BPM-EAI

More and more I talk to different clients on the difficulties around nailing a business case for BPM and issues organization are facing around end to end process visibility, my belief on BAM driven BPM gets stronger day by day.

Different people interpret BAM differently and I am staying clear from that discussion and using the term BAM here to represent a set of capability for Positive / Negative Business Process Monitoring, Process KPI analytics and closed loop feedback mechanism.

So before diving into why BAM driven BPM make sense, let us go through some of the typical questions that any organization has to answer before starting its BPM journey and sometime in between the journey

• Which process should we automate?
• How can we be sure the process we choose to automate is going to deliver the business value? Or the lag of the process we automate would have positive impact to the overall business process?
• How can we measure and report promised business value from the IT project?
• Should we document all my processes and analyze them before going for process improvement using BPM?
• Why should we go for BPM adoption when the processes are automated using ERP and other packaged application?

These are the problem area that organization needs to address holistically using value, method, architecture & technology, governance and People enablement aspects, however today let us focus on Architecture & Technology aspect.

If you closely analyze the above set of issues the key aspects that comes out in the forefront are

• There are no end to end runtime process view and any data available on how an organization is faring
• Process view are fragmented and departmental i.e. every end to end process is handled by different departments and each of these department ensures the process area they handle fares well but no view exists on how all the sub-processes contributes to end to end process performance
• No clear view on business value contribution of sub-processes and corresponding process performance
• ERP implements the Core process, however all ERP implementation will have core processes, extended processes and Fringe process. In ERP implementation everybody is focusing on the core processes ignoring extended and Fringe processes
• And lastly to what extent processes should be documented before realizing the value as the process documentation is costly

In my view organizations should always think of incremental adoption of BPM i.e. adopt BPM keeping the tab on the “why” part of the BPM. Today however the immediate focus is directly going into BPMS implementation addressing business process automation or improving manual intervention by introducing workflow driven application or using ECM capability to improve workflow around document management or using business rules to improve system flexibility or focus on immediate process modeling to analyze the process for improvement and more often than not misses the “why” aspect of BPM leading to abrupt end of BPM initiative or BPMS toolset being used as another toolset for building workflow based application. Thus it is important to manage the “why” aspect of BPM in any BPM journey to ensure business focus. And BAM is a way to manage the "why" aspect of BPM implementation. BAM based approach clearly demonstrate following benefits

• Allows organization to see a digitize version of its end to end Business Process using milestone view where end to end process is broken down into key milestone and necessary events are mapped to get a view of the end to end process performance
• Enables IT to collaborate with Business to identify the process lag i.e. sub process between two key process milestones to be automated based on the business value it embodies
• Enables organization to continuously assess process improvement initiatives
• Enables organization to manage its resources better based on the milestone view
• Enables organization to identify the process areas to be modelled in detail based on the automation or improvement requirement
• And lastly enables organization to separate out Core Processes from Edge processes in ERP and work towards Edge process improvement

This does not mean that we do not require the core BPMS capability, it is an essential part and addresses the "How" part of Business Process Management

Posted by Manas Kumar Sarkar at 3:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

After my first BPM implementation, I did not realize the promise of BPM since I was implementing a workflow based application using BPMS toolset.

Don't get me wrong on this; as the solution we delivered was highly configurable and business process driven and the solution lasted for nearly 6 years before getting decomissioned.

The point I am trying to make out here is; BPMS tools adoption itself has a wide range of benefit associated with it but BPM as an area has far reaching impact in shaping up IT to deliver business value. To realize business value organization should make serious consideration on the following aspect of BPM

• Improve Business operation efficiency
• Business process performance measurement and continuous improvement
• Drive business innovation by linking business processes across boundaries within and across enterprise
• Increasing organization Process maturity
• Enable categorization of processes for agility versus standardization to support outsourcing decision
• Enable Process governance
• Manage IT changes using Process views

This is not an exhaustive list but gives a good start for any organization to start looking at BPM from a larger perspective.

Improve Business operation efficiency: Business operation is a vast topic and would be wrong to say that BPM alone would bring in Business Operation Efficiency. However BPM would provide insight into Business process performance information and enable one to identify resource bottlenecks from an end to end process perspective. Making it easier for business owners to take an informed decision on manouvering it's resource to get maximum benefit.

Business process performance measurement and continuous improvement: This is a classic case for BPM, however organization needs to identify the process owner to define the key process indicators and work with the process owner to define strategy for continuous improvement. To facilitate this, it is important for organization to document its business process and key KPI's for analysis and improvement.

