Because Process Matters » Metastorm Enterprise

Let’s Practice What We Preach

Process Matters Blogger — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 15:10:11 +0000

Today, OpenText announced it has completed the acquisition of Metastorm. In the two weeks since news of the pending transaction hit the wire, we have been in a quiet period and unable to comment. During that time, we have continued with business as usual and continued to deliver materials in support of our 2011 theme of “Business Transformation” – including the release of a new Business Transformation Practices Framework and services offering designed to help organizations better manage change and see value from business improvement and transformation initiatives. Some people got a chuckle at the irony of Metastorm promoting the importance of business transformation, while our company itself was in the midst of a dramatic change.

But Metastorm is no stranger to business transformation. In my almost 8 years with the company, we have undertaken four acquisitions and successfully grown the company from a pure-play BPM vendor to a recognized market leader in enterprise and business architecture, business process analysis and business process management software – software that is in use by large organizations all over the world. Now we are on to the next stage of our transformation – merging with a global leader in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions. The wealth of resources and opportunities within OpenText is tremendous – powerful technology, a vast global network of professional services and customer support expertise, and a vision for adding EA, BPA, and BPM to its portfolio to allow customers to get the most comprehensive view of their organization to date – from the strategy and goals that drive the business, to the day-to-day systems, processes and people that run it, to the content needed to make the best business decisions.

So, we will continue to preach the value of Business Transformation to our customers and encourage them to take advantage of Metastorm’s software and our new Business Transformation Practices Framework. We are excited to be part of OpenText. We believe that our customers and partners will benefit from the expanded resources that OpenText offers, and we remain committed to delivering on our product vision for integrated EA, BPA and BPM. Most importantly, we look forward to developing new, innovative industry solutions jointly with OpenText – because agility and the ability to embrace change are a must for any company seeking market leadership.

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Change is Necessary – But Can Your Organization Handle It?

Process Matters Blogger — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:01:35 +0000

Having trouble managing ongoing business transformation projects – large or small? You’re not alone. Last week, I held a webinar in which I discussed how business transformation efforts are often unsuccessful— and an overwhelming majority agreed.

When I asked the attendees to describe their ability to handle major and ongoing changes within their organization in a poll, 63% of participants indicated that it was “slow, painful and expensive” and 31% said that efforts were “disjointed and siloed.” Meaning only 6% of the 83 participants who responded believed that their organization “could be an industry model for business transformation.”

I’m not surprised. Often, organizations struggle to manage change because they lack a consistent approach to business transformations. Determining the end goal of a transformation (whether it be upgrading to a new technology, seeking operational efficiency, or staying ahead of competitor innovation) is one thing, but trying to figure out a successful, cost effective way to roll out the transformation takes deep insight into the day in and day out activities and processes within the organization.

What organizations need to do is figure out how to communicate and collaborate across the enterprise so they can break down the obstacles to change. One way to achieve this is to align the organizational structures against a framework that enables organizations to prioritize and manage transformation initiatives – while also providing visibility into key organizational practices and providing vehicles to help people in cross-functional roles communicate and work together more effectively.

Today, Metastorm announced a new Business Transformation Practices Framework that is designed to do just that. The framework helps organizations eliminate the competing practices and communication barriers that prevent change and help them prioritize and manage transformation initiatives to achieve consistent and repeatable processes across current and future transformation activities. The framework is complementary to and integrated with the Metastorm ProVision® and Metastorm BPM® software – ensuring that multiple, business transformation initiatives can be tracked, monitored, implemented and fine-tuned through business architecture and business process adjustments on an ongoing basis.

If you’d like more information about the Business Transformation Practices Framework, you can contact me or go to www.metastorm.com/transform to read white papers, download solution sheets and register for upcoming business transformation webinars. An onDemand video of The Power of Business Transformation webinar from last week is also available here.

I also encourage you to join me for my next webinar – How to Manage Industry-Specific Change Using a Business Transformation Practices Framework – on Tuesday, March 15^th at 11:00 am EST, register here.

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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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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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Metastorm Positioned in Leaders Quadrant of New EA Tools Magic Quadrant

Process Matters Blogger — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:16:02 +0000

Just a few short weeks after Gartner positioned Metastorm in the Leader quadrant of its latest Business Process Management Suites (BPMS) Magic Quadrant, Gartner published a new Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture (EA) Tools — and Metastorm is pleased to announce that it is also positioned as a Leader in this report.

