‘Templatize’ for Better Business Process Management (BPM)

If there’s a word I’d like to mainstream, It would certainly be templatize. It’s already
used in the computing world, but I think it has a broader application when it comes
to business processes too. It’s a wonderful synthesis of our digital world’s move toward customization and automation, and it simply makes sense for those of us who spend our
days Googling and WhatsApping. The business template allows us to create our own
processes once and then repeat them over and over again, tweaking and refining along
the way.

Templatizing is an essential part of any company’s business process management, or
BPM. What is BPM? It’s simply the optimizing of your business practices, looking for
ways where you can cut costs, increase revenue, increase efficiency and productivity,
and just make things easier and clearer for your team.

Better BPM is a constant struggle and reward situation for businesses of all shapes
and sizes, whether you’re just at a couple desks in your local coworking center or
in a multinational distributed team. It’s the part that doesn’t focus on what you’re
doing so much as how you do it all. Logically, BPM and workflow templates go
hand-in-hand.
 

What are the benefits of business templates?

A business template is a BPM tool that acts like a workflow diagram that lets you
map out a repeatable process.

1. Templatizing enables ‘hit-by-a-truck’ teamwork

If something unfortunate happened to the most essential member of your team
(or if they simply left your team), would your business fall apart? Business templates
clarify workflow processes and make it easier to run a “hit-by-a-truck” operation that
allows for people to move between teams and roles without disruption. They also let
you run an international business from anywhere and allow remote teams to
collaborate on clearly defined tasks.

2. Templatizing captures the efficiency of best practices

We’re all working toward constant cycles of innovation and improvement, but why
reinvent the wheel? It takes up time and energy that we could be putting into new
mission-critical initiatives. Once you know what’s working for you, allow business
templates to drive repeatable best practices, and then look to experiment in other
parts of your work.

3. Templatizing gets you started

Business templates are simple and elegant BPM and productivity tools. Once you create
them, you can reuse-recycle and dive in to get started right away on any new project.
An added benefit: starting faster also minimizes procrastination and increases your
chances of completing the task at hand.

4. Templatizing reduces errors

Let’s face it, nobody’s perfect. You need to work as a team to create tried-and-true
workflows. By having repeatable steps to follow, you make sure that everyone follows
the same crucial steps, limiting mistakes made and creating a transparent workflow that
teammates around the world can view and follow.

5. Templatizing improves consistency and accountability

Using a template as part of your business process management workflow means that
you and your team are focused on clarity, conciseness, and consistency. It means you
have your you-know-what together. Not only does it help onboard new team members,
it helps give current members assurance that they heading in the right direction. And
this form of workflow automation also helps shine light on the all-important question of whodid what, when.
 

Where can you use templates in your day-to-day
BPM?

There are a lot of places where templatizing is a no-brainer. First and foremost, creating
a repeatable workflow helps increase customer satisfaction. Try using it for tech support
and customer success to follow a common flow of how to help resolve customer issues,
or to help close a deal.

And you can make sure that no matter who answers the phone or accesses the lead that you
get the right information from the start with a systematized client intake
workflow template:

For me, being part of the small 100-percent remote team that runs the online remote
network Happy Melly, the first use case we saw for templates in our highly experimental
org was for onboarding.

When you go from from three to 15 teammates and from about 60 to 400 clients in just
a year, you have to change the way you do business — or you’re sure to miss important
steps in welcoming any new member of your extended work family.

For example, here’s a snapshot of a customizable Redbooth workflow template for
onboarding new team members:

Browse Our Free Workflow Templates

Use our free workflow templates to follow a typical workflow for any given task, or go ahead and customize them to make them your own:

• Design a website
• Set up a Scrum workflow
• Manage project status
• Plan a big event
• Run a weekly meeting

…and many more!

And while templates and defined BPM may seem corporate, they also help startups and up-and-comers too.

