While the choice of dance partner was a little surprising, the desire for a liquidity event in the Lombardi management team was there to see long ago. They touted an IPO around this time, but in the current market that was always going to be difficult. My guess, and it is a guess, is that the VC funders wanted to cash out, and they pushed for a trade sale. And given we don’t know the price paid (although it may come out over time), and then discount the several rounds of VC funding … the true price will be hard to tell.

Looking at the other potential suitors – I don’t think Oracle could swallow another one so soon; Microsoft is not into Java based vendors; Adobe, have their own play and it would be hard to see the synergies; SAP … hmmn, if I had to pick one that would have been it. Of course, IBM would have been high on the list also.

From Lombardi’s point of view, as others have pointed out, IBM has the broad based clientele. This will give them room to grow and leverage an existing, widespread sales force that is tightly integrated with the market place. I am sure there will be frustrations along the way, but the methods and techniques developed by the Lombardi team are exemplars to the industry.

As I have said to many other vendors, when people buy BPM products, they buy the promise of success. And I am sure Lombardi’s success in the market is as much down to that aspect as it is their leading technology stack. They help their customers understand how they will succeed in meeting their business objectives (rather than touting the beauty of their technology stack).

For IBM, Lombardi brings that cachet in the market place – in my opinion one of the real leaders. But digesting the new acquisition and building new value will be challenging (and for Lombardi, being digested will not necessarily be the easiest of experiences). But I am not sure they can continue to claim that the Human/Content/Integration-centric BPM products belong in separate buckets – in the end, they are all about people and systems working more effectively together. I agree with folks like Neil Ward-Dutton that there is a high degree of overlap at the technology level. Maintaining a reasonable segmentation of products against perceived client needs always starts to look shaky no matter which vendor you look at.

For the customers – well those that don’t like IBM will continue to not like IBM and will wonder why they went this way. But to a large extent, they will be locked in. Others will rejoice in the fact that two existing suppliers now become one. On balance, I don’t see a massive decamp.

For the competitive BPM vendors – I should imagine it is champagne all around. On the one hand it proves their value (once the price becomes known). On the other, Lombardi getting swallowed up just removes one difficult competitor. Dealing with them as part of the IBM value proposition is probably easier than dealing with them as independents.

Other major technology vendors will sit up and take notice and may start looking for complementary acquisition targets. My guess is that Microsoft and SAP will perhaps buy someone that seems to fit. I think the Microsoft SharePoint value proposition is a little suspect (unless they bolt in a robust process platform … because Windows Workflow Foundation just doesn’t cut it – see my white paper – SharePoint as a Strategic Weapon – available free on P5 of the White Papers section of the BPM Focus web site). SAP has struggled to communicate a viable product story for anyone other than existing SAP application users.

For the Lombardi team – there will inevitably be a certain degree of fragmentation. Some will run for the hills, and others will stay. I cant see Phil Gilbert heading for the beach any time soon. Anyway, I am sure that the odd glass of Champagne (or in Phil’s case,  excellent Pinot Noir) will be raised to toast the new home.

Bigger Gains to be Made!

Ensuring Greater Commitment and Engagement!

A Different Container

Maintaining The Focus

On the BPM Focus web site, you can find our research paper exploring the implications, holes and joys of attempting broad-based BPM deployments using SharePoint. It is on Page 5 of the White Papers area (you will need to be registered to access the paper … free of course)

A short summary/excerpt:

After a summer of doing other things (including a lot of house maintenance), I am back into the swing of things and working on a White Paper around how the emergence of SharePoint is affecting the BPM industry.

I will be exploring the issues associated therewith, the different sorts of integrations, the future of BPM linked with this MS “Swiss Army Knife” (as Rashid Kahn described it on Jim Sinur’s post).

So I am interested in any and all views associated with SharePoint and the world of Business Process. I will be exploring the different levels of maturity of SP users, the claims and aspirations of MS in this domain and the potential for long term leverage in the end-user community.