Drive business innovation by linking business processes across boundaries within and across enterprise - This is an important aspect of BPM, which is enabling organization to create core business differentiator. Today organization is extending BPM to include its partner and supplier eco system to deliver better business value to its customer by enabling better visibility and decision making capability

Increasing organization Process maturity - Today organization is using BPM as an strategy to improve process maturity by enabling process visibility and ability to track the process. This in conjunction with "Business process performance measurement and continuous improvement" enable organization to improve its process maturity.

Enable categorization of processes for agility versus standardization to support outsourcing decision - It is important for organization to identify process which needs to be agile versus processes that needs to be standardize to derive maximum value. Process visibility and continuous assessment using BPMS capability enables organization to identify processes which can be standardize across geography for them to outsource some of these non-core processes.

Enable Process governance - BPM enables organization to manage process governance better by enabling process owners to make informed decesion based on financial performance and process performance

Manage IT changes using Process views - Today most IT system changes are decoupled from process making it difficult to provide business value for IT changes. A proper BPM strategy would enable organization to manage IT changes via process change management. Today advance BPM adopters are aligning there IT based on process rather than department to derive maximum benefit from IT

Posted by Manas Kumar Sarkar at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

2010 has been crazy for me, so far. This is why it has taken me a long  time to come up with this second part. I shall keep this one short and crisp.

So, let us begin from where I left in part 1 Telecommunications industry…..Basics…..part 1. Here, I shall attempt to touch upon the various telecom technology phases without going into the nitty-gritty's. You can find tons of technical details (for each technology) on the internet. My aim here is to highlight all the relevant technologies -at one place, in one blog.

Briefly, the technology journey so far -
A) 1G - Analog signal communication networks
B) 2G - Digital communication networks:
• GSM (Global System for Mobile communication, TDMA based network)- high quality voice calls, data services (e.g. SMS messaging service), low speed data transfer
• cdmaOne (IS-95) (CDMA based network) - sending voice and data
C) 2.5G
• GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) - data service that uses packet switching (digital network communication). moderate speed data transfer. Available to GSM users. Provides mobile internet access, & Multimedia Messaging Service
D) 2.75G -EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution, also known as Enhanced GPRS i.e. E-GPRS) - backward compatible and provides much improved data transfer speeds (enabling video & multimedia services). This is an extension on GSM.
E) 3G -
• CDMA2000 (CDMA based) - Includes CDMA2000 1X, EV-DO Rev 0., EV-DO Rev A., EV-DO Rev B. (Evolution Data Optimized) - wireless data transmission for broadband internet . This is backward compatible with cdmaOne (IS-95)
• UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) - This is closely related to GSM/EDGE. It is a CDMA based technology.
Applications: high end services such as videoconferencing, high-speed internet, ultra-fast downloads and interactive gaming amongst other data services on the mobile

My favorite upcoming/New Technologies:
A) LTE (Long Term Evolution) -
LTE is a 4G technology. It is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System.
• It provides interoperability with existing UMTS
• Supports flexible carrier bandwidths
• complements  HSPA(High Speed Packet Access) networks with higher data rates
• Supports advanced Antenna techniques like multiple input-multiple output (MIMO), spatial division medium access (SDMA).
• Supports an all-IP flat networking architecture.
Applications: High speed mobile broadband which in turn enables rich Real-time interactive mobile applications

B) Unlicensed Mobile Access
This provides access to GSM and GPRS mobile services over unlicensed spectrum technologies such as Bluetooth and 802.11. This leads to a ubiquitous network using dual mode handsets.
Application: Enables users to switch between wireless LANs/WANs and Cellular networks using a GSM/Wi-Fi dual-mode mobile handset GAN enables the convergence of mobile, fixed and Internet telephony, sometimes called Fixed Mobile Convergence.
A Future possibility: Imagine two rooms- Room A has a WiFi internet router. Assume that the cellular network is not present here.
And Room B has the cellular network. But there is no WiFi internet here.
A person shall be able to initiate a call in Room A and move to Room B, without disruption of the call! The mobile device would automatically switch from the internet network to the cellular network and vice-versa.

Other promising technologies include
C) Near Field Communication (NFC)
D) Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Service (MBMS)
E) Indoor Base Stations
F) WiMAX

All these technologies come with their own set of applications and challenges. And this is where, I believe, BPM can score points. Stay tuned for the next part, where I shall highlight the generic challenges.

