Collaborative and transactional business processes don't have a chance if they're not coordinated. In his landmark book, Process Innovation, Thomas Davenport defined a process as follows: Simply a structured, measured set of activities designed to produce a specified output for a particular customer or market. It implies a strong emphasis upon how work is done within an enterprise, in contrast to a product focus's emphasis on what. A process is thus a specific ordering of work activities across time and place, with a beginning, an end, and clearly identified inputs and outputs: a structure for action. This definition, although helpful, hardly begins to explain the true nature of collaborative and transactional business processes. At the very least, the word "coordination" is missing.

Coordination, Coordination, Coordination [source DarwinMagazine]

Combining Business Process Management with Composite Application (CA) development can reap rewards for companies now and down the road. It enables them to preserve existing technology investments, provides more agile technology infrastructures, and better supports short-term customer service and long-term business goals. Tom Dwyer, who oversees The Aberdeen Group’s middleware and integration technology group, sees it all fitting together through the "ability to deliver composite application through an easy-to-use intuitive interface - and bringing in content and data, responding to alerts, or easily talking to front-office and relationship marketing systems." He went on to describe industry initiatives to define both processes and business elements. "We're foreseeing the evolution and starting to see the work toward a unified modeling language, so that when you define elements in one company, it's easily understood by another company and you're seeing agreement over the appropriate standards that are underlying the business process model."

Synthesizing The Synergies: BPM And Composite Application Development [source ebizq.net]

As enterprise business processes become more automated, and more interconnected, one piece of technology refuses to go away: the human being. As a result, workflow systems, which handle processes involving human input, have begun to play a larger role in the world of BPM (business process management). Workflow engines, originally used for document-and people-intensive tasks such as processing insurance claims, are now moving into the mainstream, getting incorporated into most major BPM offerings, which must increasingly handle processes involving both computers and people. Unlike straight-through, machine-to-machine processes, things tend to take more time when humans are involved, especially if judgment is required to deal with exceptions in a highly repetitive process. So-called "long-running processes" such as credit approval, new product development, clinical drug trials, and telco provisioning involve many starts, stops, and detours that traditional workflow systems are designed to handle.

Workflow meets BPM [source Infoworld]

Identitech, Inc. announced FYI Visual(TM), an extension to the FYI® suite of business automation and content management solutions, that moves Identitech into the Business Process Management market. FYI Visual is a breakthrough, patented technology that goes beyond traditional charts, graphs, gauges and reports to provide powerful, actionable, real-time displays of business metrics. FYI Visual extends Identitech's solutions for workflow, content management, records management and forms to provide a single, integrated solution for Business Process Management. FYI Visual is also sold stand-alone to provide an actionable and visual interface for any enterprise system.

Identitech Revolutionizes Business Process Management with FYI Visual(TM) [source Identitech]

Business Process Management Systems enable business people to create and change processes with little if any dependence on IT departments, and enable IT managers to cut operational costs. What's more, BPMS helps bridge the business-IT gap. How it does all that was illustrated in the ebizQ webinar, "The Operational Benefits of BPM," part of our webinar series "BPM and the Real Time Enterprise", sponsored by CommerceQuest. In essence, BPMS puts the business process horse before the IT cart, explains Peter Fingar, executive partner of digital strategy firm the Greystone Group. Fingar, who pens a monthly column for ebizQ along with Howard Smith and co-authored Business Process Management - The Third Wave with Smith, says companies today spend 30 percent of their IT budgets on integration, in such forms as EAI and B2Bi. They do it, he says, to build end-to-end business processes. So if business process is the object of integration, asks Fingar, why not put it, and not the application, at the heart of business automation? And that, he adds, is precisely what BPMS does.

BPM Systems: The Great Enablers [source ebizq.net]

Behind every company's brand - the facade it promotes to customers - increasingly stands an extended enterprise, a dynamic value chain of suppliers and business partners interconnected over the Internet. This change is once again focusing CEO attention on business process management (BPM), but with a difference from the workflow and reengineering efforts of the 1990s. Integration has replaced automation as the critical objective of process improvement. Where workflow once tried to stamp out inefficiency by automating isolated functional bottlenecks, BPM software aims to interconnect the myriad islands of process automation created by that earlier effort and to integrate them with the processes of trading partners. E-business inherently means end-to-end processes that cross functional boundaries spanning the extended enterprise.