Of course, it will be best if folks could comment on this blog for all to see the sources, and I will post a copy of the white paper here as well in a few weeks time. All references and perspectives that I end up referencing I will of course acknowledge.

I must say at this point, I am fairly underwhelmed by the MS notion of “workflow” but it is still early days in my research.

While talking about the Obama stimulus package, Warren Buffet recently said “You Can’t Make A Baby In A Month By Getting 9 Women Pregnant” (he was referring to the fact that some things take time). And continuing on that theme, this article asserts that neither do many small incremental improvements make for “Business Transformation” – changing the culture takes time!

In his blog a few weeks back, Phil Gilbert raises a number of important questions: (paraphrasing)

1. What is Culture – and why can’t we change our BPM behaviors?
2. Why do BPM people promise fast incremental, continuous improvement, and then go and start every program by ‘boiling the ocean?’
3. How do we get from “Project” to “Program”?

He was talking about the fortitude required to take BPM to the long term – where the (existing) culture is the single biggest impediment. One could interpret Phil’s post as suggesting that cultural change is akin to “boiling the ocean” (attempting to fix everything at once); a strategy that is destined to fail.

But in order to move beyond putting a band-aid on a broken process (Project to Program), you need to take a step back and really set out to engage the hearts and minds of the business itself. And that implies challenging the established behaviors – creating a new vision of how to run the business – one where Process is part of the bloodstream; where the customer is king and effective processes deliver the great experiences they expect. Moreover, it also means challenging the way in which the organization is run (using processes to manage rather than just managing processes); indeed every facet of how the organization delivers value to its stakeholders.

Just because the new tools and technologies of BPM allow fast incremental, continuous improvement as a means of business change, does not mean we should do this everywhere – we shouldn’t! Sure, to get the initial project up and running, you need to stick to the core 30% of functionality that delivers 70% of the value and then iterate from there, spiraling toward better performance and a better fit with the underlying business need.

But getting the attention of the organization (taking the BPM challenge to the wider enterprise) and changing the established behaviors requires different tactics. Modeling the desired behaviors again and again just wont do it. Or putting it another way, endlessly tweaking existing processes within the current architecture fails to deliver – what you will get is “Better Sameness” not “Transformation”. Hoping that the pain of it all will enable the organization to develop an inner moral strength – one that is powerful enough to overcome the challenges associated with this transition misses the opportunity to re-energize.

The greatest obstacle to culture change is that once a culture has developed, the assumptions that led to it are so deeply engrained, that no one recognizes them and therefore, no one challenges them. In order to change a culture, it is first essential to identify the right underlying assumptions of the current culture and challenge them head on – before trying to implant a new culture.

It’s Wells – not Oceans!

So, what to do? Well, the good news is that a big, transformational vision does not involve “boiling the ocean”. The best way is to ‘Find a Well’ (the analogy being the Well of Life needs no external drivers – it is a life-giving source).

I have spent many years as a business strategy consultant helping organizations find effective, long-term, sustainable business strategies. I help them find a Well that shareholders, suppliers, customers, partners, the market and the community can all draw upon to enrich and energize their business and satisfy their needs.

What do these Wells look like? They are the values that are at the heart of that business area. Collectively, these values give direction, guidance and are rich source of ideas and new ways of doing things. So, we do not need to boil the ocean, just discover what drives and inspires the business and its people to adopt new ways of doing things and developing new behaviors.

In this approach, internal drivers that everyone values (because they see the relevance to their own business and business success) replace externally imposed behaviors (as the means of creating culture). Values come from an eternal spring – energizing again and again – hence sustainability is not an issue.

The even better news for BPM is that it is almost certain that any properly facilitated Business Strategy Workshop should lead to a Transformational Vision (the Well), with “Great Customer Experiences” as the source of Competitive Advantage.  Why is this good news for BPM? – because Great Customer Experiences rely on carefully designed Business Services, supported by effective Business Processes that provide the foundation for staff in delivering these experiences.  

