Chapter 1: Defining Business Process Management (BPM) 7
Process agility
Of all demands on business operations, perhaps the most
pressing is the need for change — the ability to adapt to changing
events and circumstances while still maintaining overall
productivity and performance. BPM delivers process agility,
minimizing the time and effort needed to translate business
needs and ideas into action. BPM enables business people to
define processes quickly and accurately through process
models. It enables them to perform what-if analysis on business
scenarios. It empowers them to configure, customize, and
change transaction flows by modifying business rules. It
directly translates process designs into execution — integrating
systems and building applications codelessly and seamlessly.
Moreover, the BPM platform comes equipped with
technology components that make codeless development and
integration fast and easy.
Management: The enabling
dimension
Management is the enabling dimension. Management sets
people and systems into motion and prods processes into
action, in pursuit of the business goals and objectives.
For management, processes are the tools with which they forge
business success. Before BPM, constructing and applying
these tools spawned an unwieldy mix of enterprise-class
automation, many isolated desktop tools, manual methods
and techniques, and brute force. With BPM, you can bring
together all the systems, methods, tools, and techniques of
process development and process management into an architected
system, complete with the visibility and controls necessary
for steering and tuning. How could you not want that?
The Catalyst: BPM Technology
Business leaders and managers know the fundamental roles of
business, process, and management in the enterprise. These
have been defined, studied, and improved over a period of
decades. Technology, however, has been evolving more rapidly,
and recently, significant advancements have changed the game.
BPM technology is the new enabler that has taken business,
process, and management to new levels. BPM technology is
8 BPM Basics For Dummies
the key ingredient of BPM — it’s the catalyst in a new, faster,
and more effective business alchemy.
BPM technology is the result of many years of development
and application experience; the product of the most current
advances in information systems and processing; the pinnacle
of all computing architectures, languages, and protocols. BPM
technology is a breakthrough, and a new paradigm in flexibility,
management, and control of data and information. BPM, as
a comprehensive management practice, is the result of combining
the technical advancements with established methods
and practices of a process-centric business model.
BPM technology includes everything you need to design,
enact, analyze, and control operational business processes:
_ Process Modeling and Design make it possible for you to
quickly and rigorously define processes that span value
chains, and to orchestrate the roles and behaviors of all
necessary people, systems, and other resources.
_ Integration allows you to include any information system,
control system, data source, or other technology into
business processes. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
makes it faster and easier than ever before. Nothing of
value need be discarded; everything is reusable.
_ Composite Application Frameworks allow you to build
and deploy fully-functional Web-based applications codelessly
and almost instantly.
_ Execution directly turns models into real-world action,
orchestrating processes in real-time.
_ Business Activity Monitoring tracks process performance
as it’s happening, monitoring many indicators, displaying
key process metrics and trends, and predicting
future behaviors.
_ Control allows you to respond to process events based
on circumstances, such as rule changes, notifications,
exceptions, and escalations.
BPM: A Model for Success
Because processes represent value chains that often cut across
functional departments and even separate businesses, BPM
Chapter 1: Defining Business Process Management (BPM) 9
initiates important shifts in business architecture and management
practice. BPM orchestrates processes, and that has
implications on the ways people communicate. The behaviors
are different — and that has implications on roles, job
descriptions, and incentives.
BPM & CPI: Birds of a feather
Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) methodologies like
Six Sigma and Lean are naturally part of BPM. These timetested
approaches to process optimization are extended in
force and range when combined with BPM technology. BPM is
the platform that takes CPI to the enterprise level. BPM accelerates
the adoption and execution of CPI methodologies, and
propagates best practices throughout the enterprise.
BPM sustains the effectiveness of CPI.
BPM is business infrastructure
BPM brings all dimensions of a business together, and enables
new levels of participation and collaboration among teams —
especially between business staff and IT professionals. BPM
promotes quick, incremental improvements while reaching
levels of process stability and performance quickly.
BPM is the central discipline — including the tools and the
techniques — that connects enterprises and organizations by
fostering operational process performance with effectiveness,
transparency, and agility.
BPMS: A Suite Deal
There’s an “S” that you’ll sometimes see on the end of BPM.
The “S” in BPMS stands for “Suite.”
A BPMS is the suite of BPM technologies — including all the
functional modules, technical capabilities, and supporting
infrastructure — integrated into a single environment that
performs all the BPM technology functions seamlessly. A
BPMS is the total package.
10 BPM Basics For Dummies