BPM-EAI

A branch manager is interested in seeing whether there has been abnormally low or high transactions in a particular day. A Banking regional manager is interested in knowing whether there has been an increase in customers with a recently launched campaign. The country head is more interested in knowing which areas have performed better or worse as compared to a predefined expectation. The global CFO is interested in seeing that if there is a revenue at risk due to any kind of external or internal impact. The HR head is interested in seeing the percentage change in attrition due to an initiative to increase the employee hours in the branches for providing better customer service. The CIO needs to look at the benefits of the discretionary spending over the last year. An IT manager overseeing a multi-million development program wants to estimate the value and even compare the actuals once it is delivered and is ready for measurement.

Most of the information in such examples conventionally have been available as offline reports run through batch jobs scheduled as per the need and convenience or through different other means.

The question is how should an enterprise design its Information Architecture to deliver the right set of KPIs and also make it more usable at all levels. Here are some tips:

Continue reading "An Architecture for KPI - Most needed but ignored" »

Posted by Narayanan Chathanur at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You go and ask any retailer these two questions:
What is the percentage of promotions that you execute are completed as intended?
And secondly, what is the value of sales lost every year, just because the products are not available when it mattered most or in typical business jargon a stock-out.

There are many such pain points plaguing the retail industry in an era, when the consumer is getting more and more Value conscious (I won't use the term Price conscious). Truly the mantra is, every penny saved is a penny earned.

Retailers operate in a world that is constantly changing. You need to be agile to be in sync with current market dynamics.

Promotion is one of the corner-stones on which Four Ps of marketing has been built. It is a way through which every marketer tries to capture maximum share of mind / heart / wallet etc. And retailers are no different. Coupons / Pamphlets still hold good in country like India where digital marketing has still got some ground to cover.

One of my friends rightly pointed out. "You need to have an eye for detail in retail".

Continue reading "Can BPM provide the necessary fillip to Retail Industry?" »

Posted by Arup Guha at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

'First Mover Advantage' is no longer competent enough to become a Market leader. With the advent of technology the replication of winning formula has become easier for the competitors to follow. So being first alone doesn't bear fruits but being first smart is the key to success. Smart? What does that mean? Let's find it out.

Recently cloud is creating a buzz in the technology front. Lots of researches are being carried out on how to leverage upon the available opportunities and thereby creating value from it. Cloud based solutions enables enterprises to minimize the capex and to have a control on the opex. Does adapting to cloud based services and solutions alone make us unique and smart? Maybe it does to some extent but not completely. Let's analyze how players in retail industry can become completely smart using cloud.

Continue reading "S' Cloud - A Retail way!" »

Posted by Saravanan Balaraj at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Customer Data is like the oxygen processed by the lungs and heart (systems in information technology) and injected into the blood (business processes) of any Company. Simplified, the purpose of IT is to harness this key information for the improvement of business operations. Eventually the goal of business is provide the best services to their customers. It is even more significant to know this information for a prospective customer which has the potential to increase the business for an organization. There is no secret that a company outwits competitors just with better customer satisfaction and services at the same time maintaining lower TCO and increasing bottom line. The question in today’s world when IT is ever changing, what is the current scope in usage of technologies such as complex event processing.

Continue reading "Simplify with Complex Events Processing" »

Posted by Narayanan Chathanur at 5:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is an interview with the Pega and Infosys thought leaders about their views on Warranty Management.

Sudripto De, Principal, Infosys Technologies has published several articles on Warranty Management in industry journals and Research Technical Journals including WarrantyWeek and International Journal of Product Development (IJPD)

Continue reading "Warranty Claims Management: Pega and Infosys Share Their Views" »

Posted by Dr. Setrag Khoshafian at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Charles Darwin's "Survival of the Fittest" phrase is old but still powerful and is very much true in today's competitive market place. Every company tries to grab the market share and gain competitive advantage. With the advent of information technologies and frameworks, the gap between competitors has been reducing considerably and every company seeks innovative ways and means to broaden this gap. The Cloud BPM and SOA are some of the hot trends which every company embraces for improving its service capabilities and reach thereby reducing the costs and time to market.

According to Porter, Organization should adopt to one of the three strategies namely Cost Leadership, Differentiation and Market Segmentation to gain competitive advantage. Let's analyze how each of these strategies is achieved. Cloud enables an organization to achieve Cost leadership through its economic efficiency by avoiding capital expenditures on software and services. Business Intelligence achieves differentiation through real-time data mining and predictive analytics by offering intelligent value added services.

Continue reading "ACA = Cloud+BPM+BI" »

Posted by Saravanan Balaraj at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently I was consulting with a leading Cargo shipping company for a legacy modernization program. While debating on the technology choices there was an interesting debate which happened around Event Driven Architecture and which products should be selected in achieving this architecture. The main debate revolved around Rules engine Vs a Complex Event Processing engine to analyse and further act on the events.

Continue reading "Deciding on a Complex Event Processing(CEP) platform for an Event Driven Architecture solution?" »

Posted by Amit Kumar at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Scenario: Thinking out of the Box

Gatsby was chewing the end of his ballpoint pen nervously. In fifteen minutes an unruly mob impatiently waiting outside would inundate his store. Soon after that, some of the best apparels in his store would simply fly out of the shelves. In fifteen minutes, the clock would strike 6 am and the shutters of his Gloucester store would open to the ‘Boxing day Sale’, the acid test for any UK retailer.

Through the blinds in the shop window, Gatsby could spot the seasoned buyers in the five hour old queue outside his shop. They are the hard nosed bargain hunters with granola bars and bottled water. They have come prepared for the long wait. Boxing Day on 26th December is the one day they have been waiting for the entire year. The day when dramatic price decreases are tagged on the most coveted retail brands. Most stores face stampedes and sometimes severe injuries as these big sales draw massive crowd.

Continue reading "Social BPM - Enhancing the Retail experience" »

Posted by Arun Ravindran at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, said George Santayana. Since, times immemorial civilizations flourished and perished. Many empires too reached their zeniths and could not stay there for long due to various reasons. Roman Empire - is a classic example for downfall, while in its peaks, “pax romana” was the call of the day. The measure of success or prosperity is usually got by the way the Agriculture products, sustenance of the populace, Trade and Commerce etc are handled by the Rulers of the Empire.

Continue reading "Changing with times - selection of the right BPM tool" »

Posted by Anil Prasad Kurnool at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Externalization based design strategies - another angle for SOA principles?" »

Posted by Rakesh Mishra at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "The BPM war – Goliath takes on David" »

Posted by Piyush Swain at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)