BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT

What is BPM?

Business Process Management (BPM) is an approach that’s designed to

produce better processes through the combination of technology and expertise.
BPM is a collaborative effort between business units and the IT world, and this
effort fosters a new paradigm of efficient and logical business processes.

In today’s dynamic business environment, organizations need to be agile

and flexible so they’re ready to respond to whatever challenges come their way.
BPM provides that agility and flexibility by giving you more direct control over
your operational processes. You can make better use of technology and your
entire enterprise becomes far more responsive, helping you meet your goals.

BPM helps create value for the enterprise through growth, improved
performance, better productivity, higher staff effectiveness, and better customer
service. All of these improvements result directly from improved processes.

BPM can help your organization become more agile in a number of different
ways:

 Increased productivity: In today’s economy you need to do more with

fewer resources. Applying BPM principles helps your enterprise increase
its productivity.
 Speed to market: When a new idea or product comes along, effective
BPM helps you be one of the leaders, not one of the followers who were
too late to take advantage of the new market.
 Reaching the global market: BPM can help you streamline and scale
your supply chain operations, so you can take advantage of opportunities
no matter where they may exist.
 Achieving compliance: Keeping up with complex compliance,
regulatory, and corporate governance requirements can be very costly and
time-consuming. Using BPM, you can keep these costs under control.

The agile and flexible organization has the ability to meet the needs of the
customer and be the winner at the end of the day.
BPM methodology is incorporated with practices such as Six Sigma and Lean
Six Sigma as well as the work of quality control experts such as Deming
 Practices such as Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma as well as the work of
quality control experts such as Deming are fully incorporated in BPM
methodology. BPM actually enables you to leverage these practices to provide
even greater benefits to your enterprise.

Business processes are pervasive in any organization. These processes

represent all the activities that organizations in all industries undertake. Some
processes are highly structured, such as high-volume manufacturing processes,
while others, such as medical care that must be tailored to specific patients’
needs, are more unstructured.

Speed and agility are very important factors in the success of any
business. Take the fast-food restaurant business as an example. Look at any
fast-food restaurant on the corner during lunchtime. They serve many times the
number of lunches of the typical sit down restaurant simply because the industry
is fast. People typically have a limited amount of time for lunch, and they know
that the fast-food restaurant will serve them quickly. Customers don’t like to
wait for products or answers.

BPM can help make sure that your managers have complete information,
they’re able to make better decisions. In addition, by helping you automate
many decision-making processes, by using BPM, you can be sure that most
decisions are made in a much more consistent and timely manner. Because
these decisions are based on solidly defined rules, they’re likely to be more in
line with the goals of your organization.

BPM also enables you to see your processes in action and to see how
decisions affect your bottom line. As a result, you’re able to do more than
simply react; you can alter the process to better manage new opportunities or
looming threats. BPM gives you the tools to improve the processes and
decisions proactively. This process improvement ultimately means that
decisions aren’t only made faster, but also better decisions are made.
Traditional application development:

Traditional application development is a poor fit for driving process

improvement in two different areas:

 Requirements:
In one study, Forrester Research reported that 57 percent of
traditional application development projects were poorly scoped
and 30 percent had unattainable requirements. These same
percentages — or worse — can be expected using traditional
application development for process improvement. In contrast,
BPM project success rates — over 90 percent — suggest that BPM
is a superior technology for getting process improvement
requirement right.

 Time to market:
BPM projects tend to be delivered faster, cheaper, and more
reliably than most application development projects. How much
faster? Based on IBM’s research with customers that have existing
application development capabilities (for example, Java-based
development), BPM delivers productivity gains in virtually every
phase of the project delivery.
Understanding How BPM Benefits Your Business:

The basic operational value proposition of BPM is the ability to process

more with less effort and higher quality. As a result, BPM has become a
cornerstone discipline for companies that want to grow revenues quickly while
controlling resource costs.

 Making faster decisions:

Speed and agility are very important factors in the success of any business.
Take the fast-food restaurant business as an example.

 Making better decisions:

Because BPM can help make sure that your managers have complete
information, they’re able to make better decisions. In addition, by helping you
automate many decision-making processes, by using BPM, you can be sure that
most decisions are made in a much more consistent and timely manner.

 Making financially sound decisions:

No company can stay afloat for very long if it’s throwing away money. BPM
helps you create processes that can be quantified in terms of financial results.
By using BPM, the decisions that are made can help maximize the financial
returns by minimizing time spent, maximizing the use of resources, and
reducing waste to an absolute minimum.

BPM helps you automate the decision-making process by using a business

rules approach. Because your business rules are defined based on financially
sound foundations, those automated decisions automatically are based on
financially sound foundations also.

Business Process Management Life Cycle:

Steps of Business Process Management

 Design

Most processes include a form to collect data and a workflow to

process it. Build your form and identify who will own each task in the
workflow.

