millions of dollars on an annual basis – providing more than adequate ROI justification and case study proof points to get your organization moving.

I think it’s clear that things are going to get much worse for some Life Sciences companies, with potentially disastrous consequences. While those that do take the time now to develop process visibility, understanding, optimization and control will be poised to not only survive this industry storm, but emerge as the market leaders. The best approach to survival in 2011 and to prepare for the future is for Life Science companies to invest in a strong, flexible software suite that allows them to fully understand their organizational capabilities, while providing features allowing them to track and manage change. The question is – are you ready to step up and make this investment now or are you going to wait and risk the fallout?

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BPM & BOTOX: How Allergan Battled Compliance Burdens

Process Matters Blogger — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:10:15 +0000

Last September, as you probably remember, Allergan reached a $600M settlement regarding its off label promotion of BOTOX—which sparked some interesting dialogue about leveraging business process management software to solve new compliance requirements within the pharmaceutical industry. Starting January 2012, U.S. federal government has required that all pharmaceutical companies document, track and report a wide variety of payments to all physicians or physician-owned entities.

Before it even passed as legislation, Allergan proactively took steps to meet the mandates listed in the Physician Payments Sunshine Act and ensure that technology was in place to support overall corporate compliance and risk management efforts. In doing so, Allergan implemented BEACON – a formal compliance and reporting program subjected to regular reviews, built on Metastorm BPM. Rather than just focusing on reporting, Allergan chose a Business Process Management (BPM) solution to ensure it had better insight and control over its underlying business processes, as well as the ability to proactively analyze and making ongoing improvements.

In an article published by CIO Magazine last week, How Botox Battles Compliance Wrinkles, Allergan CIO Sue-Jean Lin discusses how Allergan was able to meet its new compliance burdens using Metastorm BPM.

For more information about Metastorm’s Aggregate Spend Solution, I encourage you to sign up to watch a free demo and explore our Life Sciences solution page.

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Law Firms Practice Process Improvement

Alison Cooley — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:26:12 +0000

How can law firms increase revenue? With the complexity of today’s markets, one of the only ways to gain a competitive advantage is to identify and perfect key business practices, while maintaining superior customer service and increasing profitability. Identifying ways to cut costs, reduce time wasted, rev up productivity and outperform the competition can be a lot easier said than done. When time is money, where do you start? Let’s take a look at a popular problem that most, if not all, law firms face – new client matter intake.

Over the years we’ve seen law firms try to dig themselves out of the seemingly endless cycle of redundant, paper intensive processes. At one point in time, implementing processes – however manual – with multiple data entry points was meant to drive improvements and lower risk when gathering and reviewing critical new client information. However, given the significant technology advances and growing demand for firms to offer best-in-class services, these manual processes have become outdated, confusing and frustrating, and they diminish business productivity as well as negatively impacting customer and employee satisfaction.

Compiling, reviewing and processing new clients against the existing client database can be cumbersome. Each individual client or new business requires extensive procedures to determine the conflict of interest, generate billing, and receive department approval—all before a new client is even taken on. Investing in a robust business process management (BPM) suite is a smart, effective way for law firms to smoothly streamline and manage the end-to-end business process, while capturing the complete and accurate client matter, related party, and billing data for a potential client or business – information which is then automatically packaged and presented to the attorneys for approval via email, web or mobile device. Data accuracy is improved, risk is reduced and attorneys waste little time on administrative tasks so that they can maximize billing hours. BPM software equates to process improvement and increased revenues for the firm from the moment the first process goes live.

In ILTA’s 2010 Technology Survey, 464 firms representing over 80,000 attorneys and nearly 180,000 total end users were asked if and what they use to automate their business processes. Of the responses, 27% of firms with 350-690 employees and 39% of firms with 700 employees or more indicated that they leverage Metastorm to help analyze, streamline and automate their business workflows.

Over 190 law firms globally, including six of the 10 largest firms in the world and over 30% of the AmLaw 200 rely on Metastorm’s Enterprise portfolio suite to model, analyze and improve the firm’s business processes to reduce overhead, improve the range and quality of services, and optimize resources, all while cutting cost without losing strategic advantage. Law firms deploy Metastorm’s legal solutions to standardize process and automate manual operations to ensure complete consistency and accuracy, accelerate new client matter intake and conflict-of-interest review, maintain regulatory compliance and automate audit trail capture.

Metastorm understands that in the legal sector time is money, and we have spent countless hours developing and perfecting the right software solutions to meet your industry needs. Investing in business process management software now will enable your firm to rapidly and effectively take on new clients in a way that is easy to manage while also addressing back office processes for increased productivity, faster customer response and improved profitability.

If you’re interested in learning how your firm can benefit from Metastorm’s software solutions visit our legal solutions page, where you can download an overview of Metastorm’s legal services, learn about Metastorm’s Client Matter Inception Process Pod, and read customer success stories.

