Cordys Announces the New Release of Business Operations Platform

Recently we wrote about Cordys and their alliance with CSC, according to this latest article on realwire, Cordys has announced the new release of Business Operations Platform, which will enable faster innovation and improve business processes.

The software will enable organizations to design, implement, monitor, and optimize critical business processes all under one single environment. BOP-4 brings together both the business world and IT world, thus is provides the flexibility and agility for today’s organizations to innovate their operations.

Jon Pyke, the Chief Strategy Officer of Cordys mentions:

“With the new release of the Cordys Business Operations Platform, Cordys strengthens its next generation BPM Suite and increases support of standards and interoperability – additions which we strongly believe will further improve customer ROI. Users of our platform will be able to more effectively create a total solution to handle both system and human centric process management”.

MEGA System Blueprint Unites Application Design with Business Processes

MarketWatch recently reported that MEGA, a pioneer in EA technology and business process solutions has introduced MEGA System Blueprint.

This software tool is the first application that links business requirements directly with application design for the development of modern IT systems. According to Lucio de Risi, president and CEO of MEGA, EA and Business Process tools lack this important direct link between application design and business requirements. MEGA Systems Blueprint breaks this by allowing application design metadata to be stored close to information on business processes.

Web Seminar: BPM Principles and Practices: An Introduction

Join us for the web seminar:
BPM Principles and Practices: An Introduction
October 15
2:00 to 3:00 EST

Don't miss your chance to register for this event!
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/593373790

About the Webinar:

This Seminar will review the basic foundation for a BPM program It will provide an overview and discussion of the wide variety of perspectives on BPM, as well the basic principles and techniques of a BPM program.. We will focus on a discussion of many of the process-centric tools, techniques and methodologies available today, including Lean, Six Sigma, Continuous Improvement, Value Added Analysis, Business Activity Monitoring, process automation technologies and Innovation, and will describe how they all fit together under the BPM umbrella in a collaborative way.

It will present many lessons learned based on the industry leadership of two of the foremost BPM thought leaders: market analyst and author, Paul Harmon and leading practitioner, Roger Burlton.

What you will Learn:

- The performance improvement challenge
- Why BPM
- The levels of BPM: Enterprise, Process, Implementation
- The BPM Framework
- Some popular BPM Techniques

Featured Speakers:

Paul Harmon
Paul is a Co-Founder, Executive Editor and Market Analyst at BPTrends, the most trusted source of information and analysis on trends, directions and best practices in business process management. He is also a Co-Founder, Chief Methodologist and Principal Consultant of BPTrends Associates, training and consulting services for organizations interested in understanding and implementing business process management.

Profile of Roger T. Burlton
Roger is a founder of the Process Renewal Group and a partner at BPTrends Associates.. He is considered a global leader, recognized internationally for his no nonsense insights and pioneering contributions in Business Process Management since 1991. He was the first in the world to run a diverse series of BPM seminars starting that year.

Cordys form alliance with CSC

In recent news, two business process management giants, Cordys and CSC, have formed a strategic alliance.

The alliance will enable organizations around the globe to benefit from a new breed of innovative business process driven solutions, deployed on the Cordys Business Operations Platform (BOP), and implemented and optimized using the consulting, systems integration, delivery and application management expertise of CSC, a thought leader in BPM.

BPM ranks up there

In a recent post at BPM in Action, Dennis pointed out that business process management is on the list of the top 500 "Highest Paying Google AdSense Key Words." As pointed out in the article, the following section is from lower in the list:

$29.12 asbestos lawyers
$28.99 wells fargo equity
$28.96 minnesota dwi laws
$28.96 illinois equity
$28.95 equity consolidation
$28.94 tax attorney
$28.88 wells fargo mortgage
$28.86 business process management
$28.84 no equity loan
$28.74 mortgage finance
$28.72 consoladation
$28.64 dallas personal injury attorney
$28.60 botox certification
$28.53 credit consolidation
$28.51 landlords insurance

What do you think? Business process management is pretty far down on the list of key words, but it's made the top 500. Even though Dennis found this list before the current financial market crisis, it's surrounded by financial and medical keywords. What does this mean? BPM is somewhere on people's minds. They're looking, and gaining traction. There's hope yet that BPM will grow leaps and bounds to help streamline paper-filled business processes.

Your options for BPM

It's essential for businesses today to begin focusing on automating their manual processes so they can become agile and remain competitive by adopting a form of BPM. As EWeek points out, your company has three options: build, buy or BPM.

When you are buying, you should consider these seven questions:

1. How often will the business processes addressed by this application change?

2. How easy is it to change the application? (Speak with a technical contact from the vendor to understand what mechanisms are in place to extend or change existing functionality.)