In fact, at Redbooth, they first got the idea for creating the workflow templates going through their own Series B funding round, creating a series of legal templates to get them through that arduous yet essential investor paperwork.

But then they couldn’t stop. Now, with just a click of a button, you can open up a new Redbooth workspace that has all the steps laid out for you in common workflow management. Open up a workflow template in your existing Redbooth account, or start a free trial and test-drive as many templates as you want.

There are dozens of workflow templates already, and Redbooth is always interested in ideas for creating more! Email workflow@redbooth.com to find out more about getting custom workflow templates
 created for your business processes.

Explore the Redbooth Workflow Template library >>

BEST PRACTICESPRODUCTIVITYWORKFLOW TEMPLATES

SOURCE: Redbooth

What is BPM in plain English? Explained to Small and Medium Enterprises

What is BPM really? When we think of BPM or business process management, we often think of ‘expensive’, ‘for large companies’, ‘takes up too much management time’ or ‘we are not ready for that yet’. Is that really what lies behind BPM?

All those perceptions are wrong. In fact, a Small or Medium Enterprise should worry the most about its business processes in order to grow faster. No organization should postpone this issue until it’s too late because the solution might not be as simple.

SMEs that want to have a chance in the market should start by managing its business processes;maximize customer satisfaction and its inner efficiency, all of which is crucial to grow.

In a previous post we discussed the main difficulties and fears of a SME when using BPM and we suggested specific solutions to face those issues before they become irreversible.

Now we will present the BPM discipline in a simple and specific SME-oriented language, taking into account their problems and worries, showing why this is such an urgent issue. The sooner you start applying BPM solutions, the better will your company function.

What is a business process?

A business process is a sequence of activities that take place in your company to achieve any of its objectives. Usually a business process involves several people who contribute with a particular task.

Let’s think of the following example: Your company receives queries and products requests via email, telephone, website, call center, or through direct contact with salesmen. In any case, after receiving the request, it is assigned to a vendor, who communicates with customers to better understand their needs and build a business proposal for them. There are standard proposals, which go directly to the customer via mail. And there are complex proposals that require additional approval of commercial managers and then go to the customer. Let’s say that the client can only do three things: buy, reject the proposal or ask for modifications. If they buy, your process continues through the seller, who coordinates the delivery.

Modeling a business process

The previous example could be illustrated with a diagram (or workflow):

Hooray! We have the first version of a workflow for our selling process. Using a diagram helps us to:

• Understand how our process is working and raises questions: Do we want this logic to complete a sale? Or a different one?
• Identify bottlenecks: The Commercial Manager is able to review everything in time to send to the customer?

Process automation

Ok, the workflow is ready, now what? Automate a process using a BPMS (BPM System). That means ‘translating’ the process into a computer system that allows us to automate each process stage.

In our example, once the vendor completed a complex proposal, it is sent directly to the ‘Inbox’ of the Commercial Manager, without having to send physical documents or exchange mails. The BPMS “knows” that after the Seller, if the proposal was marked as complex, it should be delivered to the Manager, who can approve or return it.

The most important concept here is the ‘Inbox’. There the users will find the tasks that have been assigned to them in the previous stage of the process. And once the user completes the task, it will go to the ‘Inbox’ of the next user

In our example, the proposal will reach the ‘Inbox’ of the Commercial Manager, who will have two buttons: ‘Approve’ or ‘Return’. If returned, the proposal will be sent to the ‘Inbox’ of the person who wrote it in the first place. If approved, the proposal will be sent to the client (via email if he has no access to the system).

In addition to managing ‘inboxes’, the process automation allows us to:

• Create new instances of processes in different ways. In our example, create new business applications, regardless of their origin (call center, salesman, etc.).
• For each of these instances, facilitate collaboration and show at which stage is each instance.
• Set deadlines for each stage. In our example, we could make sure that the client gets our quote before a certain time limit.

