How Time-to-Insight Is Driving Big Data Business Investment

For many corporations, obtaining insights rapidly is the true value of Big Data.

They say that time is money, but Fortune 1000 executives polled in the
fourth annual Big Data Executive Survey conducted by NewVantage
Partners have boldly confirmed that reducing time-to-insight rather than
saving money is the primary driver for their Big Data business investment.

Conducted in November and December 2015, and published on January
11, 2016, the survey confirms that Fortune 1000 firms believe that Big
Data will deliver competitive advantage by enabling their firms to act
faster when it comes to analyzing data, gaining insights, making critical
decisions, and bringing new capabilities to market. The survey reflects
the evolving perspectives of chief data officers, business presidents,
chief information officers, and the heads of Big Data initiatives for
nearly 50 prominent Fortune 1000 firms.

Survey participants included Fortune 1000 top 50 mainstays such
as CVS Health, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Johnson
& Johnson. Large financial services firms were heavily represented,
and as an industry group, have long been at the forefront of investments
in data management solutions.

As measured by investment and business adoption, it has taken just four
short years for Big Data to assert itself as an essential component of the
corporate mainstream. Among the Fortune 1000 firms surveyed by New
Vantage, 62.5% reported having Big Data initiatives in production or operationalized across the enterprise — nearly double the 31.4% of firms
at this stage in 2013. While only 5.4% of firms reported Big Data
investments in excess of $50 million in 2014, the number of firms that
project investments in Big Data of greater than $50 million leaps to
26.8% by 2017, a steep and rapid increase. For the first time, a majority
of firms (54%) reports having appointed a Chief Data Officer, up from
just 12% in 2012, providing further corroboration that data has become
a corporate priority.

What is driving the sharp increase in Big Data investment? According
to the NewVantage survey, a clear pattern has emerged. Organizations
feel a need to learn quickly and act faster. While only 5.6% of firms
identified cost savings and operational reductions as the primary driver
of Big Data investment, 83.5% of survey respondents named factors
relating to speed, insight, and business agility as the primary reasons for
Big Data investment.
Of this total, 46.5% firms pointed to factors aimed at increasing speed and
reducing the time-to-insight. This is illustrated in the chart showing a
breakdown of Big Data investment factors relating to time-to-insight.

Big Data Time-to-Insight

So, how will organizations respond and leverage Big Data investments to
accelerate the time in which it takes to capture and analyze data, identify correlations, derive insights, and validate their insights in the market?

Accelerate Time-to-Answer through
Test-and-Learn Processes

Business analysts have long been bound by the time it takes to capture,
organize, and make data available to non-technical users. Big Data
processes have consolidated the time it takes to engage in analytics by
reducing up-front data engineering and putting data into the hands of
business users faster. By starting with smaller sets of data, business
analysts can engage in iterative processes such as test-and-learn to
identify patterns and correlations that allow them to focus on the most
useful data quickly. This ability to accelerate the process of insight is
alternately referred to as time-to-answer, time-to-analytics, or
time-to-decision. The net result is the realization of greater insight faster.

Accelerate Speed-to-Market with
Data Discovery Environments

Organizations are employing new approaches to traditional data
management. These approaches include the deployment of analytical
sandboxes, Big Data labs, data hubs, and data lakes. All of these
approaches are designed to introduce greater flexibility and agility into
the process of taking data and transforming it into business insights.
The big breakthrough of Big Data comes from enabling firms to deploy
rapid analysis environments that facilitate data discovery. These more
nimble environments produce faster insights, which enable organizations
to move rapidly to action and accelerate the speed with which they can
bring new product and service capabilities to market. As a driver of
Big Data investment, “speed-to-market” experienced the greatest uptick
from previous years. Firms are looking for measurable results, ratified
in the marketplace.

With the emergence of a digital economy over the course of the past
two decades, leading firms have learned quickly that they must act
faster to respond to customer needs and competitive dynamics. Firms
can no longer wait days or months to analyze indicators of customer
interest and sentiment, or detect and respond to security threats or credit
breaches. Market leaders will not wait while their competitors uncover
critical insights that drive new product and service capabilities. Fortune
1000 firms have come to the conclusion that the ability to act faster
correlates with market survival and success. The need for faster
time-to-insight will be the driving force behind Big Data investment
for the years ahead.