3. What types of skills will be necessary to change the system as needed to ensure competitive advantage?

4. Does the vendor provide a well-documented API for integration with third-party systems?

5. How easy is it to train business and IT users on the system, thus reducing reliance on the vendor for ongoing support?

6. Is the package overkill for your business problem? Will the superfluous functionality negatively impact the user experience, impeding adoption, and making support and upgrades difficult?

7. Are adaptors required to interface the application with third-party systems? If so, what is the cost of the adaptors you will require?

When you're considering building, you should work with your IT deparment to put an applicaiton together that fits all your pre-determined needs which will streamline an application designed for your specific functional need. It does take a lot of time to design, build and test this new application.

Has your company undertaken the task to build your BPM solution? What was your turn-around time, and what were the results for you?

BPTrends and OMG Case Study Competition

OMG and BPTrends will be holding a BPM case study competition. The goal, as reported by MarketWatch is to showcase success stories within the BPM field. To submit a case for the competition, go to the link provided here: http://www.bpmroundtable.org/cs-pr. As stated by Richard Mark Soley, CEO of Object Management Group,

"We know that BPM delivers value, especially standards-based recognition, precise definition, storage, reuse and optimization of business processes. It's always helpful to see how others have accomplished the move to a more rigorous approach to business modeling and optimization, however, and this competition helps bring together the best lessons -- the best practices -- to make the transition rapid and successful"

BPM and CRM come together

This article notes the growing link between BPM and CRM. It seems that more frequently these two terms are coming together. Analysts at Gartner have deemed that the biggest challenge facing the CRM industry is business process management related. Isher Kaila, a Research Director at Gartner stated:

"In the last decade, interest in CRM has grown exponentially. But we look at the ASCI [American Customer Satisfaction Index] scores and are we seeing a transformation? The answer is no."

Gartner has deemed that the solution to this problem is BPM related. As Kaila further remarked:

"Who's talking about the end-to-end processes? You need to look horizontally, not vertically, within your organization, because that's how your customers experience your organization."

Do you agree that the biggest challenge facing CRM is BPM? Do you think that by using better BPM practices, CRM will see an improvement?

BPM Process Flow

This is another post I found by Roeland Loggen that discusses a process flow when working with BPM projects where there are to be new processes and new technologies as a support. As the author summarizes these are the important steps:

1. Awareness
2. Understand and Commit
3. Prepare to Perform
4. The Real GO
5. Discipline

More detail about each step can be found on his post, but what is your input? Would you be use this process flow in your organization?

Business Process Management versus Process Management

In a recent blog by Roeland Loggen, he examines the differences between process management and business process management. He explains that process management is a plan of execution of process and to steer the execution of the process. Business process management is defined as an area of activity to manage processes as an asset. This includes managing the overall lifecycles of these processes, including the structure and design.

What do you see as the true differences between these two things?

Growth of BPM

Just announced in this press release, Cordys is the “fastest growing Business Process Management Suite vendor worldwide.” It was Gartner Inc. that released the findings that Cordys grew by 98.2% in this past year. Gartner also reported that the total BPM market has expanded from $1.229 billion in 2006 into a $1.692 billion industry as of last year. As mentioned by Jan Baan, CEO of Cordys, one of the reasons for the rapid expansion of Cordys, as well as the industry as a whole, has been a direct result of globalization. It seems that even though many markets are going through turbulent times the need for BPM process is still being seen by many organizations as a necessity.

Business Rules and Data Requirements: Pulling in Tandem for Success

Here’s another free webinar in the series of BPM webinars that we will produce in the upcoming weeks. Mary Gorman from EBG Consulting, Inc. will be presenting “Business Rules and Data Requirements: Pulling in Tandem for Success” on October 2^nd, from 2:00 to 3:00 PM EDT. Mention priority code G1M2020W2BL when you register. The description and a couple of the key takeaways are posted below:

Requirements expert and mentor Mary Gorman explores ways to effectively elicit and analyze business rules and data to help you deliver a balanced set of requirements.

Practitioners will learn the value of going beyond process requirements (often detailed in use cases or stories) to explore functional requirements specified in business rules and data requirements. Gain an appreciation of how analyzing data and rules, in tandem, will help provide a more complete and correct understanding of customer needs.

What you will learn by attending:

• How process requirements trace to data and business rules
• Appropriate timing for modeling data and business rules
• What skills are needed to model data and business rules
• The risks of single-dimension requirements

Make sure to forward this link on to any colleagues and friends who will benefit from this information. Register for the free webinar by clicking on this register link:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/561652152

SAP Introduces new Business Process Certification

SAP announced a new certification process for business process management experts. Sessions for certification will include: will include sessions on strategic context, governance, methodology, technology, and service-oriented architecture. The certification will also be offered online though the SAP Business Process Expert social network. Find out more about this program here at IT World Canada.