Plus, all instances of the process (in the example, the commercial proposals) are stored in the system, the history is recorded (who wrote it, when it was approved, etc.) and all related documentation is stored (different versions of the proposal, comments, observations, etc.). Thus, in a single system we have all relevant information of all commercial proposals (instead of having it scattered in countless mails or Excel ® spreadsheets).

Process analysis

After having automated a process with a BPMS, you need to identify:

• How many proposals are at each stage (i.e., how many opportunities at each stage)
• Set alerts with deadlines in each stage (How much does the client have to wait for a quote?)
• Exactly how much work is each person responsible for (Are we really swamped in work or just a few stages are stuck and impact on the entire process?)

Measuring tools in a BPMS allows us to:

• Issue reports that show the number of quotes, the time required at each stage and the productivity of everyone involved in the process.  In our example:
• How many applications I quote the last month?
• For which product?
• How many ended in a closed sale?
• How many belonged to each seller?
• How long did the process take?
• How long did each stage take?
• Is the Commercial Manager a bottleneck?
• How long does the Commercial Manager take to review each proposal?
• How many proposals are pending review?

This is called measuring and analyzing the processes. This way you can know for sure how well each process is working and where there are problems. This is helpful beacause you know where to use your resources and where not to waste your time and money.

Summary

When an SME starts functioning, each process is quite simple. But once you start growing, can you handle everything manually? What will happen when you have 10 processes per week? Or 100? Or 1000?

The answer, although obvious, is not always considered in SMEs: You simply can’t grow if you manage your processes manually. So many SMEs start using tools like the email or Excel spreadsheets. Both are temporary solutions. Excel spreadsheets become unmanageable and useless. Something similar happens with the emails.

The example that was presented in this post shows clearly these effects. But it is important to understand that all other processes in an SME eventually face this reality, regardless if they are production, administrative, or customer-related processes.

When we put it like that, it seems quite clear that it is impossible for an SME to grow beyond a certain size unless its processes are optimized. This is done in four stages, which are the pillars of BPM:

1. Model your processes using a diagram to visualize how they work.
2. Automate processes using Flokzu.
3. Measure time and quantity of work done, to draw objective conclusions about where and what to improve.
4. Introduce improvements and repeat stage one.

SMEs shouldn’t first worry about surviving and competing, and then think of BPM. It should be the other way around: adopt BPM to achieve efficiency grow faster.

If you want to get started in the world of BPM but don’t know where to start, don’t worry. We designed a form that will help you identify the key processes that you must work on and how to start automating them. It also includes an estimation of the required time for each stage of the automation.

SOURCE: FLOKZU

Benefits of Integrating Business Process Management with Lean Six Sigma

Business Process Management and Lean Six Sigma can work very well together. Each system has something great to contribute to an organization, which results in a higher level of power when combined. However, today not all organizations throughout the world either recognize the benefits or have failed to implement the combined initiatives through a system such as Integrated Enterprise Excellence.

In Lean Six Sigma, members and leaders are typically taught that technology is not a vital component in terms of solving process problems. Although BPM involves technology, Lean Six sigma can be enhanced through BPM’s methodologies and capabilities. Similarly, BPM users tend not to have appreciation of Lean Six Sigma strategies and how the techniques of Lean Six Sigma could lead to more effective BPM deployments. BPM and Lean Six Sigma complement each other in many ways possible, but not many are aware about these. Five benefits of integrating these two initiatives are:

1. Process Enforcement and Business Ownership

The integration of BPM and Lean Six Sigma can speed up the real-time execution of processes even when a team is geographically dispersed. With the tools combined, organizations or businesses can offer an orchestration of the essential elements of the techniques, such as the processes, inputs, outputs, failure analysis, documentation, evaluation, statistical analysis and feedback, among others. An effective collaboration of BPM and Lean Six Sigma can result in processes that can be automatically executed through BPM?s automation.