At last – BPM and Incremental Improvements!

A full program will then spring from the facilitated development of the transformational vision and values. Now, having begun with the development of a transformational vision it is possible to build a program of projects; driven from the same source and fully aligned with the agreed business strategy. Those projects are built and driven by the business themselves; for the business.

However, as each individual project is taken forward the power of BPM technology then becomes clear.  BPM allows business process developers to re-iterate their designs and carry out successive re-designs – all aligned with this vision. The Center of Excellence (or IT function) provide some of the resources for those projects, but the real work, on the behaviors of the employees and the experience delivered to the customers, is carried out by the people in the business. Since they are involved in designing their own processes to support their customers, they develop a much stronger sense of ownership.

When it comes to cultural change, it is just not possible to impose a solution. You have to engage the business properly, which means winning their hearts and minds. Start with fast incremental improvements using BPM whilst convincing yourself you are being ‘business driven’ and you will end up with better sameness. Others will ask whether it worth all that effort?

On the other hand, begin with a transformational vision and your program will be truly business driven and energized. You can then move toward that vision, using the full power of BPM technology, as you continuously improve your new services and new ways of working. And your customers will become raving fans (and your staff will like it too)!

We find ourselves presented with situations where our clients are looking for “Breakthrough Performance” rather than mere “Process Improvement”. In her guest post on Jim Sinur’s blog, Elise Olding points out that many rush headlong into implementation looking for an elusive Magic Bullet (there aren’t any, but you could describe BPM initiatives as a Golden Gun). She quickly alluded to the need for a number of techniques including “Process Walkthroughs” (following the work item), through Sticky Notes or PostIt Sessions, down to and including sitting with the users and observing what they do.

While all these techniques are useful and interesting, they don’t go far enough to deliver the breakthrough improvements that customers seek. In business today, generally what is needed is not “Better Sameness” but “Transformation”. But existing processes usually focus on the needs of the company – delivering stronger management control, and reinforcing functional priorities.  

However, we believe that the best practice to deliver breakthroughs is quite different from any of these approaches. We start from a different place – the “Customer Experience” – a stance that is all about building competitive advantage. 

Process breakthroughs come from thinking about everything we do in terms of how what we do can assist in delivering a Great Customer Experience. This dynamic lens is dramatically different from the traditional process improvement approach. It has the effect of inspiring completely different insights and generating new ways of doing things (rather than paving the cow paths). Once you are standing in the shoes of the customer, you no longer see the functional bias that reinforces existing behaviors.

In the early 90s the CEO of Sony pointed out that, every manufacturer had all the parts needed for a Sony Walkman sitting on their shelves – but only Sony asked the customer what they wanted. As a result, they transformed the way we listen to music (even if they did miss the disruptive innovation of hard disk based players).

In the end, we believe that you have to build a “Transformational Vision” around what the customer values – be it an internal customer, supplier customer, partner customer or end consumer. So we will continue to use the “Customer Experience” lens as the best route to achieving breakthroughs in process performance.

As you are probably aware, there is a real challenge for organizations in delivering an effective customer experience. The problem is that the Customer’s “Experience” is often an afterthought in most business processes. The emphasis is usually on the internal problem being solved, not the impact that this process has on the customer. Now some of you are probably saying that all our processes are customer focused. But the reality is that very often that internal efficiency and profit (upsell/cross-sell) are the primary drivers of customer facing processes.

As I type this post, I am experiencing just such a broken process – it’s the oxymoron known as Adobe “Customer Service”. So far I have been on the phone for 50 minutes as I discover that their Adobe ConnectPro product, while delivered as a “Service” in the cloud, does not have the other elements that live up to anyone else’s idea of what the word “service” means (either with or without the capital S).

