BPM-EAI

However, an entirely new paradigm emerges when we start looking at BPM in context of a green field IT landscape and such examples abound around us. A new start up organization in the process of setting up IT infrastructure, an existing organization setting up a new division or line of business or an organization aiming at large scale IT transformation are all candidates fitting in this scenario. Lets examine in more details some interesting aspects of BPM applicability in green field IT landscape.

BPM-driven approach places ‘Business Processes’ in forefront of IT systems conceptualization and design. This approach also termed as ‘Top down’ approach to BPM starts with forming a process centric view of business and from there drills deeper into system design and implementation view. In such a scenario, ‘process’ and not the ‘data model’ acts as the basis of organization meta model and drives system design and implementation phases. In a green field IT landscape, organizations have a great opportunity to develop the process model view upfront along with addressing organizational aspects like process ownership, governance and lifecycle management before the deluge of system implementation starts.

Another area where green field IT landscape can greatly benefit from BPM approach is the optimal selection of processes that need to be enabled on BPM platform. In a mature IT landscape, design of process scope around core transaction processing systems and BPM platform offers its own challenges, in terms of user resistance, training and re-skilling effort and system integration. However in green field set-up, the design of core (ERP) and peripheral (BPM platform) processes can be done based purely on business needs and objectives. Such a design is more optimal as system and environmental constraints play a minimal role in decision compared to mature IT landscape. Organizations should not let go of this opportunity in the initial phases of IT systems design. Here I can quote the example of a leading university in middle-east that embarked on a detailed process analysis and modelling initiative as the first step towards setting up IT systems and then formed a system based view splitting process scope around packaged ERP application and BPM platform based on business needs and nature of processes. This approach enabled the university to strike an optimal balance between core transactions processing ERP system and BPM platform in terms of process scope.

However, the adoption of these strategies requires these organizations to be strongly ‘process focused. During initial stage of IT systems design, there are few ‘urgency’ factors that drive the case for BPM and it is very easy for organizations to miss this opportunity in absence of ‘process driven approach’ to business, a key pre-requisite for BPM success any which way.