SOURCE: MITSloan |Management Review

Social media customer service presents new challenges

The adoption of social media has empowered customers to have a "louder" voice when they speak to an organization. Customer complaints are no longer restricted to phone-based communication between customer and company. Instead, customer frustrations can be aired on social media and be displayed for all to see.

Organizations have to be ready for the new challenges that social media customer service presents, including deciding how the organization should interact with customers on social media, which sector of the company should handle those communications and what kinds of skills customer service representatives should have to effectively handle issues on social media platforms.

Companies must determine whether a separate, standalone group should handle social media-based communication or whether agents in the contact center should take on the responsibility. Deciding on a division of labor in this way comes with its own requirements and special challenges. Regardless of where social customer service lives in your organization, you must make sure whoever is handling it has the right skill set and tools to ensure the quality of service mirrors that of every other channel the company is present on.

Challenge No.1: Where does social customer service live?

A standalone social media-focused group. Many organizations, especially those new to social media customer service, have decided to isolate the handling of social media communications. With this avenue, the organization recognizes that social customer service requires a focused approach and, therefore, must incur an additional cost of staffing a separate entity in order to get it right.

Social media communications provide another set of data points supporting a voice of the customer program.

Social media customer service is a relatively new practice that companies are still trying to figure out, so many companies see the value of isolating the work to a separate group. This allows for extensive oversight and management and may be a good course of action for companies that are just instituting social customer service.

Handling customer issues on social media is much different from interacting through traditional channels, such as phone or email. It oftentimes requires the agent to have specific skills and it may be more effective to hire staff that has these specific skill sets. Social media is a volatile channel that can build or harm your company's brand and reputation and, thus, needs "white glove" attention.

Contact center. Many organizations have handed the social media reins over to their contact centers, which is a method that has its own benefits and challenges. If an organization wants to ensure their service is consistent, regardless of channel, it makes sense to put the responsibility for all channels under the same roof.

In their ongoing battle against employee attrition, contact center managers are continually trying to provide exciting career paths to entice agents to stay. Since social media customer service may require additional skill sets from agents, managers can set up a structure that rewards agents who learn new skills. In this way, contact centers create incentives for agents to develop new abilities and reap the rewards of a workforce of agents who can multitask and are adept at multichannel customer service.

Social media communications provide another set of data points supporting a voice of the customer program. Having a single place for the collection of data helps to assure the data is collected in a consistent manner.

Challenge No.2: What tools/skills are needed for social customer service?

Regardless of where social media interactions are handled, a set of common practices and tools are required to provide the best customer experience.

Agent attitude and skills. The first requirement is to have agents with the right demeanors and communications skills handling social customer service. Agents should be empathetic, able to deal with complicated customer issues and can interact with customers through a variety of communication methods. Agents handling social communications often deal with harsh criticism of the company that can spiral out of control if it isn't resolved -- or at least responded to -- in a timely and efficient manner. A good agent will be alert, quick to identify the posts that need the most attention and choose his words carefully when corresponding with customers.

Invest in a knowledge base. Even the best agents need a place to refresh their memories on key skills and workflows, which is why a knowledge database that contains a "single version of the truth" is critical so that all agents, regardless of which department they work in, have access to the most up-to-date and accurate information for resolving customer issues. The knowledge base should contain relevant articles and training documents that agents can access whenever they have questions on how to handle an inquiry.

Integration with CRM, other systems. Embarking on social customer service means nothing if a company can't connect consumer exchanges to other key customer data, which is why having a CRM system where all customer interactions are recorded is critical to any organization. Companies must have a history of each customer's journey throughout the entire relationship to improve marketing and customer retention practices. Companies might even invest in a business intelligence (BI) tool to support the compilations of data from various sources, such as CRM data, surveys, etc. Investing in a BI tool can provide data-driven insight into key issues and process breakdowns to improve customer satisfaction.