In this little scenario, I am trying to get the ConnectPro account to accept the new Audio Bridge so that we can get seamless audio conferencing into the BPM TechShow. So far I have spoken to three people (inside Adobe) – Tech Support immediately got rid of me saying that I had to talk to Customer Service. After 30 minutes listening to reasonable Jazz at the poorest sound quality available, I talk to someone who then says I need to talk to a special agent … then I get the Supervisor of Customer Service that tells me … you guessed it, I need to talk to Tech Support. Strangely enough, I start to bleat about it, and the very nice sounding young man says he will connect me with the Tech Support Supervisor (immediately) … and now, after another 30 minutes, I am still listening to bad Jazz.

Why am I hanging on, just to see how long they take, and whether or not I can get resolution to this issue before my next call (I have missed the orginal meeting this was needed to support … so their bad/broken process has already impacted one of my own customer relationships).

I will also take the opportunity to feed back this “experience” to the relevant Product Manager at Adobe.

Of course, I shouldn’t have to be here anyway – the process that provisioned my account in the first place should have made sure the option was set up appropriately. That means that the partner (yes, you can not buy this stuff directly from Adobe) should have been trained to pick it up, or at least have an option to line up the provisioning automatically. Indeed, even trying to buy the product (i.e. give Adobe several thousand dollars) was a similar exercise in managing the frustration of being passed from pillar to post as nobody takes ownership.

The point is that the processes that handle the transactional side of the relationship are one thing (taking your money is normally pretty efficient these days … Adobe excepted), but all the related processes that go into delivering that customer experience are just as important. And I am not even an exception – in talking to the people who provisioned the audio bridge, it turns out that several others have had the same problem (i.e. it wasn’t set up right to start with).

Now after 71 minutes on this call alone (it’s my second), I am about to kill the call and try again – clearly the supervisor seems to be out to lunch (or else I was just routed back to that endless queue that will ensure this customer will sooner or later go away). But this time I will try a different route. Right now, I am so angry that if I had the option (time available), I would probably ditch Adobe in favor of a competitive product.

Having a free 1-800 number is no substitute for actually having an effective mechanism to deal with customers and their issues (i.e. work on the behaviors and culture of the people that customers interact with).

A good customer experience builds relationships, acts as a referral point for new customers, lowers sales costs, etc. And this post is proof that a bad customer experience is destructive to your brand. Bad experiences get talked about and passed on.

Within your BPM Program, you should start off with engaging the Executive Steering Group around the “Brand Customer Experience” – a broad statement that sets the tone for all customer interactions. From that point, it becomes one of setting up an engagement program with the business designed to first of all define the sorts of “Services” that customers can expect, and then from there, the need for processes that deliver that experience. Those processes are operated by people, who should be empowered (trained) to give that designed “Great Customer Experience” every time.

I will be discussing this overall method and technique in the Day 3 keynote (July 9th) of the BPM TechShow … but I doubt that anyone from Adobe “Customer Service” will be there.

Update: I called back tried a different route into a more general Tech Support group, and then finally was given yet another number to call (this one allegedly to talk to the relevant group for Adobe ConnectPro). After 17 more minutes of listening to bad Jazz sounds, I am now talking to someone. But it seems that the person on the other end is incapable of finding the answer. I get asked questions like “when did I purchase this?” … Irrelevant. Then I am asked for the Tech Support tracking number … strangely enough I dont have one. Then they want my street address in order to “validate” I am who I am … finally, after a further 20 minutes I get a tracking number. But can I look up on the Web to track that number … Noooo, I have to go through another exercise in ritual abuse (i.e. talk to Adobe Tech Support or what passes for Customer Service).

Update 2 – 6 days later. Since this post got noticed by Adobe I have had several conversations with interested parties. Of course, we offered to help them improve the customer experience … but it seems to be an issue they are taking very seriously. We’ll see where it all leads.

Following the success of our BPM Technology Showcase format in the real world (Feb and Oct 2008), and given the fact that nobody is allowed travel budget these days, make sure you check out the Virtual BPM Technology Showcase next week – Tuesday 7/7 through Thursday 7/9.

