BPM Basics

What You Need to Know About Business Process Management

An Insession White Paper February 2005

Table of Contents
Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 BPM: Past, Present and Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 BPM in Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Where Should I Start? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Ten Standards for Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Your Next Step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

224 South 108th Ave. Omaha, NE, USA 68154 402.333.3322 800.755.1596 www.insession.com WorkPoint is developed and supported by Insession Technologies, a division of Transaction Systems Architects, Inc. WorkPoint is a trademark of Insession Technologies. All other companies products are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective companies.

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Executive Summary
About this Guide Insession Technologies has prepared this brief guide so that both business and technology managers can learn the essentials of the exciting technology known as business process management (BPM). This guide provides the overview needed to understand the benefits of BPM and identifies the essential criteria a BPM solution must possess to properly meet your business needs. About Insession Technologies Whether you need to test it, connect it, monitor it, migrate it, web-enable it, secure it, report it, back it up, workflow-enable it, scale it or integrate itInsession Technologies has the proven software, services, and solutions to make it possible. We provide solutions that bring the right resources, expertise and insight to support the people who are responsible for your business computing environment. Solutions that enable you to embrace emerging technologies that extend your business beyond four walls and out to the virtual marketplace. Insession Technologies, a division of Transaction Systems Architects, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSAI), provides business software and services that facilitate communication, data movement, transaction processing, web enablement, BPM workflow, security and systems monitoring across heterogeneous computing systems and the Internet. Since 1991, Insessions solutions have been in use by more than 370 customers worldwide. Insessions customers represent such industries as transportation, telecommunications, banking, securities, other financial services, pharmaceuticals, retail and health care. About WorkPoint WorkPoint, from Insession Technologies, is a business process management (BPM) solution. WorkPoint offers unlimited implementation options as a stand-alone engine or as an embeddable BPM/workflow component. Additionally, WorkPoint is available as either Microsoft components or J2EE components with the ability for both to be deployed in the same environment sharing the same database. Using WorkPoint, businesses are able to address shortcomings of existing enterprise processes and systems. Quite simply, WorkPoint enables end-to-end business process automation and management across the enterprise, coordinating all aspects of processespeople, resources, and toolsinto an efficient whole.

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BPM: Past, Present, & Future

While business process management (BPM) is a hot topic among business and IT circles, you may be surprised to know that this technology has a long and complex history. In fact, business processes are hardly a new concept. The notion of business processes and business process reengineering (BPR) can be traced back to as early as the 1920s, when it was known as Methods and Procedures Analysisalways 1 searching for new ways of restructuring workflows or improving business organizations. Indeed, business processes have been around for decades, but the BPM technology we know today initially evolved in the 80s, when desktop computing was introduced. Applications like word processing and spreadsheets provided a solid means for organizations to improve and measure individual processes. As technology advanced, LANs and WANs were established and traditional business applications began to move off the mainframe to client/server environments. Thus, companies began to focus on how specific applications could improve team or department productivity. Since those days, organizations have been implementing several new applications leading to a situation where legacy and home grown systems reside on a variety of different platforms (Unix, Microsoft, Mainframe, etc) with different architectures (green screen, 2-tier, 3-tier, Web-based, etc). Such disjointed systems and applications meant that departments needed to be linked together. BPM was born from this needthe need to streamline internal processes and connect internal and external tasks. By addressing end-to-end processes, BPM cuts across departments, applications, and users. BPM manages the efficiency and effectiveness of business processes throughout your organization, which helps your employees, as well as your customers, partners, and suppliers. BPM not only promises to improve the processes of today, but because of its adaptable and flexible technology, it ensures a smooth transition for the inevitable changes of tomorrow.

How BPM Differs BPM has evolved from a number of technology precursors. Some of these technologies include:

Workflow: Workflow is the automation of a business process, in whole or part, during which documents, information, or tasks are passed from one participant to another for action, according to a set of procedural rules. Document Management: Document management solutions route documents that help run the business, but they lack the ability to create complex, non-document-related processes. Enterprise Content Management (ECM): ECM solutions help manage and leverage content throughout an organization. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI): EAI is the unrestricted sharing of data and business processes throughout the networked applications or data sources in an organization. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): ERP is a business management system that integrates all facets of the business, including planning, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. Customer Relationship Management (CRM): CRM entails all aspects of interaction a company has with its customer, whether it be sales or service related.
While all of these solutions provide value, none are designed to address the big picture. In other words, they lack the capabilities needed to create, manage, and improve business processes on an ongoing basis. Many BPM solutions incorporate the technologies mentioned above, but the key differentiator remains in BPMs ability to link processes to an organizations overall business strategies.