The evaluation emphasizes how well solutions support EA teams in day-to-day activities, including modeling future-state analysis, road mapping, presentational aids, dashboard analysis and scenario planning. The Leaders selected in this report have a broad range of capabilities to support EA, combined with the ability to deliver these to diverse group of stakeholders. See our press release on the report for full details.

At Metastorm, we have focused on incorporating strengths into our software that truly make us unique versus the competition — including ease of use, the availability of frameworks and models for several industries (including telecommunications, insurance, defense and supply chain management), the ability to integrate EA with BPA and BPM, and the delivery of a web-based repository tied to world-class modeling capabilities.

Adopting an EA tool allows your organization to improve its management, analysis, reporting and communication abilities. Metastorm ProVision offers a powerful suite of enterprise and business architecture, process discovery and business process analysis, and integrates seamlessly with the Metastorm Enterprise software portfolio – which is the only platform recognized by industry analysts for combining the three synergies of EA, BPA and BPM. We believe that consistently being positioned as a Leader in industry analyst evaluations for all 3 disciplines is a confirmation of Metastorm’s ability to provide our customers and partners with the best-of-breed solutions, enabling them to effectively drive strategy and change throughout their business operations.

Explore Metastorm’s product page learn out more about Metastorm ProVision. I also encourage you to review our full list of industry analyst credentials to gain further understanding of Metastorm’s market leading position in the broader technology landscape of EA, BPA and BPM.

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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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Visit Metastorm at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo!

Process Matters Blogger — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 13:44:42 +0000

Last week, Metastorm announced that we are heading down to Orlando, FL to showcase our enterprise software solutions at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo on October 17-21. The Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is one of the industry’s largest gatherings of CIOs and senior IT leaders. The event is focused on delivering the insights, tools and networking relationships necessary to create, validate and execute transformative business technology strategies.

Metastorm is very excited to offer attendees the opportunity to deliver live demonstrations and presentations highlighting key business challenges related to business transformation, architecting for the Cloud, and business architecture and process excellence. You can see these presentations at Booth 321– located in the Business Process Management marketplace and on the perimeter of the Enterprise Architecture marketplace in the ITxpo exhibit hall.

In addition to the in-booth presentations hosted by Metastorm, one feature presentation on the Symposium main agenda that we encourage you to attend is the Salt River Project BPM case study session on Tuesday morning at 8:00am. This is not a sponsor session, but the company is using Metastorm ProVision to drive business process excellence enterprise-wide. The session is titled, “Case Study: Growing BPM Success: From Project Focused to Business Unit to Enterprise IT.”

Over the past year, Metastorm has been consistently recognized for our unique ability to provide BPM, BPA, and EA software applications, which are market leaders in their respective disciplines, and work together as an integrated software platform, to form one of the most comprehensive solutions for enterprise efficiency, visibility, governance and business improvement available today.

So, please don’t hesitate to stop on by Metastorm Booth 321 and learn first-hand how Metastorm delivers the highest business value to customers.

Interested in requesting a one-on-one meeting with Metastorm during the event? Go to http://agendabuilder.gartner.com/SYM20/WebPages/browseexhibitors.aspx.

If you are not attending the event, you can follow the highlights by monitoring our Twitter and blog posts next week. Metastorm will be tweeting all week – just follow us @Metastorm or monitor the Gartner event hashtag #gartnersym. In addition, we will be recapping conference highlights daily on the Because Process Matters blog site. So stay in touch online!

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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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Metastorm Credentials Continue to Grow

Process Matters Blogger — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:25:49 +0000

The buzz surrounding Metastorm’s innovative enterprise software portfolio and leadership continues, as Metastorm credentials continue to grow! Last month, Metastorm was named by AlwaysOn East as one of the Top 100 Private Companies, as well as one of the hottest companies in the Washington, D.C. area by Lead411. This month, Metastorm continues to receive third-party recognition for its market-leading product innovation, company growth and leadership.

For the sixth consecutive year, the Metastorm Enterprise software portfolio has been named by KMWorld as one of the Trend Setting Products of 2010. KMWorld recognizes Metastorm for demonstrating clearly identifiable technology breakthroughs that service a full spectrum of constituencies, especially customers, while seamlessly integrating into enterprise wide environments.

Additionally, today Metastorm announced that Inc. magazine named Metastorm to its Inc. 5000 list, representing the fastest-growing, privately held companies in the United States. Inc. ranks the organizations based on overall revenue growth over a three year period.

Metastorm is committed to developing industry-leading EA, BPA and BPM software and solutions that improve overall enterprise effectiveness and optimization. As always, we are honored to receive industry awards recognizing and commending our ability to deliver a strong, proven software portfolio.