Over a three day period, we will be introducing 7 of the leading vendors in the BPM arena:

• Appian (7/7)
• Ascentn 7/8)
• Fujitsu (7/7)
• Global360 (7/9)
• Itensil (7/7)
• Savvion (7/8)
• SRA (7/9)

Each vendor will talk to the value that their technology delivers and how customers have deployed their solutions. This is not some vague conference where nobody is allowed to talk about their true innovations and features. Neither is it a noisy showroom floor where folks are wandering around wondering when they can get a real demo of this hot new product. We have set out to structure the interaction between seller and potential customer. Each 45 minute session is followed by a detailed Q&A allowing you to get up close and personal.

Having said that, it is supported by 3 different keynote sessions where I will cover:

• The BPM Techynology Assessment Framework (7/7)
• Ensuring BPM PRoject Success (7/8)
• The Customer Experience and BPM (7/9)

To find out more or register for the event go to the BPM TechShow site. And if you need a further incentive to take part, either Nathaniel Palmer or myself will be available for individual one-on-one sessions to help you fast track your BPM program.

A recent spate of interest in Case Management is good to see (I always called it Case Handling but the concepts are the same). The OMG is about to vote on an RFP (Request for Proposal for a new standard) on Case Management. As some of my regular readers will realize, I have a special interest in the subject of Case Management.

Some of us have been talking about the problems of dealing with Cases for a number of years (e.g. this post in 2007). My own experience started with the development of what would today be called Case Management systems starting in the mid-80s and culminating in an Oracle-based object oriented repository in the early 90s – way too clever by half for that era so I canned it in 1992 and became an Analyst looking at other peoples products, writing white papers, etc. Since then I put together a number of white papers specifically talking about the issues of Case Management:

• In 1996 a paper called “The Business Case for Case Handling” and although the vendors I referenced at the time have since disappeared (bought out), the issues are just as relevant today.
• Over the last few years, I published a couple of papers that start to explore some of the related issues (these papers are available on BPM Focus with registration). In particular, these two papers address many of core concepts of Case Management.
  • “Process Innovation and Corporate Agility – Balancing Efficiency and Adaptability in a Knowledge-Centric World”
  • “Business Processes and Customers – Difficult Domains to Integrate”

So with this post, I am having my own stab at defining the issue. I have been invited several times by those in the OMG to take part in this particular enquiry, but hesitate to get involved as these things can act as an enormous time sink. So first let me point you at some other perspectives. In recent months, we have seen several bloggers discussing some of these ideas (touching on the need for adaptability and agility):

• Jim Sinur of Gartner talks of “… Agile processes that are tapped into emerging events and contexts driven by organizational and community goals … the need for creating and managing unstructured processes. This kind of environment requires organizations and vendors to master goal driven processes.” In another post he said “Today most processes are Flow directed, but the future will likely require goal direction for at least a portion of the process. This is what we call unstructured processes that are composed of process snippets that are flow directed and portions that are completely dynamic. A combo looks to be the way forward.” See here, here and here.
• Neeli Basanth Kumar (of Cordys) talks of Process Patterns in Adopting Case Based Solutions (he even uses one of my diagrams from a 97 paper – The Workware Evaluation Framework … where I tried to highlight the role of Case Management).
• A discussion paper put out by Dennis Byron at ebizQ provides a sort of summary of some of the thinking of the vendors that replied to his request for information (originally it contained references to my thoughts and some of my graphics but that content was pulled after I pointed out the provenance). 
• Bruce Silver commented on the RFP discussion going on at the OMG and postulated what he sees as the difference between “traditional BPM” and “Case Management”.

For me, it all comes back to the continuum of Process. On the one hand, we have the image of the organization as machine, with mechanistic “Procedures” used to control the work of the resources available. Most BPM initiatives are still stuck at this level, seeking to automate things and remove (human) resources from the equation. If Productivity = Value / Resources, this reductionist approach is all about reducing the resources involved in the deliver of a given value.