Social media has empowered customers to have an influential voice in how the public perceives a company. It is up to organizations to address customer concerns on this channel and control the conversation so their reputations aren't damaged and provide a consistent customer experience. For some companies, this might mean a complete re-evaluation of their customer service infrastructure and technology investment in order to do it right.

SOURCE: SearchCRM

What is BPMN? Simple introduction for any audience

Business Process Management Implementation - the ultimate quick-fire Checklist

Business process management (BPM) aims to improve performance by optimising corporate practices and procedures.

Business processes are as diverse as the companies that implement them, so it’s difficult to find a one size fits all model. Added to this hodgepodge is the internal politics that threaten successful implementation of BPM. Opposition to cultural change can quickly turn BPM into an unwieldy beast. Gartner predicts that organisational politics will prevent at least one-third of BPM efforts in 2016.

Successful BPM can be achieved if you take the process bull by the horns. Be the master of the BPM arena by breaking down the method into these three digestible chunks:

1. Analysis and Design

You first need to know where you are before you can decide where you’re headed. Nailing this stage will go a long way in shaping what technical and business resources are needed to get things right. Do the following in this phase:

• Decide who needs to be involved – list all the skills you can think of and match them to the person.
• Hold a kick-off meeting – clarify roles and responsibilities.
• Identify gaps in knowledge and organise the relevant training.
• Establish the project scope – define the limits, considering the budget and time.
• Prepare the project plan – this includes the communication, change management, governance and training plan.
• Start process mapping – suppliers, inputs, processes, outputs and customers (SIPOC) diagram will be useful here.
• Identify challenges – what’s going wrong with the existing process?
• Define an improved process – what needs to be removed, added, merged or automated?
• Explain the structure for standardisation – how to name, categorise and model data.
• Create business process rules – these include schedules, escalations and notifications.
• Measure success criteria – what are your key performance indicators (KPIs)?
• Describe the user experience – logins, views, navigation and access levels belong here.
• Explain the reporting structure – choose the software and design the dashboard.
• Outline the system requirements – consider issues like the number of environments required and system integration.
• Map the data migration process – what data will be moved and how it will be transferred.

2. Program Management

This is divided into two areas – people and projects. Without the right hands on deck, the BPM implementation will be dead in the water.

Add the following to your BPM crew to help ensure plain sailing:

• Process owners are responsible for ensuring the business needs are met.
• Business analysts are the bridge between IT and business. They carry out process mapping, analysis and redesign.
• Process designers plan the technical parts of the process. They work out how the new process will fit within existing systems.
• Process developers have the job of designing new interfaces and database properties.
• Project managers run the daily aspect of the BPM implementation. Risk and issue tracking and resource planning are some of their tasks.
• Program managers are needed if the PBM project involves multiple organisations or a very large organisation. They choose priorities and make sure best practice is followed.
• Subject matter experts take part in the design and testing of the new processes and systems.

Now that you have the right people on board, add these elements to the BPM mix:

• A work breakdown structure which will form part of the project plan. 
• Resource management to account for absences and people leaving the organisation.
• Environment preparation so it should be ‘all systems go’ for deployment and integration.
• Change management processes help to maintain success after execution.
• Communication plans have details of what information is needed, where it’ll be kept and updated and who’s responsible for document control.
• Communication tools can include SharePoint, the intranet and newsletters.
• Lessons learnt logs to capture what went wrong and how it was fixed.
• Policy update documents show changes to policies and reflect the new processes.
• Testing schedules to include what will be tested, by whom and when.

3. Training

Implementing a BPM process is just the beginning. The business must be educated on the best ways to use, monitor and improve the processes.

These aspects will make your training more successful:

• Spell out the training objectives.
• Identify what training is specific to which group.
• Give every opportunity for training attendees to give feedback.
• Involve trainees early by asking them about their expectations at the start of the session.
• Make the training as relevant as possible by using real life examples.
• Make it clear what impact the new processes will have on jobs.

The perils surrounding BPM implementation can be lessened if you develop a good foundation. Ensure that you have the gone through these steps at a minimum.

The key is to remember that all successful projects involve getting the support from the right people. This is even more important with BPM. Save yourself a lot of stress by trying to get the right people on your side. You probably won’t win them all but the more you have for the BPM implementation, the higher the likely success rate.

