I survived the evening event at Kosmos, a former movie theater which is now a great party location in the eastern part of Berlin. After just a few hours of sleep, I was sitting in the presentation held by Ian Charlesworth from Ovum Research. He offers us an analyst perspective on the merger of BI and BPM.
I really enjoyed this presentation. An interesting point of his argumentation was the natural match of BPM and BI. BPM needs BI for process control, but also for process improvement. Without an idea of the performance of the executed processes BPM is not able to improve them. BI needs BPM to make it “active”. If BI is not integrated in the processes, the technology is useless. At the same time, the triggers and events for BI are naturally found within business processes.
BI provides the knowledge to change. BPM carries out the changes.
A useful category for grouping BI and BPM is the management of the certain and the management of the uncertain. BI analyzes what has happened. Current trends are being discovered. The uncertainty can be managed by BPM approaches. Process modeling and simulation help in foreseeing possible future developments. Plans can be developed and tested and then implemented. On top, a dashboard combines the information of the certain and the uncertain.
Mr. Charlesworth ended his presentation with an appealing example. He compared cars and how they have developed over the last 40 years. With old car models, you just recognized that an error occurred when the smoke poured out of the hood. In car models launched 10 years ago, you had at least a few warning lights, such as the temperature gauge, low pressure gauges and the like. At least you got the information that there is something wrong before the cars stopped working. Comparing this to BPM, this is where most of the companies are today. They see that something is going wrong in a process but they don’t know how to fix the process. The newest generation of cars have comprehensive, intelligent monitoring systems. They provide information about service intervals and possible threats to the driver like collision detection. That’s where the businesses processes should be, too. The system warns of possible threats before problems occur. At the same time, you get information how to avoid the breakdown. And this what we call the progress from reaction to prediction through the combination BI and BPM.