 Model

Represent the process in a visual layout. Fix details like deadlines

and conditions to give a clear idea of the sequence of events, and the flow
of data through the process.

 Execute

Execute the process by testing it live with a small group first and
then open it up to all users. Make sure you restrict access to sensitive
information.

 Monitor

Keep an eye on the process as it runs through the workflow. Use

the right metrics to identify progress, measure efficiency, and locate
bottlenecks.

 Optimize

As you analyze, notice any changes that need to be done to your

form or workflow to make them more efficient. Consider business
process improvement steps.

Various Types of Business Process Management?

BPM systems can be categorized based on the purpose that they serve. Here are
the three types of business process management:
 1) Integration-Centric BPM:

This type of business process management system handles

processes that primarily jump between your existing systems (e.g.
HRMS, CRM, ERP) without much human involvement. Integration-
centric business process management systems have extensive connectors
and API access to be able to create processes that move fast.

2) Human-Centric BPM:

Human-centric BPM is for those processes that are primarily

executed by humans. These often have a lot of approvals and tasks
performed by individuals. These platforms excel at a friendly user
interface, easy notifications, and quick tracking.

3) Document-Centric BPM:

These business process management solutions are required when a

document (e.g. a contract or agreement) is at the heart of the process.
They enable routing, formatting, verifying, and getting the document
signed as the tasks pass along the workflow.

Most business process management systems will be able to

incorporate elements of each of these, but each one will usually have one
specialty.

The BPM advantage:

The BPM advantage BPM provides you with productivity improvements

compared to other solutions for a number of reasons:

✓ Built-in functionality: The tools you need to define process

improvements and implementation, such as modeling, workflow, simulation,
and so on, are typically built into a BPM suite.
 ✓ Cohesive development environment: Because the tools you need are
integrated into the BPM suite, those tools are designed to work together, which
simplifies implementation and change management.

✓ Graphical development tools: Leading BPM suites support graphical

development of process solutions instead of requiring complex and highly
technical coding. This speeds development and reduces the technical skills
necessary to deploy BPM.

BPM simply lets companies create a platform for process improvement

easier and faster. Often, however, you can encounter a challenge in justifying
the BPM investment as opposed to following the traditional paths, such as
buying or building a custom application. BPM offers a high ROI, rapid
development, and the tools to drive process improvement. In addition, BPM can
help your organization become more agile and able to face the challenges of the
future.

A typical BPM project scenario:

Although each BPM project is somewhat different, it’s pretty easy to create a
road map that shows a common project development path. Here’s a fairly
typical scenario:

1. Assessment phase

a. High level design

b. Project scope and plan

2. 1st Iteration

a. Application framework development

b. Initial object model defined

c. Initial rule set defined

d. Process flow created

e. Basic deployment to development environment

f. Initial governance plan created

3. 2nd Iteration

a. Live database connection established

b. Framework refined

c. New rules added

d. Add user interface

e. Process flow updated

4. 3rd Iteration

a. Integration points refined

b. Object model refined

c. Additional rules added

d. Refine user interface

e. Process flow added

f. User training

Depending on the project’s needs, there could be additional iterations before the
project is considered to be essentially complete. But because each iteration
occurs on a very short cycle, the entire development process happens very
quickly.

BPM project resources

You need to allocate a certain level of resources to your BPM project. Typically
these resources include software, people, and hardware.

Software resources:

Some vendors license components individually or require additional software to

support the BPM deployment. BPM suites that are based on industry standards
(like those from IBM) are more likely to be successfully deployed by using the
existing infrastructure components of an organization. Most BPM vendors
support the ability to buy BPM at the departmental level and grow that license
to the enterprise as requirements grow. This process allows you to grow your
BPM footprint more slowly.

People resources:

Make sure to plan for staff to handle your BPM project implementation.
Typically, these people should include

✓ A project manager

✓ A subject matter expert

✓ One or two business analysts

✓ One or two developers

This core project team aligns the Business and IT organizations to ensure
project success.

The small size of the project team demonstrates the productivity that BPM
brings for delivering process improvement. Typically, you need no more than
five or six people on the team.

The BPM project team should be dedicated to ongoing BPM projects if you
want to drive continuous process improvement. Your team doesn’t just work on
a single project and then disperse, but instead, the members use their expertise
gained from completed projects to help make future BPM projects even more
successful. Staffing your BPM team becomes an ongoing investment that grows
and pays off as you add new processes.

