Models Link Processes

Models Link Processes

Companies today looking for the next wave of IT to squeeze more productivity out of their operations are increasingly turning to BPM software to streamline operations by knitting together business procedures.

Their goal is to create a platform that weaves together processes running in different silos of technology, including ERP (enterprise resource planning), customer relationship management and other enterprise software. To the extent that an IT department can do that without having to rewrite major pieces of code, they make processes more efficient, improve profit margins and improve the timeliness of bringing products to market.

"The holy grail that everyone has been looking for the past 15 years is to model the business process using some tool and have the underlying implementation product automatically configure to align with that. If we could ever get there, that would be a major, major breakthrough," said Thomas Gulledge, professor of enterprise engineering at George Mason University and president of Enterprise Integration Inc., both in Fairfax, Va.

IT managers and line-of-business professionals alike have come to understand that implementing business process management software requires a process modeling step and a process optimization and management step. The former consists of breaking down the tasks of a particular business operation—both conceptually and graphically—and creating a model that details where processes touch systems, applications and, increasingly, people.

BPM is the technical execution of that model. IT organizations have found that you can't have one without the other. While there's been a lot of process modeling going on for years, process management tools that can execute those models have come to light only over the past 18 to 24 months.

These new tools are fundamentally different from previous software offerings in that they combine modeling capabilities with real-time management capabilities. This extends the concept of BPM across, and even outside, an enterprise.

The latest wrinkle in BPM technology links the execution layer to a process control layer, which gives companies the ability to monitor and measure processes on the fly.

"You have to believe the future is flows, rules and [Web] services," said Jim Sinur, an analyst with Gartner Inc., in Stamford, Conn. "So modeling languages are generating flows, managing the rules and generating portions of where customer [interaction] points are for Web services."

According to Gartner, 55 percent of clients polled said using a BPM engine helped them to automate administrative tasks and reduce costs of transactions or a business event. In the same study, 70 percent said BPM improved coordination across departments or geographies, 70 percent said fewer people were needed to perform business tasks, and 85 percent said they reduced the steps in certain processes. Some 85 percent said they experienced quality improvement, fewer errors, higher productivity per person and a reduction in time to market.

In setting up a BPM strategy, organizations can choose software from three constituencies—pure-play BPM vendors, EAI (enterprise application integration) vendors and ERP developers.

Although their software runs at the core of many businesses, enterprise software vendors such as Siebel Systems Inc., SAP AG and Oracle Corp. are the last ones to address BPM. Siebel and SAP have each announced integration infrastructures for defining, implementing, managing and monitoring business processes—and initiating Web services.

Siebel, of San Mateo, Calif., last fall announced its Universal Application Network initiative, which promises to provide prepackaged, industry-specific business processes. SAP, of Waldorf, Germany, is adding a BPM component to its recently unveiled Enterprise Services Architecture for Web services. Later this year, SAP will ship a product that combines an integration broker for XML-based message exchange and its BPM engine that enables the design, execution and monitoring of business processes.

Oracle, of Redwood Shores, Calif., is also looking to provide prepackaged business processes with its Conference Room Pilots, a set of 97 prepackaged processes, grouped into 19 functional areas, that work across Oracle's E-Business Suite.

But pure-play BPM software makers continue to push into new realms. HandySoft Corp., for example, is developing a library of business process applications to augment its BizFlow BPM engine. The packaged applications will contain business rules, process models, reporting, solutions interfaces, adapters and services for quick implementation, said company officials