Through this integration, practitioners or business owners can have more control, which is intensified by monitoring and the reporting of predictive process performance metrics. The BPM portion and associated software can provide vital data for implementation and process design. This simply means that all processes can be executed according to their intent with harmony. This minimizes the risks of problems occurring.

2. Agility and Speed

Organizations will experience benefits when the two initiatives (i.e., agility and speed) operate together. For instance, a supplier can improve its competitiveness by reducing the delivery time. Through the use of Lean Six Sigma methods, this organization can determine the value stream map, which highlights the metrics and focus points necessary to reduce total lead time.

In this, the value stream map is broken down from the lower processes up to the point that key areas of waste and failure are addressed. Once improved, it results in delivery time enhancements. A BPM automation initiative can act at this time to deploy the controls and processes throughout the initial key areas, such as waiting order approvals and signatures. Through BPM, there can be automated controls, where all the data for process performance are collected in real time.

3. Better Approach to Problem Solving

Usually, Lean Six Sigma strategies focus on resolving narrow and highly specific issues. With this technique, all the data necessary to eradicate all wasted work can be determined in an efficient manner. Hence, there can be a well-defined set of steps or activities, which will aid in eliminating all the non-value-added work.

However, a traditional Lean Six Sigma deployment by itself often misses the big picture. This is where Business Process Management can be beneficial in the picture. In general, organizations benefit the most when there is a framework that will support the integration of the two techniques so that all angles of the problem solving process will be looked in a more precise manner; e.g., the Integrated Enterprise Excellence business management system described above.

4. Patches the Weaknesses

Lean Six Sigma alone in terms of a deployment involves two major weak points:

• The enhancements obtained from Lean Six Sigma have the tendency to become isolated and less focused, which can lead to problems with the flow of services or products in terms of the bigger context, like in an enterprise.
• A Lean Six Sigma deployment depends upon the collection of resources from competitors and views priorities the same way cooperatives do. Since various business units have their unique priority ratings, reviewing the right priorities normally leads to slow enterprise-wide improvements.

Now, what about BPM? Essentially, BPM is not into statistics — creation of hypothesis test when it comes to identifying areas for improvements like a Lean Six Sigma process improvement roadmap suggests. Yet, BPM within an IEE structure lays the framework required for modification in workflows and processes to allow the implementation of enhanced outputs derived from Lean Six Sigma.

5. Higher Returns

Average companies, which either employ Lean Six Sigma or BPM, are known to generate increased profit when compared to those who do not utilize any initiative. However, those organizations that manage to effectively integrate BPM and Lean Six Sigma successfully achieve the most long-lasting benefits.

Many organizations are deploying both Lean Six Sigma and BPM. Most of these companies are large companies, but smaller ones can also reap the benefits of BPM and Lean Six Sigma, together. Those companies that either utilizes Six Sigma, BPM or both experienced significant improvements on essential performance indicators. Yet, those who performed the integration of the two initiatives gained higher levels of success, particularly in terms of revenues.

Without doubt, the two initiatives have a lot to give to one another since they only have one goal — help organizations optimize and manage their processes more efficiently. While the focus and approach may be different, the combined efforts really help in elimination of waste, improving quality and developing better control.

BPM and Lean Six Sigma integration is promising, but organizations should be clever and alert to achieve continuous improvement throughout the years to come. An Integrated Enterprise Excellence system provides a roadmap for this effective integration.

SOURCE: Quality Magazine

What Is the Future for Processes?

To understand the future of processes, you must dig a little deeper than many people do.

Process thinking goes back well over a century, to the origin of modern iron and automobile production.  The raw materials and finished goods of such manufacturing and production processes are literally spatial — 3-dimensional.  What can you do to significantly improve productivity in a 3-dimensional world?  The answer these days is simple:  You build robots.  Robotization has literally changed the world during the past 30–40 years.

Rather than manufacturing and production processes, however, the world is now increasingly focused on white-collar and digital processes.  What 3-dimensional presence do the raw materials and finished goods of these processes have?