Hardware resources:

In reality, your ongoing hardware needs for BPM project development are
essentially comparable to other application deployment needs. A BPM vendor
provides you with minimum hardware requirements, but it’s unlikely that there
will be any surprises in them.
Understanding BPM architecture:
BPM has a particular structure or architecture that greatly assists in
process documentation. Although different implementations of BPM
vary somewhat, there are certain major components that are fairly
common. These include
✓ A workspace that includes user interfaces, process monitoring,
management dashboards, and task inboxes
✓ An execution environment where you find the business rules
engine, the process engine, and analytics engine
✓ The metadata repository that contains process asset descriptions,
process relationships, and process policies
✓ A process design toolbox that enables process modeling, business
rule definition, definition of KPI’s, process development, and design
of user interfaces
✓ A new services development environment that includes Web
service adapters, connections to existing functionality, and new
services creation tools
Business Process Management Suite
BPMS stands for "Business Process Management Software" or "Business
Process Management Suite." In either case, BPMS (or, more recently iBMPS
with the "i" referring to "intelligent") is a software tool used to improve an
organization's business processes through the definition, automation, and
analysis of business processes. We'll break down each of these concepts below.
BPM, by itself, is a discipline used by organizations to identify, document, and
improve their business processes. BPM software is used to enable aspects of
BPM:

Definition

Before any workflow automation can be created, processes need to be

documented, which requires planning and collaboration as well as tools to
illustrate how processes look. Business process models can be created within
BPMS in a variety of ways and then reviewed by stakeholders to ensure
an accurate depiction of the process is achieved. Process models can be
published in a variety of ways or exported into different formats, commonly
BPMN. Some process modelers also include simulation modes to test different
process scenarios.

Automation

The primary aspect of process automation is offloading much of the rote

work involved in employees' day-to-day functions to a system that has been
programmed with business rules and automated triggers with limited human
interaction. Building these automation involves assembling tasks or actions and
input mechanisms (e.g. forms or system inputs) to mimic the behavior of a
business process.

Analytics

BPMS tools provide various levels of reporting or integrate with reporting

tools to provide analytics about process performance. Reports are tied to KPIs
(key performance indicators) and provide data on the performance of individual
actions, processes, process members, etc. Analytics can identify process
bottlenecks and provide opportunities for continuous process improvement. In
addition, audits can be run on historical actions.

The BPMS Market

The BPMS market is vast and includes vendors that provide complete all-
in-one solutions or "Suites" as well as smaller players that provide individual
aspects for definition, automation and analytics as well as form building,
collaboration, and BPM project management. Large BPM Suites can be used for
massive, organization-wide BPM initiatives with large teams and long, complex
projects. Workflow automation software can be used to tackle smaller, specific
projects that may not require things like process simulation or organization-
wide process modeling collaboration.

BPM tools and Vendors

A BPM suite (BPMS) helps organizations in their BPM activities by

offering a suite of tools and functions for mapping, modelling, automating,
managing and optimizing.
BPMS generally supports activities ranging from business rule management to
user communication to analytics. Intelligent BPMS, or iBPMS, offers next-
generation capabilities such as adaptive analytics and advanced collaboration
tools.

There are dozens of BPM software options on the market. Vendors include

1. Appian

2. BP Logix

3. IBM

4. Kofax

5. Oracle

6. Pegasystems

7. Red Hat

8. Tibco Software.
IBM: IBM offers the broadest range of BPM solutions to meet different needs.
IBM can address all forms of process requirements across a wide range of
business needs. With over 5,000 customer engagements, IBM has extensive
skills and service expertise, providing accelerated time to value with
prescriptive and defined services for every stage of your journey.
Pegasystems: This vendor primarily focuses on delivering package, process-
based solutions that address specific business needs. Its solutions follow any
rules-based approach to BPM that address specific process needs.Users then
need to customize these solutions and the underlying business rules. The
Pegasystems solution generally seems best suited to decision-heavy processes
that are often found in the financial services industry.
Oracle: This vendor concentrates on building out a single design time and
unified engine for process, case, rules, analytics, integration, and so on.
However, there have been instances of migration projects from earlier BPM
versions that drive significant work and slow adoption for customers.
APPIAN: Appian business process management (BPM) software offers solutions that
are rapidly built through a simple drag-and-drop functionality that is convenient for its
users. Its native process repository captures and stores process models for rapid reuse.
Business rules to define your critical policies and procedures while the Forms interface
design enables the fast creation of task forms and dashboards. Complex event
processing is also available for tracking, analyzing, and responding to business events.

BP Logix: BP Logix Process Director provides many workflow advantages and BPM
advantages as it empowers IT professionals by providing a BPM software solution that
encompasses the benefits of BPM such as workflow automation, business process
automation, document management, electronic forms and business rules to make lifecycle
management and collaboration efficient and effortless.

