ARIS BPM Blog

SAP is focusing on Business Process Management. Processes are leading to simplified business complexity and make it possible to embedd business requirements in the process design. An approved process design is the basis for the Realization phase, from model-to-execution. The supporting BPM Technology is ready for this by SAP NetWeaver BPM and SAP Enterprise Modeling by IDS Scheer (which is ARIS). To have a complete and sufficient Approach in place, a new ASAP Methodology 7 has been released with BPM and ARIS as important part of it.

Yesterday, we released ARIS Express 2.1 containing important bug fixes, but also some new features. Along with the new version comes the official ARIS Express poster. The poster shows the most important modeling constructs supported by ARIS Express. It is a quick reference you can use while modeling.

This is to inform you that we just uploaded ARIS Express 2.1 to our servers. Most of the new or improved features were already announced some weeks ago, but here a short recap:

Within my previous blog I have given an overview of the BPM maturity for each of the industry segments. Based on the input of more than 1000 maturity checks, the Healthcare segment seemed to have the lowest BPM maturity. Figure : Overview of the BPM maturity across industry segment

On Tuesday I had the chance to open the Compliance Forum 2010 in Cologne with a speech reflecting on changes in GRC after the financial crisis. It was well attended and the speakers assigned did a very broad coverage of GRC topics. I really liked the venue so I was very happy to moderate the sessions during the day.

Wie bereits vor einiger Zeit berichtet, haben meine Kollegen und ich von der Business Unit Metall der IDS Scheer Consulting eine Umfrage in der deutschen Metallindustrie durchgeführt. Das postalische Mailing richtete sich an rund 3.600 Adressaten in rund 800 Unternehmen aus der metallerzeugenden oder -verarbeitenden Industrie. Am Ende gab es rund 80 Antworten und damit eine Rücklaufquote von über 2%. Das ist doppelt so hoch wie die sonst übliche Antwortrate von 1%.

In the past months, various authors in the blogosphere guessed that BPM might be dead. We saw this kind of discussion before for SOA as we entered the trough of disillusionment. Personally, I’m not surprised by this discussion, but I just don’t get it. In my view, BPM is alive and kicking and here are some reasons for my assessment:

After a hard day of work, it feels good to relax, sitting in the evening sun, lean back, having a glass of cold beer…

During the recent ARIS Process Forum in Birmingham I carried out a delegate survey revealing that speed and efficiency are top of the agenda for CIOs and that business process excellence is key if CIOs are to meet the challenges they face. When I asked the delegates to identify the issues on their CIO's agenda they came up with 5 top priorities, each of which places great emphasis on an ability to manage business processes confidently:

Companies are faced with different challenges. On the one hand, they need suitable SAP systems to manage their daily business. On the other hand, many restrictions exist when it comes to procuring the best IT landscape. For example, time, money, and other resources are insufficient, or the management asks to align business and IT while ensuring business process transparency. Unfortunately, mergers and consolidations, required upgrades, user-driven optimization, or general requirements are an obstacle to a desirable situation.

We have started a new initiative on reports and macros in ARIS. In the next articles you can learn some interesting facts about how to develop scripts in ARIS.

My colleague Andrew Aitken has written a paper based on his extensive experience of implementing "lean" projects and explains the role of simulation within Lean. This paper has been provided to support the IDS Scheer lean six sigma programme being coordinated by Katrina Leyking. Katrtina comments "this could be interesting reading for ARIS users as it provides a wider perspective and introduction to lean from an experienced practitioner".

BPM is all about continuous process improvement. But have you ever wondered HOW you actually go in medias res and improve your process quality and efficiency? With the Six Sigma and Lean methodology you complement your BPM project with effective instruments to reduce process waste and process defects. The ARIS Six Sigma Solution provides you with integrated support for defining, measuring, analyzing, improving, and controlling your processes the Lean Six Sigma way.

Computer users love to challenge each other by starting totally useless " flamewars". Just think about how emotion comes up if people discuss Windows vs. Linux, Extreme Programming vs. classical software development, iPhone vs. Android, PHP vs. Ruby or EPC vs. BPMN. Wait, EPC vs. BPMN? Yes, I noticed several times that people have very strong feelings about both process modeling notations and tend to favor one over the other.