Well, exactly none.  The raw materials and finished goods of these processes aren't physical and simply have no spatial presence whatsoever (except maybe for paper artifacts).  Robots (at least physical ones) aren't an option.  That fact of life makes a huge difference in how you have to think about automation for such processes.

Instead, the raw materials and finished goods of such processes are all about your operational business knowledge — your intellectual capital — and your capacity to express and apply it.  That capability, in turn, depends directly on your business terminology and business language.  For white-collar processes you have no choice — the world is semantic.  So you must deal with the subject matter semantically.

That takes us in a very different direction than most professionals currently foresee.  For one thing it takes us toward natural language and away from diagrams.  That's a huge shift in mindset.  Imagine having a business conversation with your smart phone about gaps and ambiguities in business policies and in the meanings of the vocabulary you use to talk about subject matter knowledge.  Don't think that's possible?  Have you watched your kids talking to their smart phones lately?

Sooner or later businesses will realize that operational business knowledge differentiates their product/services and enables their ever-more-automated processes to function.  Capturing, managing, and re-using that intellectual capital puts a premium on structured business vocabulary (concept models^[1]) and on business rules expressed in structured natural language.^[2]  Those business rules are the only way you have to ensure quality from white-collar and digital processes.

What about Case Management?

Many 'processes' people are looking to implement these days are clearly best viewed as case-oriented — e.g., patient care, mortgage applications, etc.  Individual cases must be orchestrated through various states, often with undesirable or wayward transitions.  There is significant variation in the paths that various cases take.  Things just don't always move along as predictably as on a production line.

For such problems you'll want a more case-oriented style of modeling.  (For business practitioners that technique may or may not prove to be CMMN.^[3])  You might not use traditional process modeling at all.  Whatever your approach you'll definitely want to be very clear about what milestones are relevant, and which business rules apply for each.  That puts a premium on business rules.

What about Cognitive Computing?

People are also starting to ask why current processes are so dumb.  For example, why can't they:

• learn from experience? 
• be more goal-driven?
• dynamically balance between conflicting goals? 
• self-adapt? 

Some people suggest use of cognitive computing to help make processes smarter.  I doubt anybody today really knows how far this idea can be taken.  I can, however, say two things with certainty:

• If you don't know what your business rules are (i.e., what rules guided previous executions), can you really expect a machine to figure them out?  A machine can undoubtedly identify patterns, but that's a far cry from demonstrating compliance, guaranteeing consistent results, or customizing appropriately case-by-case.
  
• Suppose self-adapting processes do become reality.  The question I have is what will keep such processes from going out of bounds?  How do you avoid them doing things that are undesirable, self-defeating, or even illegal?  These are critical questions that will always bring you right back to business rules.

For further information, please visit BRSolutions.com      

References

[1]  Refer to "What Is a Concept Model?" by Ronald G. Ross,  Business Rules Journal, Vol. 15, No. 10 (Oct. 2014), URL:  http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2014/b779.html  

[2]  E.g., in RuleSpeak®.  Refer to http://www.rulespeak.com/en/  

[3]  Case Management Model and Notation  

SOURCE: BRCommunity

6 ways the robot revolution will transform the future of work

TechRepublic spoke to Alec Ross, author of The Industries of the Future, about the global impact AI and robotics will have on the future of work.

Image: Stephen Voss

We are on the brink of a major technological moment, with global, economic, and social implications, according to Alec Ross, author of The Industries of the Future. Out today, Ross's book draws on his experience as Senior Advisor for Innovation under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in which he visited 41 countries to see, firsthand, the way the world is changing. TechRepublic spoke to Ross about his takeaways for what the world will look like, and how to prepare for our future.

Robotics today are what the internet was 20 years ago

Ross believes that "today's robots are going to look like the PCs of 1993 pretty soon." A big reason for this, he said, is that "cloud robotics has taken the traditional development model for robots, what we historically might have thought was necessary in terms of hardware and software in-unit, and radically transformed that."

