Selecting the BPM from the Highest Level of the Enterprise

BPM Mini Course. Class 4:

Selecting the BPM from the Highest Level of the Enterprise

Originally Published in iThome Computer Paper, vol. 215, 2005/11/04

The arrival of the age of low profit margins have forced enterprises to shift from its previous emphasis on increasing more business to emphasizing on the preservation of profit margins. Yet, the world is flat, and the rules of the game change rapidly. Enterprises must be able to react swiftly when the environment changes to maintain its profits. These needs are making usage of IT solutions to support business operations ever more important. But out-of-the box enterprise applications software mainly focuses on satisfying the general needs of enterprises. On the other hand, internally developed systems are often designed based on the needs of when the system is being developed. In a time when differential management of business operations become more apparent, while waiting is a luxury that cannot be afforded, whether out-of-the box software or internally developed s systems, their flexibility and speed to adjust only becomes too slow to keep up the pace with the needs of enterprise. Therefore, for enterprises that need to have swift and flexible processes, building a new generation enterprise IT infrastructure based on the concepts of BPM has quickly become the trend. More and more enterprises are acknowledging the importance of BPM and are pondering how to deploy BPM systems. IT systems providers are also utilizing this opportunity by introducing BPM products. But for enterprises that are faced with numerous attractive products but are unfamiliar with the various marketing jargon, what type of BPM solutions is the best choice for enterprises?

360 Degree Evaluation of Enterprises Needs

From my previous professional BPM service, I deeply feel that when enterprises are faced with today's challenges, the key to the solution is always whether each department can cooperate as a team. This is because for an enterprise to achieve each goal, efforts across multiple departments are needed. For the same reason, systems that deal with processes cannot avoid having features to support inter-department operations. Therefore, when determining the needs when selecting a BPM solution, both macro-needs and micro-needs have to be considered to gain a holistic understanding so that the best evaluation standard can be devised to select the most beneficial BPM solution for an enterprise. For example, when an enterprise is still not large, maybe a paperless and flexible office automation process is the best solution needed by the enterprise. But when considering the future growth target in 3 or 5 years, integration ability may be what is most needed. Also, when IT projects such as order management or other processes that involve multiple departments, completing the mission not only requires integrating existing ERP systems, but also during the process of establishing the system, the ability to get each department involved to work with the IT department in introducing the BPM concept and not try to shift responsibility to others when cooperation is the key to the success or failure of an order management BPM solution. Therefore, professional BPM deployment services have just become more important while the product itself is not the only factor.

As mentioned above, because each enterprise has their different needs, their choice can be from simple BPM products to professional BPM services. The section of a BPM product can also differ based on the different needs of each enterprise, so the choice can be from ones only restricted to office automation processes supporting the digitization of forms, to complex form combination, integration, support of various dynamic process logic, to B2B process support systems that need to integrate with business partners, customers, or suppliers. Professional services that are needed can also include deployment service, IT architecture planning service, process consulting service, and BPM project management service, to operation strategy consulting. Then what type of planning evaluation method can ensure the best solutions is selected while taking into consideration of long term partnership goals?

Four points of evaluation, long term insight, during our planning, it can start at the following four points:

1. Core competitiveness of the vender

More and more venders market their products as BPM products, but each are designed with different market positions, so it is natural that they each have different strengths. For example, a product that position itself to be an out-out-the box product will naturally emphasize its easy of use rather than its ability to adapt to various needs. It would also naturally be taking in process management and integration features and mechanisms. So these types are more suited for managing forms, such as office automation process. Products that offer a platform emphasizes on its openness and can support multiple and complex process logic, as well as various management needs. Even various mainstream front end human computer interface technology such as JSP and ASP enables enterprises to build information highway systems that connect various information sources with applications. Although various existing enterprise IT systems, regardless of ERP, CRM, SCM, portal, or custom designed operations can all add processes into the system to reinforce a high degree process based application system.