Interested in learning more about Metastorm? Explore the complete list of Metastorm’s industry awards and industry analyst credentials. The ongoing recognition we receive from third parties is a testament to the value that our software delivers to end customers. We encourage you to explore some of these customer success stories to gain insights for your own initiatives.

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Forrester Ranks Top Business Process Management Suites

Process Matters Blogger — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:27:43 +0000

Yesterday Metastorm announced that it has been recognized as a Leader in “The Forrester Wave™: Business Process Management Suites, Q3 2010” report, published earlier this week.

In previous years, Forrester evaluated BPM suites across four categories and published four different BPMS Wave reports —document-centric, integration-centric, human-centric for Java and human-centric for .NET. Now, based on the evolving BPM landscape, Forrester focused down to one BPM Suite report, ultimately narrowing the playing field down to 11 global BPM vendors. I think this is a smart move – it is less confusing for organizations that are evaluating BPM, and it more accurately reflects the premise of BPM itself, which is that the strongest vendors handle human-centric, integration-centric and document-centric processes in a single BPM platform that ties together all types of disparate systems (Java, .NET, mainframe) under a single process layer.

BPM tools and solutions have prevailed through the recent economic downturn, offering business solutions to help boost productivity and gain efficiency and greater control over key operational processes. Whether the organizational objectives are to reduce cost, improve productivity, increase compliance, enhance business agility or reduce risk, Metastorm BPM provides a comprehensive, user-friendly, and proven BPM solution, enabling users to quickly design, automate, analyze, and monitor organizational processes.

But going beyond the basics, I was pleased that Forrester called out a few things that really make Metastorm innovative and stand out from the wealth of basic BPM solutions on the market. The evaluation states, “Metastorm falls into the Leader category, with an impressive collaborative process design environment and Web 2.0 features. [Metastorm] now offers innovative collaborative workspaces and Web-based modeling features that make their BPM suite more accessible to business analysts and business users.”

The newest generation of BPM suites have been designed to target a wide variety of users process analysts, process architects, end users, business managers, and customers—and offer deeper, richer features and capabilities to meet business needs. Forrester noted that BPM vendors are beginning to focus on greater inclusion and collaboration across nontraditional roles for business process improvement, including process owners, business users and customers. It is with no coincidence that our newest products, Metastorm M3 and Metastorm Smart Business Workspace, are aligned with this growing trend. Metastorm is committed to developing cutting-edge solutions that enhance collaboration, visibility and productivity across all levels of the organization.

Another differentiator for Metastorm is that we have long recognized the importance of delivering best-of-breed enterprise business architecture (EA), business process analysis (BPA) and business process management (BPM) technologies on a single platform – to help organizations tackle the ever elusive challenge of aligning strategy with execution. Metastorm has been one of the long-standing leaders in the BPM industry, but it is our unique ability to deliver full-scale EA and BPA software (which by the way is also ranked as a Leader in its category in the Forrester Wave for EA Tools, BPA and IT Planning report) integrated with our BPM suite that sets us apart from the pack.

Forrester acknowledges this differentiation in the report, stating “Metastorm was one of the first vendors to take advantage of the synergies between EA and BPM. Now that investment seems to be paying dividends by providing a compelling environment for BPM and EA teams to collaborate on strategy and delivery for business process improvement.” However, I don’t think the magnitude of this differentiator was fully reflected in our Wave position, due to the nature of the BPM-centric scoring criteria. Perhaps one day soon, industry analysts will acknowledge the importance of merging the EA, BPA and BPM disciplines onto an integrated technology set rather than viewing them solely as independent technologies. In the meantime, we continue to work with our customers to help them see the powerful potential of the combination and realize this vision.

I encourage you to read the complete Forrester BPM Suites Wave report, as well as other industry analyst reports, to get a clearer picture of the technology landscape and to learn more about how Metastorm Enterprise software solutions can be leveraged to meet your organizational needs.

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Hewlett-Packard: On Uncovering Global Processes

Process Matters Blogger — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:57:31 +0000

Organizations worldwide rely on enterprise software solutions to understand and optimize organizational systems, and achieve the agility they need to meet their evolving businesses goals. Over the past six years, the Metastorm Customers Speak Out video testimonial series has revealed real-world examples about how organizations are leveraging enterprise architecture, business processes analysis and business process management tools to understand the full scale of their business operations and maximize their overall performance. In Season 6, which launched earlier this week, customers discuss how they are successfully deploying enterprise software to automate, integrate, align and manage optimized business processes.