At the other end of the spectrum, we could consider processes as more like evolving “Practices.”  Think of what you do personally and see if this concept makes sense – some parts of what you do are defined in Standard Operating Procedures, other parts you interpret and apply your judgment. The more leeway you have to make decisions (in your job), the more knowledge you exercise in carrying out your job. Most knowledge workers are goal oriented, regarding procedures as a means to an end, rather than an end in themselves. Managers tend to be goal oriented.

We could think of high level processes as being about a “Purpose” – and how that Purpose is interpreted will inevitably be somewhere on that spectrum Procedure and Practice. Indeed, one finds that most business problems need a combination of both – hence the approach that has become know as Case Management. Now we’ve got this concept established, from a process perspective you could think of Case Management as applying to the Practices end of the spectrum. Workers here are goal oriented, and typically apply processes to achieve those goals.

Case Management is a very important “Design Pattern” for supporting flexible work Practices instead of more rigorous Procedures (where no adaptability or run time flexibility is needed). Different products take vastly different approaches to Case Management, all with the aim of providing flexibility and adaptability to the user, yet still providing support for the organizational objectives (processing more work, more efficiently and providing traceability).

Case Management proffers a way of mixing overarching support for that Purpose – normally through a high-level, outline procedure, which is then supported by a library of process fragments that can be bound into the parent as determined by the user. In some cases, the user has complete control of what should happen next; in others, the ability to progress from one phase of that high-level outline to the next is constrained in some way. Some products leave it very loosey goosey, others are all about constraining the user. Depending on how strong the need for adaptability is (in the target domain) the user may even have the ability to develop new process fragments to support a given need (imagine a Software Engineering project … it’s not always possible to predict every possible permutation). In others (say a Bank for example), it might be good enough to have the user select from a library of available sub-processes to bind to the parent. Indeed, in a Bank or Insurance company, it is unlikely that the run time adaptability would be allowed (the last thing you need is a clerk getting creative with a bank draft).

With careful architectural design, it is possible to create a Case Management environment out of many different BPMS products. But that implies that the end-user organization already have a clear idea of how such environments are constructed. In a sense, they create an application layer above the BPM Suite. 

My concern with the OMG RFP is that it is trying to standardize something that is poorly understood (as evidenced by the varying perspectives given in the OMG BMI mailing list). 

While the rest of this document goes on to outline my own views on Case Management, I believe that developing a standard in this area at this point would only result in hampering innovation. Having said that – there is a definite need for much more discussion and exploration of the domain of Case Management.

I believe that the approach proffered by Cordys represents just one way of approaching Case Management. There are others, and I do not believe that tying everyone down to one interpretation of Case Management at this point will be a good thing in the industry. Other vendors with Case Management approaches include:

• Singularity
• Cordys
• Global 360
• Sword (was Graham Technology)
• Itensil
• TIBCO
• EMC Documentum
• IBM (FileNet)
• BizAgi
• Pallas Athena
• Pega
• Polymita
• HandySoft

All these vendors have some sort of capability that could be described as Case Management (and I am sure there are plenty of others that would put themselves on the list).

Finally those in the Process technology world are starting to see that a pure “one sized fits all approach” to the standardization of process definitions is entirely inappropriate when it comes to the needs of humans and knowledge workers. Moreover, Case Management approaches provide all sorts of benefits to companies in that they enable a far more flexible response to the needs of customers.

As different vendors struggle to work out the best approach, the last thing they need is to be tied down to a “standard” approach. In the end, it will be the Darwinian process of selection that will see the best products win out; not some imagined need for standardization and interoperation between wholly different approaches to the problem. 

Notes

Most BPM efforts could be characterized by their incessant focus on process standardization. They are predicated on the assumption that overall business effectiveness improves through better control. And while this is true for procedural, back-office problems, the reality is that customer facing and knowledge work processes are extremely difficult to standardize (if not impossible).