SOURCE: DueDil

Journey Mapping the Customer Experience

“‘We’re going to solve the customer experience problem’ is a hard sell to the C-suite,” said Miguel Quiroga, executive director of customer experience at Verizon. He went on to advise the audience at the Clarabridge C3 Conference on how to overcome that resistance.

His advice? Identify which experiences matter the most in balancing customer satisfaction with profitability. 

Fix those experiences that are at the “root of the strongest customer pain points and are linked to the most profit.” 

Sound advice since the language of the C-suite is profit, revenue and growth. 

Despite all the rhetoric, the truth is the religion of the customer has not been embraced by the C-Suite as fervently as we’d all like to believe – despite Gartner’s claim that “89 percent of companies surveyed plan to compete primarily on the basis of the customer experience by 2016.”

Quiroga’s advice is to pick your battles: Prioritize the experiences to fix; be clear on how to measure improvement; set expectations internally and externally; then scale across the customer lifecycle and the organization. 

Keep in mind that the last experience the customer has defines his or her expectations going forward.

Understanding Customer Experience

Before you can actually fix any experience, you need to understand it. 

That's where most companies get stuck  – not because the work is hard, but rather because there is a multitude of approaches without a clear consensus, and companies lack the requisite skills. 

The challenge with most approaches is twofold: They must provide a complete picture of the journey and they must invoke the viewpoint of the customer.

Most approaches advocate focusing on a few customer touchpoints, which are often defined from a company’s “inside-out” perspective, not by customers. 

This approach does not result in significant, profit-impacting improvement because it lacks context. It’s like looking at a handful of puzzle pieces and guessing what the whole picture looks like.

The objective of journey mapping is to reduce complexity and make all the aspects of the customers’ experience understandable and accessible to everyone in the organization. The best way to do journey mapping is to interview your customers face-to-face — qualitative research — and document, in detail, their entire experience through their eyes.

Start with the trigger event that causes your customers to realize they have a problem or opportunity. Then map their decisions, actions and emotions all the way through purchase and implementation to the point of renewal or retirement. 

Done correctly by someone experienced in conducting and interpreting the qualitative research, the results will enhance the company’s success far beyond simply highlighting key experiences that need to be addressed. In fact, there are 30 uses for journey maps.

Creating the Map

Let’s talk about how to journey map, since that is where companies are getting stuck. One process, as defined in the Sellers’ Compass methodology, includes five steps, which can often be completed in 45 days:

Step 1: Data Breadcrumbs

• Identify sample size (industry, region, product) and roles to be interviewed
• Analyze trends
• Conduct internal journey mapping session with cross-functional team

Step 2: Interview Customers

• Conduct 45- to 60-minute interviews with two roles per company
• Transcribe and anonymize interviews
• Complete 15 to 20 interviews per sample

Step 3: Journey Map

• Plot detailed patterns of behavior as well as outliers
• For each journey step define the 5 “W”s
• Define interaction channels, emotion evokers, content and other drivers

Step 4: Tollgating and Content

• List tollgates by step
• Define buyers’ process for passing tollgates
• Define content/channel/source for each tollgate

Step 5: Gap Analysis

• Conduct gap analysis on content, interactions, CTA, channels, etc.
• Define “needle move” action plan and timeline for fast results

Using the Map

According to Jeff Freund, CEO and co-founder of Akoonu, “Your journey maps need to capture four core dimensions at each buying stage for each of your buyer personas: The buyer’s participation level (driver, participant, gate-keeper), the buyer’s informational and internals needs, the buyer’s activities to fulfill those needs, and the buyer’s content preferences.”

Koren Stucki, Vice President, CEM Consulting for Clarabridge, believes journey maps “should be a catalyst for change.” Stucki has observed the following common pitfalls of journey mapping:

• No clear scope and objective
• Lack of qualitative research
• No executive sponsor
• Engaging the wrong stakeholder
• “Inside-out” design
• Activity treated as a one-and-done
• Failing to make journeys practicable

“Although all buyers, regardless of industry and company size, go through roughly the same basic steps, different personas will engage in different activities and have different needs, participation levels, and content preferences throughout their decision-making process,” said Freund. 