Business process analysis and management software enables organizations to design and implement optimal customer service processes, resulting in a world-class customer chain that supports all points of interactions between the business and the customer. When Hewlett-Packard needed help converging and simplifying complex, global customer service processes, they turned to business process analysis and management software to get the job done. In a recent video interview, Bill Riordan, customer service and support manager of Hewlett-Packard, shares how they are successfully deploying business process management tools to uncover and transform their global processes. HP’s customer service programs provide support for 132 countries. Using software as the basis for their BPM infrastructure, they were able to identify and analyze 1,500 disparate global processes and improve and consolidate them into 100 universal processes.

Watch more customer video interviews and read over 100 customer success stories.

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Logica: Creating an Information Sharing Environment

Process Matters Blogger — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:24:45 +0000

At Metastorm, we strive to build and nurture successful relationships with our customers and partners, while providing them with innovative, market leading software to meet their unique business needs. In our newest season of the Metastorm Customers Speak Out video testimonial series, Logica, a business process outsourcing (BPO) company, shares how it is using business process management and business process analysis software to engage clients, create stronger, deeper connections, and establish an information sharing environment between the business and customer.

Norman Baldwin, global BPO operations director for Logica, discusses how Metastorm solutions have helped Logica generate a formal focus on organizational and customer success. When selecting a business process analysis and business process management vendor, Logica was looking for software that fostered an openness culture between their employees and clients. Baldwin explains that Metastorm software has allowed them to deliver their services in an economic, effective and efficient way. Metastorm software also enables Logica to go back and evaluate what they do, and ensure that they are doing it in the best ways possible, Baldwin says.

The synergies between BPM and BPO are obvious. BPO providers must be “experts” in business process excellence in order to provide world-class outsourcing to their customers. Metastorm is unique in its ability to provide not only the business process management software foundation, but also business architecture and business process analysis software that gives BPO providers the ability to map out a unique strategy and business process improvement program for each customer.

All 38 episodes of the Metastorm Customers Speak Out video testimonial series can be watched on the MetastormMedia YouTube channel or on the Metastorm customer testimonial page. The customer testimonials are also available on iTunes, by subscribing to the Metastorm iTunes Podcast. If you are interested in learning more about our partner success, visit the Metastorm partner page.

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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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Metastorm Continues Success in Global Government

Process Matters Blogger — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:05:28 +0000

Today Metastorm announced that our partner, iOctane, and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs have signed a license agreement for the distribution of the Metastorm Enterprise suite of products and services. The Department of Internal Affairs is recognized as an innovative and essential leader in New Zealand’s public service, dedicated to serving and connecting citizens, communities, and government to build a strong, safe nation. The new license agreement will enable New Zealand government agencies to use Metastorm’s business process management and enterprise architecture software for ongoing planning and improvement initiatives.

“Through ongoing product innovation and a focus on customer success Metastorm has established itself as a market leader and we are fortunate to have a strong network of partners such as iOctane to deliver the Metastorm suite of products and services around the world,” stated Robin Martin, executive vice president of international operations for Metastorm.

“We are delighted to be able to sign this agreement with the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs. It will allow government agencies to access the Metastorm process modeling, business architecture and process execution technology tools,” said Chris Symes, head of client engagement for iOctane.

Metastorm has a strong history of helping national and local governments increase efficiencies and improve citizen service through the use of business process management (BPM) software. For example, the City of Norfolk, Virginia recently highlighted the results of its use of Metastorm BPM in an interview with CivSource. Additionally, in a customer video testimonial, the City of Richmond, Virginia discusses how they were able to successfully deploy Metastorm BPM solutions to structure and automate their business processes. Metastorm BPM provides tools for users to design, develop, monitor, and change processes as their organization evolves.

Government organizations worldwide have applied Metastorm BPM to business challenges such as compliance, operational efficiency, permit processing, citizen service, case management, grants management, logistics, defense, and disaster response. Many government organizations have turned to Metastorm BPM because it provides access to a wealth of information within organizations and has the ability to bridge silos across different agencies. These are just a few examples of how government agencies are leveraging Metastorm Enterprise software to develop optimal business processes. Read more government success stories on BPM here.

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Metastorm ranks above the competition

Process Matters Blogger — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:17:43 +0000

As further testament to our functionally rich, integrated business process management suite (BPMS) – Metastorm Enterprise – industry research firm Ovum recently placed Metastorm at the top of its “must-have” list for business process management (BPM) vendors.

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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