In addition, the same applies to the service ability of the vender and the product; naturally also have different market positions. Such as companies developing out-of-the box products naturally would not focus on increasing service efficiency and improving methods used. Yet, BPM projects are closely connected to the daily enterprise activities. It could just involve a single process within a single department or a simple process. It can also be an inter-department enterprise wide operation process that connects information from each department's internal processes. Naturally, the technical and product management ability and experience, as well as the level of industry knowledge and experience for the consulting service can be quite different. So when selecting a long term partner, aside from product support, this is another very important issue that needs to be taken into consideration.

2. Require Product Features

When assessing long term needs, the immediate needs must also be met. Therefore, product features that is needed immediately must be separately listed, especially features that are required. For example, there are a large number of users in the company, so it can be expected that the system will be very busy and the system cannot be allowed to stop. Therefore, an error-tolerant and load balancing architecture is a must. Also, if simplifying the management of IT is a company goal, then a single management mechanism for the whole organization would be needed. So the BPM product should have the company's organizational structure data to have the ability for real time organization integration ability, avoid scheduled file processing, and determining management problems with the future organizational data.

Confirming the required features is an important basis for product selection, but there shouldn't be an attempt to generate a complete BPM product list, especially by referencing the product features of products from different venders and feeling that all the features are needed. If a feature list containing all the features from the products surveyed, then the goal becomes unclear and venders cannot correctly understand the needs of your company. Naturally, in this case, venders cannot provide efficient communications and interaction on product development goals.

3. Development and Maintenance Requirements

When venders can all propose solutions to satisfy the above required needs, another issue that needs to be considered is the development and maintenance requirements. Since from a cost point of view, it would be expected that the development method match the skills roadmap of IT personnel and does not rely on proprietary languages for development. Since the current trend is different the past when only the convenience of coding is emphasized, now the matching of the IT architecture development with the technical skills of the personnel is most optimal for the enterprise, and is the consideration of modern IT managers. Also, the maintenance cost is mostly dependent on the number of features supported by the product and whether a healthy management mechanism exists. For example, in regards to supporting job assignment logic or process branching and confluence logic, if a product can provide a method to achieve them, it would be much clearer to display it on process diagrams, making maintenance much easier. From a management cost point of view, if maintaining every problem in the process would require taking a look at the code to solve problems, then when there are more and more systems, there wouldn't be anybody that would understand all the code, thus increase risks. On the other hand, it would render the management of the processes that the BPM system is suppose to manage unmanageable. Then the long term benefits of the BPM system cannot be realized, making it another problematic IT system.

4. Using the Most Complex Process in Considering the Options

Last, do not forget the uniqueness of the company. Each successful company is successful in their respective industries is because of uniqueness of their business operations, then taking this uniqueness into consideration when deploying an ERP system. Using SAP as an example, if the company is just deploying SAP, then what makes the company different from other competitors using SAP? A company is successful because when deploying SAP, the hidden process management control concepts are different than other companies, giving it a unique competitive advantage. So the unique processes of the company must also be considered when deploying BPM.

In addition, the same applies to the service ability of the vender and the product; naturally also have different market positions. Such as companies developing out-of-the box products naturally would not focus on increasing service efficiency and improving methods used. Yet, BPM projects are closely connected to the daily enterprise activities. It could just involve a single process within a single department or a simple process. It can also be an inter-department enterprise wide operation process that connects information from each department's internal processes. Only when the product selected can support even the most complex process logic, then the benefits of deploying such system would be maximized. Even though the planned demands are all simple processes, don't forget possible goals in the next step. After all, when the external environment changes faster, the internal changes within the company can only be even faster, the next production demand could be tomorrow.

Gold metal glory takes Taiwan 's competitiveness to a new level

My previous involvement with the BPM project at Wintech Microelectronics received a goal metal award that was never received by any other Asian software company. Applying BPM to create the benefits of process innovation is the key for us and our customer, Wintech Microelectronics, receiving the award and was selected by the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) as the best 2004 Asian Pacific best case for the global industry and academia. This represents not only Taiwan 's software industry strength is already strong enough to compete at international levels, but this is also an example of never ending innovation of Taiwanese enterprises. Through my thoughts in the article, it is hopped that it can asset enterprises to make the BPM selection into a systematic process to truly select the best BPM solution that can help create long term benefits.