“And on top of that, these constantly evolve throughout the journey and over time. By integrating personas and journey maps, you can capture these evolving roles, needs, activities, and preferences for each persona at each step of the way.” 

Journey mapping has been in use now for almost a decade and best-practices are emerging. Stucki recommends that companies:

• Bring VOC (Voice of Consumer) into journey maps
• Bring any recordings (from call centers, etc.) and customer quotes into journeys
• The journey mapping team should be cross-functional
• The same team needs to be involved from journey mapping through building the new experience and measuring the result
• Identify listening posts at key points in the journey
• Obtain input from customers on their current and future states
• Measure journey success based on how customers measure performance
• Refresh journey maps annually
• Build a Center of Excellence (COE) around customer experience

“At the foundation of engaging content, inspiring marketing, and effective selling is deep audience understanding – truly knowing your buyers and how they buy,” stated Freund. “That’s why in-depth buyer personas and journey maps are the necessary foundation every company needs.”

Journey mapping enables companies to build an internal common understanding about the truth of business performance. It’s not a patch or something that applies to marketing or sales but not to finance. 

Customer alignment is the new normal, and journey mapping is the first step to competing on experience.

SOURCE: CMSWiRE

Can you use Agile and BPM together to solve business issues?

The perfect business process management system (BPMS) hasn’t been invented. Perhaps it never will be. However, that hasn’t stopped countless attempts to create the next wave of BPMS solutions. One of the approaches getting attention today is the combination of Agile development methodologies with business process management. It may not be a match made in heaven, but it seems to be producing results.

Since it burst on the scene in the early 2000’s, the desire to utilize Agile techniques in many aspects of businesses has taken off. You’ll hear about Agile manufacturing and Agile marketing and other seemingly misused commingling of the word “Agile.” However, the place where Agile software development is attributed with getting its start is summarized in the Agile Manifesto:  

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools;
• Working software over comprehensive documentation;
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation;
• Responding to change over following a plan.

Process Management Evolution

The idea that business process management lives in a silo is false. BPM has continued to grow and change with the business. BPM systems have continued to adopt and adapt to modern technologies. It’s in this way that Agile and BPM have and can come together.

BPM and Agile Together

There is a logical connection point where Agile development and business process management ideals can come together. BPM is all about the rules, follow through, dealing with exceptions, and back to more rules. This is the way business process management professionals think. This is how they are taught.

Of course, BPM has morphed and changed over the years to include more complex flows, including routing, re-routing, wait states, extremely complex rules, recursion and recursive processes, and a plethora of ways to included process iterations. All in an effort to insure the process can be documented… because a documented process can be followed.

Agile development runs almost 100% counter to this mentality. Agile values the individual over the process and prefers that something works versus something being documented. Agile prefers the human element to the business element. And, Agile allows for change instead of taking the planned path.

This last point is what may be the saving grace where Agile and BPM can come together. Since Agile values the human element and BPM has traditionally focused on the process over the people there is a logical connection point here. BPM systems are morphing to allow for ad hoc routing and exception handling. Some of these capabilities are the result of customer demands for a more flexible BPMS and others are from advances in computer processing, such as the increase in access and use of machine learning.

The implication is that there might be areas where Agile and BPM shouldn’t be used together. If you look to the “rules” of Agile development, they run counter to what traditionally has been considered the domain of business process management. Advanced computer processing and more powerful mobile platforms have allowed for the development of low-code solution platforms that put the power of Agile Development in the hands of the people that know the processes best, while allowing the IT department to provide guardrails to insure data and process governance.

Where Agile Might Be Heading

Now, it’s all about lean processes and the minimum viable product (the MVP), as espoused by Eric Ries in his seminal work in his book, The Lean Startup.

MVP thinking – In 2011, a book was released by Eric Ries. He espoused a model of thinking that was common in startups, but had not taken off in the corporate world yet: to develop a minimum viable product (MVP) with the highest return on investment versus risk. To do this, a minimum viable product only has the core capabilities to allow it to be deployed and nothing more. The idea behind MVP thinking is to allow for rapid development and iteration and not get bogged down in the minutiae of a traditional product development lifecycle.