TIBCO: TIBCO ActiveMatrix® BPM is a completely model-driven business process

platform based on TIBCO’s best-of-breed messaging and integration infrastructure.
ActiveMatrix BPM provides the complete spectrum of business process styles—from human
workflows to case management—as well as unprecedented scalability and performance to
handle all of an enterprise’s business process needs.
KOFAX: In 2015, Kofax was named the Most Innovative Solution for Banking Customer
Authentication by Grand Prix Banque & Innovation. By 2017, the brand was recognized as a
Best Channel Vendor by Business Solutions Magazine in January, a Hot Vendor in Robotic
Process Automation in September, and the Most Innovative Solution for Banking Customer
Authentication by Grand Prix Banque & Innovation in October. Kofax Kapow was added to
Constellation ShortList for Robotic Process Automation in February 2018
SUCCESS STORIES OF THE ORGANIZATIONS, THAT USED BPM:
KeyBank:
To more efficiently process accounts payable, cut costs, and respond to
changing customer needs, KeyBank decided to transform its processes with a
business process management (BPM) and enterprise content management
(ECM) platform.

Ayo Falokun, vice president of the BPM and ECM Competency Center for
KeyBank, said, “Customers coming to our bank expect the same kind of
responsiveness that they get from sites like Amazon, and the same quality of
service. We need to be able to quickly provide them with solutions that meet
their needs.”
KeyBank based the need for the solution on common banking industry
challenges:
✓ Increased competition
✓ Pressure to cut costs
✓ Changing customer needs
Working with IBM Software Services for WebSphere, KeyBank created a BPM
solution that includes IBM Business Process Manager and IBM FileNet Content
Manager software. With the Business Process Manager software, Falokun’s
team could work more closely with the business while gaining greater visibility
into and control over its processes
Using the IBM BPM platform, KeyBank saved over $300,000 in one-time
software acquisition costs and achieved ongoing annual savings of more than
$200,000 from efficiency gains, productivity improvements and reduced labor
costs through process automation.

KPMG:
“We needed a solution that had the right delivery capability,” says Natalie
Semmes. “But it is not just about getting a new process up and running; it’s
about managing that process over time and making sure it can scale to support
potentially thousands of users at any given time.” KPMG had to select a vendor
that would help it achieve strategic outcomes.
KPMG selected IBM Business Process Manager and enhanced it by developing
an optimizer application. This combined “BPM-O” solution improved speed to
market for both solutions and change.
The first client deployment that used IBM Business Process Manager and BPM-
O went live in four weeks for 56 process steps, and the solution quickly scaled
to 1,400 business users. Change cycles for small changes reduced to days, rather
than weeks or more and were driven by the business, not by an IT prioritization
queue. Business analysts can harness subject-matter expertise and create new
business processes 80 percent faster with BPM-O than they could with a more
traditional BPM programmer skillset.

The Ottawa Hospital:

Formed in 1998 through the merger of five different health institutions, The
Ottawa Hospital (TOH) is one of the largest academic teaching hospitals in
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. With four campuses throughout the city, the hospital
has approximately 1,200 beds, 12,000 employees, and 1,500 physicians.

TOH was admitting a growing number of patients with complex symptoms.

Care teams were struggling to compensate for manual processes that could be
highly variable. So the management and board of directors set an aggressive
goal — TOH ranked within the top 10 percent among academic health science
centers in patient care and quality in North America.
To achieve that goal, the hospital needed to be able to manage, measure, and
improve its performance in several key metrics. Over the years, TOH dealt with
numerous challenges. Occupancy rates, for example, grew to 110 percent and
kept climbing. At the same time, the hospital saw an increase in the complexity
of patient conditions. Patients with complex conditions require care from
multiple departments that must be able to communicate and collaborate
effectively.
However, TOH found that with this increased complexity, healthcare
professionals were spending more time searching for information and resources,
resulting in less time with their patients. As a result, patients could experience
delays in their care, impacting the overall patient experience. This increased
complexity also placed a significant burden on the care providers to make sure
they had all the information they needed before making decisions and treating
patients.

TOH sought IBM’s expertise in BPM. IBM provided a care management

platform that improved coordination of and visibility into changing patient and
hospital conditions. This allowed practitioners to collaborate and spend more
time with patients. A comprehensive care process management platform rolled
out with the goal of improving patient flow, safety, quality of patient care, and
the overall patient experience.
Some key features of the care process management platform included
✓Closed-loop communication capabilities to ensure in-process
communications were properly sent, received, and acted on
✓ The ability to view and maintain a patient’s “circle of care,” a simple, easy-
to-use visual interface that identifies the providers involved in a patient’s care
and facilitates communication and collaboration between them
✓ A multi-disciplinary activity plan that enables providers to assign tasks,
monitor activities, and gain visibility into the entire chain of activities
✓ Metrics for tracking process execution that can then be benchmarked against
historic and real-time data, so information from processes that are currently
running can be used to make immediate, more-informed decisions

The use of the IBM solution at TOH helps care personnel and hospital
administrators improve patient flow, ultimately improving patient outcomes and
delivering a more positive patient experience.