BPM and Workflow; they are one and the same thing, aren't they?

I am often faced with the question from customers and partners alike; “What is the difference Business Process Management and workflow?”
The confusion often arises because misleadingly, these two terms are used interchangeably by individuals in the BPM space that should know better.

In short Business Process Management (BPM) is about managing a business problem whereas workflow is simple a subset of BPM it is an enabler, a technology. BPM uses workflow as one of its key dimensions in order to manage business processes.

These six BPM dimensions include:
• BPM has a human workflow (WF) dimension;
• BPM has a rules engine (RE) dimension;
• BPM has an enterprise application integration (EAI) dimension;
• BPM has a service oriented architecture (SOA) dimension;
• BPM has a content management (CM) dimension; and
• BPM has a business intelligence (BI) dimension.

Additionally a BPM Solution/Suite (BPMS) should allow for the configuration of all of the dimensions from one interface or product suite. A true BPMS such as XMPro provides the ability to create Composite Process Solutions (CPS) with all of these elements from a single toolset.

What are the potential costs of ignoring BPM?

I frequently read blog posts, articles and comments expounding the virtues and benefits of adopting BPM principles and solutions.

I thought that it may be interesting to consider the cost of the status quo or put another way doing nothing!

Pieter van Schalkwyk the CEO of our author partner - eXomin - has published a white paper 6 Hidden Truths to Lost Profit, in which he makes the case that:

• Businesses lose hard-earned profits in high volume transactions through inefficiency, inaccuracy and the costs of rework.

• Businesses lose profit in the supporting processes through poor customer service and quality issues.

• Low frequency processes lose profit through non-compliance, penalties and a lack of transparency.

In short the whitepaper explains six process characteristics that result in profit leakage that in Pieter's opinion need to be considered and addressed.

I do not intent to make this case here, but I strongly recommend that you download and review this document.

What do we mean by BPM?

I came across an interesting discussion on one of the LinkedIn discussion groups; BPM Guru, which asks What do we mean by BPM.

Greater minds than I have contributed some excellent posts to the discussion, but here is my attempt at answering the question:

BPM is a management discipline that treats process as an asset, where the asset if properly managed ensures that an enterprise aligns its business processes to its business strategy; leading to effective overall company performance through improvements in specific activities/tasks, either within a specific department or across the enterprise.


It presumes that business performance can be improved by assessing the performance of these assets. Makes improvements to these assets based on the assessment and by deploying these improvements with effective change management, ensuring therefore that the business makes the best possible use of the ‘process’ asset.

It measures the effectiveness of the asset in achieving improved business performance, and finally seeks to consider/make further improvements, based upon the outcome from the performance measurement activity.



  

STAY CONNECTED to your Business Systems

Let's face it...for the most part beyond phone calls, handhelds and mobiles are at best only used for e-mail and calendar management. To free up executives, managers and other key employees from their desks, organisations need to deploy mobile applications so that business decisions do not stop when individuals are away from their desks.

Join me for a 45 minute webinar on significant improvements that are available for your Blackberry, iPhone and iPad users. This webinar series will show you how to connect your mobile users to your business systems, and provide for real-time monitoring of their team's performance.  Wherever they are, and whatever mobile device they use, your people can therefore keep the business moving.

My HR Manager says: "I need to approve the termination pays by 2pm today, but I am out of the office at a conference and only have my iPhone with me."

My CFO says: "I have email on my Blackberry so why can't get I get access to my finance system to approve the supplier payments and new customer approvals?"

My new Sales Director has just bought an iPad. He wants to monitor the sales performance of his reps whilst on the road and get notified when orders with special discounts need approval before month end.

XMPro is a robust business process management platform, which will allow your mobile employees to handle and manage tasks, view and monitor business processes, access live reports, handle documents, and ultimately...

...allow these individuals to be highly productive without being tied to their offices or desks!

What you will learn:

1. How to implement consistent, reliable business management processes for your entire workforce.

2. How to configure the business process once and then deliver and support them to a variety of mobile devices including Blackberrys, iPhones and iPads.

3. How to deliver the same content to your office users of Outlook and SharePoint.

Who should attend?
CIO, CFO, COO
IT Managers
Business Process Improvement Managers
General Managers
Operations Managers

2011 Event Details
Tuesday 25th January: Click here to register
Thursday 24th February: Click here to register
Tuesday 22nd March: Click here to register
Thursday 28th April: Click here to register
Tuesday 31st May: Click here to register

Turning SharePoint from good to GREAT

Speaking to clients and prospective clients, I frequently and not unsurprisingly, come across Microsoft SharePoint.  There appears to be an awareness amongst users, that despite its obvious and significant capabilities and strengths, SharePoint is trying [and some would say failing] to be all things to all people.

With $1.3bn in sales, 100 million (yes 100,000,000) or more seats 'sold' over the last few years SharePoint is Microsoft’s faster growing server product. There is simply no getting away from the fact that SharePoint has a powerful place in the business software landscape. This status is clearly built upon SharePoint’s well documented strengths in the areas of Collaboration and Content Management, some would argue that despite this, it has critical limitations.

I came across the following comments in a publication ‘SharePoint as a Strategic Weapon’ from BPM Focus 2009: “…it is entirely possible to leverage the best parts of SharePoint – it’s Content Management and User Interface/Collaboration features – and still benefit from the best in class BPM capabilities.” The document goes on to say, “SharePoint provides strong capabilities to support the Portal and Collaboration as well as Content Management requirements, but it runs out of steam in the wider Business Process domain.”...and Forrester in a paper entitled ‘SharePoint and BPM - Finding the sweet spot’ observed that, “Out of the box, SharePoint processes are simple, so you can’t create seamless business process without a lot of custom coding.”

Taking this point further Pieter van Schalkwyk the CEO of our author partner - eXomin - has published a white paper on turning SharePoint from Good to Great. This focuses on my previous point that SharePoint attempts to be all things to all people and in doing so fails to be great at anything.

In reality we are seeing Microsoft mature its marketing message - can you spot the difference?



In 2007 this message included terms such as "Streamline Processes" and "Business Intelligence". Coming up to date, more generic terms appear in Microsoft’s 2010 ‘pitch’, which include "Composites" and "Insights". Reading between the lines this suggests to me an acknowledgement that all-things-to-all people is not a viable path to success. Indeed I would suggest that it highlights a realisation on Microsoft’s part that SharePoint forms only part and not the entire solution, for delivering better outcomes to end users.

In the area of Streamline Processes [e.g. Composites] specifically, this allows for and supports the existence of specialist ‘fit-for-purpose’ tools to address composite areas across the business, whilst standing firmly on the foundations that SharePoint brings in the server layer.

So how do we turn it from good to great? I would suggest by bringing worthwhile and tangible benefits to the key stakeholders; more control for the IT department, better and more visible process outcomes for the business and less confusion/more clarity for end users. Can I suggest you get a copy of the whitepaper "eXomin turns SharePoint from Good to GREAT"   here and make up your own mind?

Professional Advantage - XMPro