In the future, I expect to see more thinking around designing, developing and deploying BPM systems around the concept of holocracy. While it may not make sense that a BPM system can be self-governing, that is exactly what can happen in an Agile development environment.

Holocratic thinking – The concept came to the forefront recently because the CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, committed his company to adopt a new corporate structure: holocracy. The simplest way to describe a holocracy is that there are no more traditional bosses. Holocracy changes how an organization is structured, how decisions are made, and how power is distributed.

In the meantime, it is quite possible and useful to continue to think in terms of Agile computing to create and deploy both simple routing solutions as well as mission-critical BPMS offerings. The methodology has proven itself to be adaptable to multiple business models as well as flexible enough to change when the business changes. I expect we will continue to see Agile BPM solutions for the next few years. However, I also expect we will continue to see development on lean and holocracy-oriented BPMS offerings. Because as the post stated at the beginning … the perfect business process management system (BPMS) hasn’t been invented.

SOURCE: BPM Leader

8 Helpful Hints for the Start Up Entrepreneur

You have a great idea, but you also have a busy life with distractions at every turn. We, as Entrepreneurs, understand the undying desire to succeed and live the life we know we deserve. When you are an Entrepreneur, it is extremely important to stay focused and positive so that you accomplish what it is you set out to do. Often times we come up with a big idea, share with a potential partner, talk about it over cocktails and convince each other that you will be worth millions by next month – it’s so exciting at the time!

Then reality sets in and we figure out all too soon that 30 days later we still aren’t millionaires. In fact, more often then not we find ourselves living the roller coaster of an Entrepreneurial life before ever reaching that big success.

Here are 8 helpful hints:

1. Stay within your budget – One of the biggest reasons Entrepreneurs give up on their dreams is the lack of money. Running out of money to continue promoting your idea or product can be very stressful. When you finally take that leap of faith and go after your dreams, sit down and write a budget with the amount of money you have. Live within your means and cut out what is not necessary until you have the money to spend on wishful comforts.

2. Write down clearly defined goals and stay focused on those goals

a. Create an action plan that bites off one chunk at a time. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line – set your goals appropriately. There are not unrealistic goals, there are only unrealistic timeframes. For example, don’t say that you will hit the $1,000,000 by next week right from the onset of an idea. Start small and build to the $1,000,000. Make a goal of the $1,000,000 by next year and set smaller goals in between.

b. Stay focused on your goal. Don’t get side tracked by “get rich quick” scams. Stay to the straight line. See your target and don’t take your eyes off of it.

3. Do something every day to promote your idea/product – Every little thing counts. Build an “opt in” database, learn about search engine optimization. Build relationships and keep focused on how to get your idea in the hands of people who will talk about it.

4. Talk to other Entrepreneurs – Learn from other Entrepreneurs. Talk to others about how they did it. Model after successful Entrepreneurs. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel on what works and doesn’t work to promote your idea. Learn from the ‘greats’ that already figured it out.

5. Perseverance – Never give up! Continue to work at making your ideas happen. If you stumble across a few rocks in the road and fall down, get right back up and keep focused on the path to success. Remember, everything takes work. Prepare for the worst and expect the best and decide that you are a success.

6. Track your progress – Sometimes it is hard to see the progress when it is just a little bit at a time. Track the small successes and look back to see what you have accomplished. A little success every day creates the big success at the end of the tunnel.

7. Lean on family and friends – Surround yourself with positive, uplifting people that support you. Block out the negative “always has an opinion” know-it-alls. Remember, anyone can have an opinion, but few actually have the guts to go after their dreams.

8. Create the right mindset (the most important one of all!) – Write affirmations every day! The subconscious mind does not know the difference between reality and make believe. Whatever you conscious mind says over and over the subconscious will create its reality. If you are an Entrepreneur this is one of the most important exercises you can do. Write your affirmations in present tense. For example, ‘I am living my dreams. I attract abundance. I increase my income by xxxx per month’. If you do this one hint alone, sit back and watch how your life can change.