That, in turn, has transformed the economic equation as well. "By enabling a robot to draw from the intelligence in the cloud and therefore not needing such spectacular processing power inside the unit," he said, the cost will drop significantly.

The spread of innovation will be uneven

The robot revolution will have different effects, said Ross, and whether or not countries reap benefits will depend on how quickly they adapt. He highlights Japan, Germany, and South Korea as the countries that are best positioned. Although China and the US are also part of the "Big 5" in robotics, the smaller companies that have headquarters for big robotics companies have created an "outsize benefit on a per capita basis."

Challenging traditional economic models of labor

Semi-skilled labor can now become robotic labor, said Ross. In China, where hundreds of millions are employed in semi-skilled work, robots will have a huge effect. "The fact that there are new equilibrium points in the human/robot labor cost trade-off that is hitting semi-skilled labor, in China, is a really big deal," he said.

The US, on the other hand, is a relatively high cost labor market. Over the last 20 years, most displaced labor has been blue-collar.

The introduction of robots in the US will be "great for certain segments of America and Americans," Ross said. "There will be more billionaires. There will be more millionaires." He sees more people working in engineering and robotics. Yet there will also be a huge group of displaced workers. And while, in the past, it was mostly manual labor that took a hit, robotics is now "doing work that is increasingly cognitive and non-routine," he said. "The next wave of jobs that will be replaced are lower-level white-collar workers, which require some cognition and a lot of repetition."

And the impact, Ross said, is personal. Jobs like what Ross's own father had, as a real estate lawyer in West Virginia, of which a large part was collecting signatures, may be rendered obsolete. "I can't help but think that the combination of AI plus blockchain technology can wipe out the kind of work that my father did for 45 years."

Cultural differences

Ross sees East Asia as the first large-scale adopters of robots. Why? It's cultural. Westerners, he said, are much more worried about robots, whereas eastern cultures, and the belief in animism, makes them "inherently less hostile to artificial intelligence and robotics," he said. "Robots don't have the cultural baggage in the East that they have in the West."

For example, in the US, "if you see a little neo-robot on a student's desk, some people think, 'God, that's messed up. Why is it that a 2-foot tall robot is teaching that 10-year-old how to do her multiplication tables?'"

But in Japan, South Korea, or China? "It's a non-issue," Ross said.

Get ready for a rebellion

Job layoffs are guaranteed; the question is, what will happen with displaced workers? "Anytime labor patterns change," said Ross, "there is unrest."

Living in Baltimore, he has seen, firsthand, what happens when a group of people experience deep anxiety and a sense of unfairness over their economic prospects, which is what he felt was at the heart of recent protests. "It won't surprise me at all if [we see] the kind of protests we saw around the Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s," he said. "In the 2020s, I could imagine the same kind of protests against robotic labor."

Preparing for industries of the future

Ross thinks that investing in areas like vocational education and community college is critical, with the potential to serve millions of Americans. "The vocational ed of 2016 is largely unchanged from the vocational ed of 1956," he said. "What we have do is we have to look at what the industries of the future are and radically reorient how we deliver vocational education."

Since these types of education focus on "historically, a very vulnerable segment of the population," it is critical to prepare this group with what lies ahead. "There are lots of job openings that will be available, with things like an associate's degree in cyber security, for example," he said. "We've got to radically reorient our approach to community college."

The 3 big takeaways for TechRepublic readers

• Robots will affect countries differently depending on how well and quickly they adapt—Japan, Germany, and South Korea are best positioned to welcome the transition.
• There are major socioeconomic consequences that will come from a class of displaced workers. Civil unrest and protests could result as a backlash against robots.
• Investing in vocational education is crucial to the strength of the US economy and its future workforce.