This is a real problem for long term BPM adoption. Ask yourself how many organizations you know in the BPM arena that have more than 5 or 10 processes “under management” (i.e. using a BPM Suite to ensure that things don’t fall through the cracks). And then think about how many spreadsheet are used in those same organizations to coordinate work.

In the paper “Customers and Business Processes – Difficult Domains to Integrate” I suggested that there were several different types of Case Management (Case Handling). These range from the traditional BPM Suite (which struggles to support the necessary adaptability), through what I called “Design Time Case Handling” on to “Run Time Case Handling”.

Case Management and BPM

The vast majority of BPM Suites and Workflow tools assume that all activities/tasks/steps (and the potential paths through them), are modeled a priori (beforehand). Putting that another way, they focus on driving work between employees based on a model that maintains the status of a work item. The process model must exist up front, which presents the first hurdle of process discovery—i.e. ensuring those models are “correct.”

Further, in most products, all work of a given type share a common process description (rather than copying the model to support each work item). In such situations, the engine will normally allow the end-user little or no choice but to follow the pre-defined procedure.

Of course, the challenge is then for process modelers to predict all possible permutations in advance—something that is virtually impossible to achieve in customer facing situations. To get around show stopping scenarios, a few products incorporate features that provide the ability to bypass, redo, and rollback steps, while most rely on re-assignment of work to the supervisor (who must then step outside the system to resolve the problem). It does not take long before the supervisor becomes the bottleneck as cases mount up (those that do not follow the “happy path”).

Change is only possible through re-development of the common process model. New items of work then follow the modified process description (most products incorporate some form of version control). Change to an individual work item normally requires the deletion of all threads of work and the work item is then recreated under the new model (compromising any future audit). Alternatively, mechanisms must are needed to move an existing case to the new model.

These adaptability issues are not constrained to customer facing scenarios. For example, as government regulations change, the firm needs to revamp its process models to handle that change. There might be thousands of cases in the system, the vast majority of which will complete before the new regulations come into force. But imagine that there are still 100 cases outstanding at the point the new regulation comes into effect. For most products, it would simply be impossible for them to handle this problem in any sort of constructive fashion. Each of those work items would have to be manually stopped, and then restarted (somehow) under the new process definition that met the new government regulations. The only viable way of approaching the problem is to incorporate mechanisms to migrate individual instances to the new model.

For Case Handling support, the key differentiating factor (of the BPM Suite) is the ability to link multiple processes to a given case of work—the primacy is with the case of work, rather than the processes that are used to support it. Each case is usually “managed” by a relatively loose (high-level) parent procedure, but the worker can then add new procedural fragments to handle each different requirement of the work in hand. Effectively, the user is binding new procedural fragments to the case at run time; either by selecting them from a library, or by developing new ones.

Of course, this sort of approach is reliant on a BPMS that can facilitate such modifications to work in flight. For most products, it will also require great care in the design of the process architecture itself, and may involve the development of an external application.

(Some of these thoughts have been culled from my past White Papers on the subject of Case Handling)

As many of you know, I have been pressing the metal to the floor on BPM in the cloud. So, I was interested to see the Appian Webinar last week (available on demand here). Some of you will remember that I developed a good chunk of process training for them to support users on the Appian Anywhere platform.

The session opened with the usual intro (not from me for once), pointing to all the usual reasons for doing BPM – efficiency, retain customers, compliance, etc. However, I was impatient to get to the SaaS opportunity, as I believe BPM delivered in the cloud enables a whole range of new possibilities.

Following the vendor neutral intro from Information Week, Samir Gulati Appian’s VP of Marketing, talked about their offering. Appian Anywhere has the same code based as the Appian Enterprise product, but deployed in the cloud and available on demand. AA has been out there for nearly 18 months or so (although I think it was only officially released earlier this year). It’s available in the Premium Edition where you get your dedicated server, SAS-70 type 2 application, etc., and the Standard Edition where you get shared (multi-tenant) access to an Amazon EC2-based service. From a pricing point of view, the Standard Edition is $35 per user per month. And while you are in evaluation mode, Appian provide a “Process Coach” to help get you up and running.