SOURCE: businesslightsideas

IoT & Cloud Are Transforming ECM

The combined impact of the consumerization of technology, cloud, mobile and the Internet of Things (IoT) is ushering in a new era of information management that will change the face of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) as we know it.

Cloud, mobile and IoT together have accelerated a mighty upheaval in the technology landscape as more content enters the enterprise than ever before - leaving enterprises struggling to manage it effectively. The modern ECM platform is required to scan, store data, manage work flow, business process and compliance. Mobile, Analytics, Cloud and Collaborative (MACC) technologies will be the nerve center for big data and predictive analytics.

Cloud is quickening its momentum. IDC predicts that by 2016, there will be an 11% shift of IT budget away from the traditional in-house IT delivery, toward various flavors of cloud computing as a delivery model. By 2017, 35% of new applications will use cloud-enabled, continuous delivery - driven by faster DevOps life cycles to streamline rollout of new features and business innovation.

At the same time, IoT is moving far faster than anyone expected. Market research service BI Intelligence forecasts that device shipments will hit 6.7 billion by 2019. The enterprise sector is currently leading the way on IoT, accounting for 46% of device shipments this year.

ECM - back on the enterprise agendaThis evolution is putting ECM back on the radar and urging enterprises to look at where ECM fits into their roadmap and how it can address a number of issues on the horizon. These include privacy and security issues, universal connectivity, increased regulation of cloud by governments, assessing cloud risk and enhanced virtual and distributed work modes. All of these will put ECM firmly back on the agenda.

Traditional ECM is still working for many enterprises, with more than two-thirds of organizations in AIIM's recent (Q2 2015) ECM Decisions Industry Watch saying they see ECC/DM as mission critical. In addition, 75% of enterprises see ECM/RM playing a key role in their information security strategy going forward.  Undoubtedly ECM is firmly rooted in the enterprise, but with the arrival of mobile, cloud and IoT, enterprises are starting to look at it from a different angle.  They are beginning to realize that ECM has the scope and functionality to deal with the sea of technological change they are faced with and the mountain of data it will create.  IDC has forecasted a 50-times increase in digital content from 2010 through to 2020, with a staggering 90% made up of unstructured data such as emails, audio, images and video.

ECM in the cloud?In our increasingly connected world, ECM comes with its challenges to satisfy the ‘work anywhere' generation, and some enterprises are just dipping a toe in the water.  From a personal point of view, respondents to AIIM's survey were largely in favor of moving ECM content to the cloud, mostly as a small on-premise/large cloud hybrid.  Enterprises themselves, however, are less positive with 48% in favor of cloud.  The dominant preference, as expected, is private cloud (71%).

Many enterprises have established on-premises information governance principles and are worried that moving their ECM system to the cloud could leave their data exposed. But they are realizing that an internal data breach is probably more likely to happen than in the cloud.

They are aware that cloud-deployment of ECM would improve universal access, but for most this equals dedicated deployment on servers that they control rather than multi-tenanted public cloud.

Many enterprises have established on-premises information governance principles and are worried that moving their ECM system to the cloud could leave their data exposed. But they are realizing that an internal data breach is probably more likely to happen than in the cloud.  And they are costly. According to the Ponemon Institute annual Cost of Data Breach Study, the average consolidated total cost of a data breach is $3.8 million.  The question today is not where is the data stored, but are the right information security and governance measures in place to protect it.

Enterprises have wrestled with how to manage the intersection of people, process and information and for the past fifteen years or so we've had ECM on board. With mobile access and large amounts of data existing outside structured processes, the whole perspective has changed. You only have to ask current ECM users, 52% of whom believe that within five years, ECM solutions will combine as a uniform part of the entire IT infrastructure. ECM is entering a new age where hybrid deployment options are expected, but the term ECM is no-longer a moniker for an industry that is going through major disruption. It needs a name that more accurately reflects the changing landscape.