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Gartner Ranks Metastorm as Leader in Business Process Management Suites

Process Matters Blogger — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:42:03 +0000

Gartner unveiled its latest Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites (BPMS) 2010 report Tuesday evening at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. Today Metastorm announced it has again been positioned in the Leaders quadrant in this evaluation, which includes 25 of what Gartner considers to be the best BPMS solution providers in the market.

The report cites Metastorm’s ease of use and strong functionality across the process improvement life cycle and ease of use for nontechnical and technical roles as notable strengths. Attendees at Gartner Symposium reported that Gartner analyst Michele Cantara also highlighted Metastorm’s collaborative cloud modeling capabilities and the ability of Metastorm ProVision to tie EA and BPM together as key differentiators during her presentation about the BPMS Magic Quadrant at the conference.

This year, the Magic Quadrant evaluation focused on vendors’ ability to support the following four main usage scenarios that drive organizations to invest in a BPMS:

Support for a continuous process improvement program
Implementation of an industry-specific or company-specific process solution
Support for a business transformation initiative
Support for a process-based, service-oriented-architecture (SOA) redesign

Metastorm is known for its ability to provide a flexible, comprehensive and highly-proven BPMS solution that effectively addresses each of these scenarios and allows organizations to quickly implement, manage, monitor, and analyze core business processes. Complementing its leadership position in the BPMS Magic Quadrant, Metastorm is also positioned in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner Business Process Analysis (BPA) Tools Magic Quadrant and Enterprise Architecture (EA) Tools Magic Quadrant. The power of these three solutions combine in Metastorm Enterprise to enable effective alignment of process execution activities with business goals at all levels of the organization.

I encourage you to read what industry analysts have written about Metastorm to understand the value of Metastorm’s Enterprise software solutions and how they can be leveraged to help organizaitons make better, more informed business decisions.

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AmerisourceBergen Recognized for Business Process Improvement Initiatives

Process Matters Blogger — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 14:13:03 +0000

Metastorm customers are continuing to receive tons of recognition for their business process improvement initiatives! Last week Metastorm announced that the City of Richmond, VA has received multiple awards for its CommonCents initiative built on Metastorm BPM® software platform. Today, Metastorm announced that our valued customer AmerisourceBergen has been named runner-up in the 2010 Business Agility and Process Optimization Enabled by BPM and SOA contest, for its success in implementing business process initiatives using Metastorm BPM software!

The Business Agility and Process Optimization Enabled by BPM and SOA contest highlights the business success stories and lessons learned to provide proof points and insights for other organizations considering or pursuing BPM, SOA or combined BPM-SOA adoption.

AmerisourceBergen is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical services companies serving the United States, Canada and selected global markets, and works closely with manufactures of branded pharmaceuticals, generic pharmaceuticals, biotech and specialty drugs, over-the counter remedies, and health and beauty aids.

AmerisourceBergen has deployed over 200 processes using Metastorm BPM! To govern its business process management initiatives, AmerisourceBergen has created a Center of Excellence and has seen millions of dollars in savings to date. In one of its most recent projects, AmerisourceBergen was able to leverage Metastorm BPM to extend and augment is new SAP implementation.

At Metastorm, we are dedicated to building software that helps organizations focus on the right business improvements to drive business change, optimization and effectiveness. We are very proud to see AmerisourceBergen, and all of our customers, recognized for their commitment to implementing strategic business process improvement initiatives. Check out AmerisourceBergen’s customer success story to learn more about its success in deploying BPM in the pharmaceutical industry.

Metastorm solutions can be tailored to fit all of your organizational needs. Visit our solutions page to find more information about how your organization can benefit from implementing Metastorm’s leading suite of Business Process Management, Business Process Analysis, and Enterprise Architecture software.

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Allergan: Business Process Initiatives as an Investment for Long-Term Goals

Process Matters Blogger — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:55:51 +0000

Pharmaceutical companies have found ease and success in deploying Metastorm Enterprise software to model, improve and optimize their processes and systems. In the newest season of the Metastorm Customers Speak Out video testimonial series, we take a deeper look into the strategic advantages Metastorm software offers Allergan, a global pharmaceutical company.

In this video interview, Tom Holmberg, senior business process analyst for Allergan, provides insight into how business process initiatives have become powerful investments for Allergan’s long-term organizational goals. Holmberg explains how Metastorm’s combined platform of enterprise architecture, business process analysis, and business process management became a priority within their organization. Using these combined strategies, they enhanced their organizational structure and identified opportunities to deliver more optimal business results. Implementing business process initiatives helps users see into their current organizational structure and ensure that they are deploying the most efficient time-to-market processes—thus, optimizing their organizational structure and producing a competitive market advantage.