Business Process Management Solutions for the Apple iPhone

MarketWatch reports in this article that Autonomy Corporation’s business process management solutions will provide support for corporate users of the Apple iPhone. The iPhone will be able to collect and automate information related to business processes through HTML, PDF, and paper-based forms and documents.

There is seamless integration with the iPhone and the Autonomy Business Process Solution. It provides many capabilities like approval workflow, information collection, business activity monitoring, and collaboration to the enterprise. IT professionals can also be ensured of seamless and rapid integration with their existing infrastructure.

Mark Seamans, CEO of Autonomy Cardiff mentions:

"Autonomy's support of the Apple iPhone brings the ability to initiate, route, approve, track and even digitally sign key business processes using an intuitive iPhone-based interface. This enables field and mobile-based employees and users to effectively participate in business processes as though they were in their office environment."

Watt Germany adopts BPM

At EBiz, they inform us about a German electricity company that has just adopted BPM in order to become a completely electronic company. In an effort to redefine their businesses from process perspective, they’ve adopted Software AG to redefine their IT structure.

They look for the software to provide them these benefits:
-More immediate changes to processes in order to implement new regulations
-Support new customer requirements
-Introduce new products on-demand.

Watt Germany is hoping this new business process software will help increase efficiency and will deliver gains by 30% allowing them to redirect this money to accelerating sales.

Xtiva Chooses MircroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform

As reported in ebizQ, Xtiva chose Microstraegy Business Intelligence Platform for there Saas BPM portal. Regarding this choice MicroStrategy’s COO Snaju Bansal released this statement:

"We are pleased that Xtiva selected the MicroStrategy platform to incorporate into its new portal. MicroStrategy's analytical richness and intuitive Web interface provide detailed analysis of granular-level data to help users make more proactive, analytically-based business decisions."

Some of the benefits that Xtiva expects clients to receive include:

- Improve the quality and focus of reporting across the enterprise
- Reduce total cost of ownership of advanced enterprise reporting solutions
- Manage revenue and expenses more effectively
- Bridge the huge gaps between regulatory and financial reporting today

Appian and Mega Partner to Bring Together BPM Tools and Enterprise Architecture Software

Yesterday I wrote about this partnership between these two companies on this post on our Evolve EA blog, and I figured I share the news along here as well. eBizQ reports in this article that Appian, a provider of BPM techonology, and Mega, a provider of EA technology, have entered in agreement to join the BPA and EA capabilities of the MEGA Modeling Suite with the Appian Enterprise BPM Suite and the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-delivered Appian Anywhere platforms.

This new partnership is aimed to improving enterprise success in process innovation and building on existing deployments of software with joint customers such as Enterprise Rent-A-Car, AXA Investment Managers, General Dynamics, and the Department of Homeland Security. Users will be able to perform archectiture and process design on the Mega Suite and then export processes directly to the Appian BPM platform to map out direct management of operations.

Lucio de Risi, president and CEO of MEGA mentions:

"The combination of MEGA's powerful BPA, simulation, and optimization functionality with Appian's robust and scalable BPM platform will unite business users and analysts with enterprise, technical, and information architects in the common goal of creating adaptive, process-driven organizations."

Nomad Information Systems adopts new CRM framework

In a recent article at IT Web, we find out that Nomad Information Systems has chosen a new CRM framework provider, Radical. Radical’s new software will provide a way to better manage call logging and work flow planning. This new software will integrate the bank, retailer and customer by capturing information at the point of the sale, providing a safe way for transactions to go between the retailer and the bank.

Mark Fouche, technical director at Nomad Information Systems, had this to say about their new software:

"Through Radical we will better manage the logging of our clients' calls, be able to track and monitor call status, and improve our work flow processes, such as the planning of pilots and subsequent roll-outs of the Nomad product to clients,"

Appian and MEGA Partnership

MarketWatch reported today that Appian and MEGA have decided to combine the BPA and EA capabilities of the MEGA Modeling Suite and Appian Enterprise BPM Suite as well as the SaaS platform by Appian Anywhere. As summarized by MarketWatch

The partners say the aim of the agreement is to accelerate enterprise success in process innovation and build on existing deployments with current joint customers such as Enterprise Rent-A-Car, AXA Investment Managers, General Dynamics, and the Department of Homeland Security. The partnership will be supported by product integration, as well as shared and coordinated sales and marketing activities.