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BPM In Action
Simply put, BPM gives organizations more control over their core functions. It provides the necessary process visibility so management can make informed business decisions. Ultimately, BPM gives you the power to monitor, manage, and quickly manipulate processes in response to changes in strategy as well as the market. Heres one scenario (out of hundreds) that demonstrates why this is so important: A retailer has an issue with a shipment. For one reason or another it cant be delivered (i.e., a wrong address or the customer is refusing the order). However, the shipment company tries to deliver the package several times before it finally sends the product back to the company. As a result, the retailer incurs hundreds of dollars in restocking and reselling costs. Had the retailer been using a BPM solution with active process monitoring, its customer service representative would have been able to intercept the shipment once it became distressed, identify alternative opportunities for delivery, and re-route the product to another destination point. Not only does this save the retailer the inventory, logistics, and costs of product returns, but it also gives them control over how distressed shipments are managed. As illustrated above, a BPM solution delivers the right information to the right people. This level of control brings cost savings, revenue generation, and improved service to customers. Whats more, BPM technology is flexible and can be easily utilized by non-technical business people. After all, allowing IT staff to focus on their own projects, while putting the processes back into the hands of the business is a key advantage of BPM.

Evidence is pouring in that BPM is delivering cost benefits, while reducing error cycles, increasing value and enabling differentiation. A recent survey cited many benefits of BPM. Although some of the benefits, such as employee satisfaction, were soft, others provided concrete cost savings, including the following: A reduction in time for process completion A reduction in the number of steps A reduction in error cycles Automation of administrative tasks A reduction in the number of workers required Gartner Group

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Where Should I Start?

The BPM market is crowded and can prove to be very confusing. That being said, below are some basic starting points that should help you define your specific BPM needs: Gather Information If youve been given the responsibility of choosing the best BPM solution for your organization, youll want to start by acquiring a comprehensive view of your companys processes. While gathering information, its important to recognize the difference between processes and activities. An activity can be considered as a function of a task or transaction. A process is made up of a series of activities. For example, completing a loan application is a process. Running a credit check is one activity that is part of the process. Getting in touch with various departments such as finance, customer service, human resources, etc. will be necessary to get the information you need. While this will take some time and effort, attaining a clear understanding of the rules and processes within each of your organizations departments is a critical first step. Determine Your Most Important Processes BPM is more effective if you understand the importance and purpose of each process. Seek both technical and business users perspectives to define the most critical processes and applications within your company. Define Your High-level Requirements Take the information youve acquired in the steps above, and then focus on the processes and applications that are closely tied to your organizations mission and strategies. Defining your high-level requirements first will better position you to find the BPM solution that best fits your needs. Once youve defined these elements and have narrowed down the selection of vendors, you can then progress to the more minute details and requirements.

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Ten Standards for Selection

With so many BPM vendors on the market, you will most likely be bombarded with a variety of solutions all possessing a number of features and functions. Undoubtedly, this can be confusing as well as overwhelming. However, during your selection process it will be helpful to keep this simple standard in mind; a complete BPM solution is designed to address the entire process lifecycle, including both people and technology. Based on this principle, Insession Technologiesa software provider who has been in the business for over a decadepresents the top 10 standards to evaluate when looking at BPM solutions.

Analyst group McKinsey confirmed recently that companies are recognizing the importance of BPM in helping to meet new corporate governance requirements such as Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley.

1. Scalable/Fault Tolerant Architecture Since many BPM solutions have evolved from desktop document management solutions, only a very few are designed with enterprise scalability in mind. Whether you want your BPM solution to solve a specific need in one department, or would like it implemented as an enterprise standard, you should always take scalability into account. The best solutions will not only scale across multiple nodes, but also survive the failure of nodes when deployed in a cluster. 2. Rules Engine A rules engine automates routine and repetitive decision processing. A BPM solution should enable invocation of the rules engine from conditional process transitions and also from within process activities. A fully integrated graphical business rules engine (BRE) empowers business users to create and maintain the business rules that govern a process. 3. Graphical Tools Graphical tools are designed to analyze, model, and define processes. Such development tools (which can include a screen designer and a business rules editor) deliver executable processes that are linked to business rules. These tools also provide an intuitive interface for business and IT users to create processes and monitor the state of active process instances.

WorkPoints Rules Editor

4. Facilitation of Human and Automated Activities A BPM product selection team should carefully consider a solutions ability to perform fully automated activities. The best solutions will empower invocation of virtually any existing system or database in the enterprise. The system should also enable both push and pull capabilities for interacting with other enterprise systems. Furthermore, a comprehensive BPM solution should be able to assign activities to your organizations various human resources.