Check out the complete season of Metastorm Customers Speak Out on our Metastorm Media YouTube channel, subscribe to the Metastorm iTunes Podcast, or visit the Metastorm customer testimonial page.

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Get Leaner Faster with Business Process Management

Process Matters Blogger — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:08:19 +0000

Last week we hosted a webinar entitled, “Get Leaner Faster with Business Process Management,” which featured Kevin Haugh, Vice President of Product Marketing for Metastorm, and Brian Chaney, Director of IT Strategy and Architecture for Copper River IT. During the webinar Chaney discussed best practices to kick start a Lean initiative using a Business Process Management (BPM) tool, and commented that BPM is a great way to focus on Lean and provides a quick turnaround time.

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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An African tale – the chicken and the pig

Francois Potgieter — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:24:30 +0000

A very good friend once asked me to write her a short blog post; said it at least needs to be smart, but with flare to be interesting and informative, yet relatable and certainly not boring. A walk in the park – albeit the bush in deepest, darkest Africa.

Once, while at the breakfast table in yet another hotel, in yet again another part of the world, I thought about reliability and the human factor:

My waiter was slow.

While sitting there, two words came to mind – dedication and commitment. How strange that two things so simple get to be so complex.

At the very moment my food arrived, a thought sprang to mind—the chicken and the pig.

Staring at me trusty bacon and eggs I realized that this chicken and this pig are my dedication and my commitment.

You see, as it happens to be – the chicken was dedicated – it contributed to my breakfast.

Albeit, I certainly appreciated and enjoyed the fruits of her dedication, and she certainly has to endure the pressures of life to produce – she will still do so day for every single day of the rest of her life.

She, however, did not give her whole self – she didn’t make a commitment.

The pig on the other hand, is fully committed. He contributed to my breakfast every fiber in his body so to speak. He gave his all.

You see, dedication is only a half effort. Commitment is investing every fiber of yourself, and settling for nothing but one hundred percent.

In the business world this is the same.

Some companies and their people are dedicated and do well. They consistently maintain steady growth, explore other areas, and generally keep their shareholders and clients happy.

Then you have the few that stand out above the rest. Those fully committed companies. The ones that do not grow “on average” – they dominate the market. These are organizations that are committed. They give their all, and in return, their success is unmatched.

And strangely – a study published in last year’s Harvard Business Review examined these very same, top global companies – the clear differentiator to their success is the management of business processes. Almost 90% of all companies surveyed live and preach process management. They are dedicated to it. They live by it!

So my message – Be the new normal. Be processed.

– Francois Potgieter (Bytes Technology Group)

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Francois Potgieter is the Business Unit Manager at Bytes Technology Group where he is responsible for the Enterprise Information Management solutions (EIM). The business unit focuses on business process management (BPM), document management and general EA consulting. Francois is based out of Johannesburg, South Africa.

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BPM Drives Next-Gen NBA Scouting

Metastorm PR — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:07:15 +0000

A new NBA season kicks off tonight, as stars like LeBron James and Gilbert Arenas return to the airways and arenas near you. The league has come a long way since launching as the Basketball Association of America in June 6, 1946. But, despite growing into a global game both in fanfare and stature, there are certain outdated processes in the league—one being the player recruitment process.

Prior to working with Metastorm, one NBA team’s manual scouting system required multiple scouts to watch potential players while completing paper forms to rate their skill set. Next the forms were aggregated for each player, reviewed and ultimately used to create a list of players to be targeted during the NBA draft.

Not only inefficient, this system often led to inaccurate player data, inconsistency in rating between scouts, incomplete reports and a lack of structure when comparing players.

To solve these problems, the team’s general manager enlisted Metastorm to automate the scouting process with Metastorm BPM®—creating online player profiles and enforcing a consistent ratings scheme. Scouts are now able to better collaborate and share evaluation data in near real-time and management can pool different player ratings from multiple scouts and make evaluations based on a single, standardized score.

Metastorm’s unique process client for Microsoft Outlook improved the team’s ability to prepare for the draft – allowing scouts to run reports on top picks and automatically generate a “Player Brochure” on every player. These Player Brochures could be downloaded to a laptop or printed, so that all information on a player is organized and at hand on draft day.

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Visit the Metastorm Library: eBooks

Metastorm PR — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:19:49 +0000

Did you know that Metastorm has published several informative eBooks that cover a variety of interesting topics? Highlighted below are 3 complimentary eBooks that Metastorm has released during the past several months.

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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States streamlining tax collection process to mitigate budget shortfalls

Metastorm PR — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:29:49 +0000

While some sectors of the economy are showing positive signs, budgets in key states around the country continue to linger “in the red” as rising unemployment and reduced spending have decreased income and sales tax revenue, respectively. According to a recent Financial Times article, despite receiving federal stimulus money, 46 of the 50 states show a whopping $142.6 billion shortfall in their cumulative 2010 budgets.

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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