Samir talked about a few example customers of Appian Anywhere: ManuLife, who are using it to support their marketing function, driving better resource usage, managing interfaces to their third party suppliers, etc. The second example was Starbucks who are using AA to manage and track localised promotions, enabling visibility into what is going on.

The main part of the webinar was a case study delivered by John Cowles, Director of Operational Efficiency at Clayton Holdings. They are primarily involved in Credit Risk and Due Diligence work for the Mortgage industry (they don’t own assets, just provide services to others). Their customers are the Banks and Mortgage issuers. They could see the financial industry going in a downward spiral, and felt that things would get tighter. They realized that they needed to get better control of their own processes, and start monitoring/managing process performance. They also felt it was taking too long to get people up and running effectively.

Being a smaller company, they were a little nervous about getting into the BPM space, so thought they would try out the SaaS option. For them, it was a low risk; a low cost way to get started (John’s estimate was that it was only about 10-20% of the cost associated with buying a BPMS and installing in-house). And with limited IT availability, they felt the SaaS option represented the best way forward. They started zeroing in on Appian because they had the SaaS capability (at the time they were the only one out there with an On Demand offering). He liked their tenacity and the flexibility of the tool.

Once their instance was set up, it took just 6 weeks to get their first process up and running. He started developing a baseline of their current operation (always a sensible move). In his words, “you can’t improve anything unless you know where you are started. You could be wasting your time focusing on the wrong things.” Overall, he was looking for a 30% improvement in efficiency, while also seeking to reduce the variability in the way work was carried out. They followed a DMAIC approach, but it was a BPM project (not 6Σ). They were lucky in that they had the active involvement of a lot of senior business people (Executive Steering Group). Yet, their development and implementation team was small (2 people).

They have been doing a new release every month once they got their initial processes up and going. And ever since that first release, the business people themselves have developed more and more ideas on what they want to do. Initially, they actively avoided doing any integration at all. So it has only been very recently that they needed to involve IT.

I am not sure, but I think they are now addressing two areas of the business. John talked of having over 30 processes, with a lot of interdependencies between those processes; so I am guessing he was referring to the various sub-processes and chained processes that support the domain. 

From a results point of view – they are now doing more with less. He cited a new operation in a remote city where they had thought they would need 14 people to do a particular role, now they get by with just three.

For a case study, I thought it was a good one. It was good to hear someone really getting into the lessons learnt.

• John quite rightly pointed to the need to “Focus on Change Management and Process Management early on … We had to prioritize, needed to step back and look at the bigger picture.” I found myself thinking that we could have had some interesting discussion over the Process Portfolio Management techniques that we have been working on with a Center for BPM Partner.
• His second point was I think a good one “Limited or no system integration in the first release” … indeed, they left the integration till nearly 6 months before they got into that.
• “Prototype everything” … sit down, work with them in design mode, and see what that looks like, prototyping all the time.

There were others, but those were the things that stood out for me. John also talked to the need for Process Visibility … “Need to step back and look at the metrics at a high level and then focus down on the critical areas … treat it like a compass.” I liked that last phrase as it gives a sense of what Process Visibility should really mean to managers.

As a BPM Case Study, I thought the session was a good one. However, I think it would have been even better if he had covered the game-changing capabilities of a SaaS delivered BPM solution in support of the process across the wider value chain. I think many managers are still stuck in the mode of optimizing their own processes rather than looking for the opportunities to support the wider problem. It’s a bit like stove pipes inside an organisation … but here, I am getting at the opportunities to radically improve the value chain, through the comprehensive integration of all the actors involved. Having said that, I am sure John is already thinking about the opportunities to deliver this sort innovation.