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Insession Technologies BPM suite, WorkPoint, consists of a set of components, which can survive failures of nodes if deployed in a cluster. The total solution can be configured with multiple instances of the components to meet the performance and scalability requirements of the enterprise. Customers may choose to run all components or only those components needed for their implementation. Individual components or multiple copies of components may be scaled vertically or horizontally across multiple servers or in a cluster to meet scaling needs.

5. Dynamic Portal True enterprise class BPM solutions provide a dynamic front-end portal. This feature not only provides a simple way to deploy a user-facing application, but it also empowers dynamic integration with business applications for live content and context information. A portal also provides insulation from future changes to backend systems, as it can be pointed to new applications at any time. 6. Knowledge Base A knowledge base holds the history and definitions of all processes. The knowledge base should be deployed in a relational database, and an organization should be able to run custom queries against the database tables in real time. Ultimately, the knowledge base provides an audit trail of historical information and is invaluable to users in ongoing process improvement. 7. Real-time activity monitoring A comprehensive BPM solution should have the ability to continually monitor process activity in real-time. Such capabilities allow for users to instantaneously make changes. Furthermore, the BPM solution should have a visual display so that users can easily see the status of a process. Users can then drill down into the historical information provided in the knowledge base to see who did what, when, and how long it took. 8. Integration with Existing/Custom Front-End Applications Many departments or enterprises already have existing front-end applications. In these instances, the BPM system should facilitate invocation of the runtime engine via programmatic API calls and/or Web services calls. The best solutions will expose their entire API set, including everything from process creation to all business functions and monitoring capabilities. 9. Flexible Platform Support In todays IT environment, many companies maintain a mix of computing platforms and databases. Thats why a truly cost-effective BPM system will utilize an organizations existing IT infrastructure. Additionally, companies universally report that when a BPM system is acquired for just one department, the company quickly grasps the value provided by the system, and other departments move to utilize the system as well. So, even if youre looking at a single department procurement, you should consider whether the solution could be utilized effectively by other departments or at an enterprise level. 10. Ease of Use and Broad Technical Support Many technology solutions are geared toward IT developers and the IT group. In addition, development, deployment, and management of sophisticated technology often requires extensive training, and/or IT expertise. If a BPM vendor doesnt have the proper support team in place, you may be left in the dark when it comes to implementation. While a good BPM solution should be easy to use and allow anyone (even those with very limited IT experience) to use the product, you should be able to call your vendors support team any day, at anytime.consulting,

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South & Associates, P .C. Through top-level service and efficiency the law firm of South & Associates, P satisfies over .C. 150 clients on thousands of foreclosures each year. This Kansas City based firm emphasizes mortgage banking law and predominately focuses on the management of foreclosures, a key component to the organizations success. When South saw business process management in action at a client site they realized they too could benefit from internal workflow. Because each case the firm processes is governed by a specific set of requirements and regulations, South needed a way to make sure that work was done in compliance and completed in the appropriate timeframe. For example, certain regulations in the state of Missouri can cause a case to be put on hold for 15 to 30 days. According to the regulations, specific activities are required to happen at designated times. With support from Insession, South was able to design a process capable of tapping into that Missouri foreclosure process to suspend it temporarily. Layered processes such as these are capable of suspending or reactivating other processes within the WorkPoint system. Acting as the centralized workflow broker, WorkPoint seamlessly manages Souths process, from A to Z. To learn how WorkPoint has helped hundreds of organizations worldwide, visit http://www.insession.com/bpm/workpoint/workpoint_customerprofiles.asp

Your Next Step

This white paper has highlighted some of the most essential characteristics you need to consider when selecting a BPM solution. As you move forward with your initiative, its important to apply your unique circumstances, and determine what BPM features are critical to your company. Organizations around the globe have gone through this very same process and decided that WorkPoint was the best option for them. And wed be happy to make it an option for you. For more information, please contact a sales representative at 800.755.1596 or visit www.workpoint.com.

No matter what your BPM goals, Insessions WorkPoint will help you reach them by providing: Unlimited implementation optionscan be embedded or implemented for end-users Flexible component architecture Native Microsoft and Java runtime engines Fully exposed/open APIs and Web services Platform and database independence Worldwide 24x7x365 support

1 Davenport, T. H. and Short, J. E. The New Industrial Engineering: Information Technology and Business Process Redesign." Sloan Management Review, 1990, 31 (4), 11-27.

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