Three Promises of BPM: Agility, Flexibility, Visibility [source TransformMag]

Here's how and why four companies are placing big bets on business process management. Like a car that runs smoothly instead of stalling at every traffic light, a business that makes good use of business process management (BPM) strategies and technologies can eliminate delays, bottlenecks and errors. Although BPM is very new, pioneers are proving its value.

Well-Oiled Machines: BPM Projects Point to Success [source TransformMag]

Business process management solutions offer obvious payoffs. The challenge is selecting the right solution for your application. Doculabs describes typical applications for BPM and the capabilities and vendors that best fit each scenario. In the current economic environment, organizations are struggling to radically improve efficiency and leverage existing investments in systems while remaining responsive to their customers. At the same time, businesses require systems that are more automated, involve less human intervention and can gather data from multiple systems to provide customers with the products or services they need. These frequently conflicting imperatives are driving demand for business process management (BPM) solutions, especially in process-intensive industries such as financial services, insurance, healthcare and manufacturing. BPM is a framework of applications that maintain complete control over a process. These solutions automatically manage processes, allow manual intervention, extract customer information from a database, add new customer transaction information, generate transactions in multiple related systems and support straight-though processing without human invention when needed (for example, in trade and settlement processing).

BPM: When Speed Counts [source TransformMag]

But as a dazzling array of vendor-driven standards continues to emerge, a fresh set of machinations are proving that the battle for control of Web services standards remains alive and well between two camps: IBM and Microsoft on one side, Sun and to some extent Oracle on the other. The issue reared its head most recently when IBM and Microsoft had declined to participate in the newly formed W3C Web Services Choreography Working Group. But then two Microsoft officials showed up at the initial meeting on March 13 at Oracle headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif. According to Steven VanRoekel, director of Web services at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash. , the two officials attended the meeting to determine the scope of the group's work pertaining to contract language, which is intended to establish communications between end points. But Microsoft discontinued participation after finding out the group's work on contract language did not coincide with its own, VanRoekel said.

Web services paths remain divided [source Infoworld]

Imagine a world where people speak a language that brilliantly describes the molecular structure of a large object, but can't tell you what the object is - or that it's about to fall on you. You've just glimpsed the arcane world of business process applications. Fortunately, an emerging Business Process Management Language (BPML) standard is beginning to change all that. BPML is being designed as an easy-to-use, declarative language that describes processes in ways that executives can understand and also provides the detail for developers to execute them.

Business Process Management Language (BPML): Automating Business Relationships [source SterlingCommerce and EAIJournal]

A slew of product announcements indicate growing focus on BPM by vendors in different categories:

• eiStream, Inc. Introduces ViewStar BPM; Technology Leverages Web Services to Automate Business Processes
  [source eiStream]
  
• 
  Intalio Ships Intalio n-cubed 2.0 [source EAIJournal]
  
• 
  Fujitsu Plans To Unveil BPM Software Next Month [source InformationWeek]
  
• 
  PegaRULES Process Commander 3.2 Released [source EAIJournal]
  
• 
  FileNet Launches P8 BPM Architecture [source EAI Journal]
  
• 
  Corechange Integrates Portal and BPM [source EAIJournal]
  
• 
  Brief: Fujitsu, Staffware plan BPM software updates [source ComputerWorld]
  
• 
  Clear, IDS Scheer Smooth Business Process Wrinkles [source eWeek]
  
• 
  Answerthink and Savvion Announce Partnership Agreement [source AnswerThink]
  
• 
  Commerce One unveils business integration software [source NetworkWorldFusion]
  
• 
  Metis Technologies Launches Pathways BPM solution [source EAI Journal]
  
• 
  Lombardi Releases TeamWorks 3.3 BPM [source EAI Journal]
  
  
  

In 1931, statistician Walter Shewhart developed a framework for "continuous improvement." What became known as the Shewhart Cycle outlined four key steps for improving processes: Plan-Do-Check-Act. A plan is developed to improve a process; the plan is implemented; the results are tested; adjustments are made; and the cycle begins again. One of Shewhart's most famous students, W. Edwards Deming, took this concept, along with others, to Japan. The manufacturing world has never been the same. The Deming revolution--built around concepts like continuous improvement and just-in-time (JIT) inventory--had a universal impact on global manufacturing. Today, there is a new form of enterprise software that has the ability to do for white-collar business processes what Deming did for manufacturing. Delphi Group believes that business process management (BPM) is "quickly emerging as the moniker for the next killer app in enterprise software." Believe it or not, this may actually undersell the potential impact of BPM. BPM will not just change the software industry--it will change industry in general. Just like Deming.