SOURCE: Sys.con

The American Innovator - The 8 Wastes...FastCap Style

NEW PILLS FOR OLD ILLS

In a piece on Clay Richardson's Forrester blog in November of last year, he predicted that 2015 would see the BPM industry disrupted by things like low-code vendors, improved dynamic case management, smart process apps and a stronger focus on the customer. While there is a lot to be said for the current, 'traditional' BPMS you have in place and the approaches and strategies you can use to get the full value from it, there are also some exciting elements to new BPM offerings. We take a look at how you can get more from your current BPMS and what to consider if you think it's time for a change.

BPMS as an Austerity Pill

Most BPMS implemented in the last decade were sold as a “pill” for the recession. They were focussed on short-term projects to do more with less, improve quality and reduce cost - all legitimate business goals and many successes have been recorded in these areas. Notably, most of these implementations were project focussed, lacking an overall vision, without links to business strategy, without BPM standards and sometimes without even an understanding of the full capability/functionality of the BPMS that was purchased. Also, because of the introspective nature of these projects, the customer was not at the heart or even the extremities of the BPMS initiative.

Now, that the recession is almost over and the projects are ending, this austerity pill is no longer needed and just like a patient needing to change their lifestyle, these BPMS implementations need a full health check and overhaul to make them relevant to expanding markets and to provide a real focus on improving customer centric processes.

The good news is that the BPMS continues to be as relevant, capable, extensible and valuable.

If this sounds like your organisation, you are in an enviable position. Think big. Go back to basics and take a more strategic approach to the BPMS.This will give you an opportunity to leverage the pre-existing investment – no need for a big capital intensive project and you are building on the BPM assets you have already built. Align the BPMS strategy with business strategy, understand the opportunities, threats and then establish priorities and get cracking! If you know who your customer is, map the Customer Journey as part of this exercise, ensuring that there is a proportionate focus on the Customer.

New Age BPM Suites

The term “new age BPM suites” refers to the explosion of Business Process Management (BPM) related solutions appearing on the market, promising fast fixes that plug gaps, provide workflow, light automation and can connect disjointed IT applications. These suites and solutions will extend or replace existing BPMS, moving business processes beyond documentation to execution.

Who can benefit?

The smug fit and healthy BPMS Implementers

Organisations that have implemented their BPMS strategically, who took the time to understand how processes can influence strategy and vice-versa are well positioned to benefit from the new age BPM suites and the “4 tier architecture” as described by Forrester. They understand where the emerging solutions fit in the jigsaw that is their future digital business, they have the structures, governance and standards (including data management) in place that allow them to rapidly deploy and get business value from these solutions - fast. They are also more likely to have resolved security and data protection risks associated with deployment in the cloud. I’m not coming across many organisations in this position.

The new BPM solutions can be used as short term solutions…new pills

Ironically, organisations that don’t have a BPMS or BPM but have a pain that needs a “pill”, can gain very fast benefits from these new and emerging BPM suites and applications, for example:

• Starting small by conducting experiments to evaluate BPM approaches – small cost, low risk and builds trust
• Gathering data from disparate sources to generate “Big Data” (customer centric analysis, of course)
• Plugging gaps to create end-to-end customer experiences
• Supplementing outmoded systems with workflow and new functionality, bolted on.
• Interim low cost solutions where big legacy apps require major development or ” plan B” for high risk developments
• Automation of electronic forms and checklists
• Case management
• Event based triggers (to email, SMS and other channels)
• Monitoring e.g. social media
• Automation of collaborative tasks e.g. shared excel files
• And lots more…

These solutions will take weeks to develop, rather than the months needed to develop using “traditional” application development methods. When delivered in the cloud, implementation time is also minimised, meaning that they genuinely deliver business value fast.

Final comment…

This is an exciting time for those wanting to gain advantage from BPM systems and solutions. Some of us working in this space for years foresee major benefits to our clients from these new and emerging solutions. As with all new technologies, take the time to understand the risk of an early stage market, understand how they fit with your business and IT strategy and choose carefully.

If you do decide it's time for a change, make sure it's approached correctly from the get-go. For some examples of how to implement a project well from the beginning, have a look at our Rapid System™ and TPSoP® methodologies, both created to ensure that business goals, governance and customers, are always taken into account, creating a real understanding of the heart of BPM.

If you need support for the changes you're implementing check out our BPM consultancy services.

SOURCE: Torque Management