BPM-EAI

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