Posted by Komal Sethi at 5:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm not very fond of putting ‘ change management’ in my title. It’s such a cliché and not sure if organizations really trust something like this even though everyone understands what this is about. But life is not fair, not to the extent we all like and world of Integration is even more unfair (ask your Integration lead and they will tell you the stories). Just couple of months back, I was having very intense discussion with a CIO of one of the major retail businesses on the topic of IT shared services, and issue on hand was the frustration that this gentleman was going through because of not being able to generate interest and motivation in larger IT organization community as well as business units to go shared service way. While on his interest part, his direct career and credibility as a leader was at stake, more importantly, it nullified lot of effort and investment that was made to conceptualize, design and build the shared service entity.

And this has not been the only unique or isolated story that I have come across. Specially with rapidly changing and evolving IT organizations, this has been a common struggle to break the current mindset and conventional working patterns and move the entire organization toward a new way of doing things. It typically will involve the business app teams, infrastructure team, business owners and managers, vendors and all other parts of the eco-system that are involved in making service delivery work.

I know there are plenty of frameworks, concepts and management guidelines available as far as change management is concerned so this will be sheer waste of time for me and others to have those reproduced here. Intention of this blog is more to bring experiential insight of what I have seen on the ground, what I discovered from my listening posts of very senior executives in large corporations running IT departments and presenting few important aspects here. So to simplify the matter, let us take two sides of the coin and see if the combined story helps elevate the understanding to some degree. First side of the coin is “what made organizations fail in adoption” and I’m sure you guessed the second side of the coin right, that is “what made organization win over the adoption battle”.

What made organizations fail in adoption?
At granular level, there are many different types of factors depending on organization culture, size and business  that in my view contribute(d) to the failure. Here is what my learning says what’s behind the scene making organizations fail (in adopting new delivery models) despite all good intentions:

• Does it really matter for your Bosses? – if you are running the center like an isolated baby and no one on the top really cares for it, you are sitting on a failed program already. Well, still there is 10% chance where your individual heroism and extraordinary brilliance could take you there, but then you are best judge if you want to bet on that 10%...:-)
• Has anyone figured out the value realization? – while you may know what you are trying to do, if others only get to see the changes (read that as trouble and pain) and expectations, they are less likely to be your buddy and partner in the change. Change the game from being ‘change troublemaker’ to ‘opportunity maker’. This can only happen if you are absolutely clear how your plan delivers value to stakeholders. In my view, IT management is increasingly becoming closer to  business management discipline and sooner than later, we will see that IT managers need to become business managers. This will mean that every strategy/plan that is put forward, IT managers need to drive it from business value side and manage the business value outcomes of the investments. That will transform them from ‘Implementer’ class to ‘Business partner’ class.
• Do you have champions working for the change or you are just ordering? – If you own the competency center, it is not enough just you to believe in it and run the change in instructional model. Your leadership team (reporting to you presumably, you never know now a days) need to share the vision, the dream of aspirations and the passion to create a better portfolio. Many of the competency centers really become failed attempt because there is just one person fighting the battle and rest of the team doesn’t really feels any stake in the change. So life goes on for them as usual with little bit hassles every now and then from their boss. Well, that’s fairly tested recipe for failure. So as I see, as the owner of the competency center, it should be your first imperative to create a dream in your immediate leadership team under you and charge them with the roadmap of the change. Enable and empower them to come out from day to day hassles (that’s a investment worth taking the risk) and focus on the transformational change.
• Are you creating ‘documents’ or are you delivering the ‘change’? – I’m sure if you are thinking to invest into competency center program, you have ‘strategy’, ‘plan’, ‘roadmap’, ‘blueprint’, ‘business case’, ‘guidelines’ etc. fairly well sketched in your mind. And if you are sourcing the help from external vendor, a typical ‘consulting’ program might be very well underway. With that flavor of competency center program, my observation has been that organizations get tired/exhausted/done with heavy consulting deliverables with tones of ‘on paper’ deliverables. If you are serious about making the change, just exercise caution before having those tons of documents created. What I have experienced, many of such documents go straight into the bin after couple of months (actually weeks in some cases) because neither organization has any clue how to translate those documents into meaningful outcomes for the organization nor they have adequate skills to make it happen. So I suggest, since beginning, keep the goals/focus on create the change in the organization, creating newer capabilities and delivering improvements (to what exists) even if it takes longer than focusing on monthly deliverables on the paper.

Actually list goes on and on. I got tired writing this one and I’m sure no one wants to read 10 page blog either but I guess I have put forward the most important aspects. If topic evolves, I will put forward more variations to this for the second side of the coin. So feel free to put your comments/experiences and questions.

Posted by Rakesh Mishra at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)