Pay attention to BPM [source news.com]

The Port of San Diego now relies on business performance management (BPM) processes and technology (courtesy of Comshare) to strengthen its decision-making capabilities and to make those decisions, and the budget derived from them, more visible to the public. It is not alone. Federal, state, and local governments gravitate toward BPM processes and applications thanks to a surge of regulatory and fiscal pressure. As with most types of technology adoption, governmental entities generally lag behind their corporate counterparts—about two to four years, in the case of BPM investment. But that gap is narrowing as governments, spurred on by regulations, declining tax revenue, and a public that demands ever-increasing levels of visibility and accountability, drives governments into a deeper analysis of their financial data and the factors that influence it.

Government Hammers BPM [source InternetWorld]

Citing ingredients necessary for BPM (business process management), an official at Addison, Texas-based BPM vendor Fuego offered attendees at the InfoWorld CTO Forum conference on Tuesday a glimpse of organizations that have shortened the gap between business processes and execution. Fuego CEO Mark Theilken stressed that a BPM implementation must be technology- and application-independent as well as not rely on a single individual for its operation. Theilken added that systems must be designed to represent activities in a single process model. "It's not just Web services you have to integrate, it's also desktop services from [Microsoft] Excel and Windows [plus] integrate mainframe services, and you have to turn Web applications into Web services to integrate that as well," said Theilken.

CTO Forum: Fuego illuminates crucial BPM ingredients [source Infoworld]

In tough economic times, many companies are cutting costs by making internal operations more efficient. At the same time, some of these enterprises are laying the groundwork for carrying efficiencies to activities with customers and suppliers. In attacking wasted time and unnecessary effort on the part of employees, many companies are turning to business process management (BPM) software. These systems consist of a modeling environment capable of building, deploying, and managing business processes, including the flow of forms and documents among people responsible for completing the activities. In addition, the systems contain business logic that ensures tasks are completed before starting the next step.

Companies Tap BPM Software To Automate, Orchestrate Processes [source InternetWeek]

Business software company SAP is strengthening the workflow capabilities of its middleware as it launches NetWeaver to wrest back control of enterprise application integration within the SAP world. For a long time, however, one of the problems it faced was the "big hole" in the process layer - the middleware for integration. Exchange Infrastructure is aimed at plugging this hole. It is less than a year old, but SAP plans to eventually "move the Exchange Infrastructure towards what everything a middleware product will do", said Dale. Instead of sending in armies of programmers, enterprises can define a business process, and the services can be combined to form xApps that snap on to an existing IT environment. Compared to the seven or eight key applications currently offered by SAP, for example, in the areas of human resource management or financials, there will be hundreds of xApps, said Dale.

Integrating the SAP world [source ComputerWorld]

A World Wide Web Consortium committee began meetings on Thursday to sort out an array of confusing, yet critical, Web services standards. Critics have charged that Microsoft and IBM are reluctant to work with the existing WS-Choreography working group due to the W3C's strict royalty and patent policy. Under W3C guidelines, published specifications cannot include patented technology or demand royalties for usage. Ross-Talbot said that if vendors push standards linked to their proprietary products, "partners would be required to license stuff, and they should not need to. That's why it's absolutely vital to be royalty-free," he said. "Personally I think (IBM and Microsoft are) shooting themselves in the foot."

W3C seeks standards accord [source BusinessWeek]

For decades, businesses have organized their automation endeavors around the very unnatural and unbusinesslike concept of the "software application." Applications automate business functions such as accounts payable, order processing, inventory control, human resources, and so on. But today's business applications are often described as stovepipes because they are separated by function, time and the data they manage.

Tearing Down 20th Century Stovepipes With 21st Century BPM [source ebizq.net]

The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org) today announced the election results for its 2003 board of directors. Re-elected to a second term were Ismael Ghalimi of Intalio, Howard Smith of Computer Sciences Corporation, Jeanne Baker of Sterling Commerce, and J. Matthew Pryor of Versata. Newly elected directors include Sinisa Zimek of SAP, Georg Simon of IDS Scheer, and Stephen White of SeeBeyond. The election process was completed at the organization's Annual General Meeting in Costa Mesa, California. Board members will provide both business and technical leadership as the organization continues its work providing open, royalty-free standards for the management of business processes.

BPMI.org announces new board of directors [source BPMI.org]

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. 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.

Models Link Processes [source eWeek]