SOURCE: TechRepublic

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

Disrupt or Be Disrupted: IT Driving Business Transformation

BPO/ITO expert: Robotic process automation offers 'tremendous value proposition'

Robotic process automation is sometimes described as the automation of automation. How is RPA different from the sort of business process automation that companies and CIOs have been doing for years?

Andy Wasser: We're only talking software here. What I think is distinguishing this from traditional automation is going the next step with the ability to integrate multiple systems and [enable them] to adapt to changing circumstances. So, it could be that you're taking your ERP system and your CRM system and there was somebody who was going in between those two, or you were going to one of your systems that was reporting potential breaches into your network, and then you were going to another system to do further examination. I've heard robotic process automation being used as sort of the replacement for the swivel chair. Going from one system to another is what RPA does.

What do you mean?

Andy Wasser

Wasser: Let me give you an example. Let's say there was an accounting system, and the accounting system would kick out exceptions. And then you'd have Maria, the wonderful person who would deal with all the exceptions. Well, someone would sit down with Maria and say, 'What do you do?' And she'd say, 'Oh, when it comes in and it's missing a bank identification number, I do this, this and this. And when it comes in and these three numbers don't add up, I do this, and so on.' When you list it all out, it turns out that Maria is dealing with maybe 14 types of common exceptions. Those 14 exceptions can be turned into a process, just like the original accounting system was turned into an automated process. She was doing things that were exceptions, but there was a routine to her exception handling. That routine may have required her to look something up in an ancillary system or make a phone call or do a calculation, so with RPA you're starting to go that next level, in terms of complication.

Has technology changed suddenly in order for this to happen?

Nothing that these devices are doing today puts human IT outsourcing at risk. But I wonder if it is just a matter of time.

Andy Wasserassociate dean, Carnegie Mellon

Wasser: I think it is incremental. Things are getting more and more automated with time, and so you're seeing the results. Think of an ATM. It used to just dispense cash. Now, you can take a picture of your check with your cell phone and deposit it. So, I think it's not a big-bang type of issue. It's more that things are just happening faster and faster, and as things are definable and repeatable and rules-based, they're great candidates for this type of technology. I don't think there is any incredible silver bullet that's happening, except the fast pace of expert systems and artificial intelligence.

You make a good point. Technology is much more pervasive now, and as everything we do becomes more digitalized, there is more opportunity to automate jobs.

Wasser: That's right where we are. As things get more and more digitized, there is just more opportunity for RPA.

RPA is presumably expensive to implement?

Wasser: While it's fairly costly right now to consider this level of technology, one thing we know about technology is that those costs keep going down over time. And the one thing we know about people is that our people costs tend to keep going up. And so the value proposition here is just enormous. The place where it is most likely to start out is with those repeatable, definable practices, and that is pretty much what we call BPO, business process outsourcing. And there is a function of what we call IT process outsourcing that very much falls under this same banner today. That is the glass house -- the data center, the help desk, the network support. Today, we may be thinking software engineering is pretty damn complicated and requires so much judgment, and nothing that these devices are doing today puts human IT outsourcing at risk. But I wonder if it is just a matter of time.

When you really think of this, this has happened time and time again. A couple of hundred years ago, 75% of the world's population was involved with farming and agriculture. In the 1950s, it got down to about 30%; now in the U.S., it is 2%. People say, 'Oh yeah, but you still need somebody to operate that combine.' Yes, but that somebody is doing the work of what 50 pickers used to do. If you've recently seen a mining operation, it's incredible -- there's just one guy behind a console driving all this equipment.

What should CIOs be thinking about in terms of their BPO/ITO contracts?

Wasser: When you're looking at your options now, you should be saying, 'I want to keep this in-house, and I want to onshore or nearshore this to Syracuse, N.Y., or North Carolina, or Bogota, Columbia, and I want to offshore this to Chennai and, hey, this is ripe for making that phone call to [RPA software vendor] Blue Prism to see what they can do for me.' RPA should be part of the set of options open to you.

SOURCE: SearchCIO