Now, the regular sessions start. I think it was not easy for you to decide which session I should attend, because there are always 5 parallel sessions at the same time. Now we will see if I can manage covering this one, because it is given by three speakers: Georg Simon, Eric Brabaender, and Jörg Klückmann; all of them from Software AG. Please bear with me if I'm not able to attribute every statement to a single person, but of course I try my very best.
Georg starts the session by motivating why we need business process management. In his view it is a tool to manage change. Companies not able to change won't survive. Often, changes can't be influenced, for example changing laws and regulations. In spite of all good marketing practiced, customers also tend to introduce change, which can't be planned. Another source of change is technology and of course the free market economy.
Even though there are many triggers for change, of course organizations often resist changing. According to Georg, this is good, because that's what an organizational structure is about. But if change is needed, resistance to change is often not intended.
Georg lists some points customers most often mention when asked why they do process-based transformation. The main ones are:
- identify strategy and key objectives
- define end-to-end processes
- identify improvement opportunities
- implement BPM governance model
The process lifecycle is a tool to illustrate and communicate how processes get implemented and change eventually is accomplished. Georg confesses that back at IDS Scheer times, the process lifecycle by ARIS had a main issue: IDS Scheer didn't provide a technology to implement a changed process. Today at Software AG, all needed technologies are in place. All phases like design, implementation, composition, execution, monitoring & controlling, and measurement are supported by Software AG product. And according to Georg, most of them are integrated.
According to Georg, customers implement process intelligence mainly because:
- make business transparent
- react on unforeseen events in real-time
- understand process patterns
- create and share dashboards with role-based KPIs
- provide management with feedback and strategy
Now, Jörg takes over to focus on process transformation. He first best practices he collected during discussions with key customers and BPM gurus:
- understand and support corporate strategy (and map it to KPIs)
- manage expectations and define measures
- establish solid process governance
- define and follow standards
Personally, I like especially the point of managing expectations. It happens just too often that before a project is started, too big expectations exist. If the project progresses, people get disappointed that less is achieved and motivation starts lacking. Instead, it is always a good idea to commit to lower targets in public and overachieve shortly after the beginning.
Eric now goes more into the technology part needed to support process-driven transformations. Nice, it is not just some slides, but he actually gives a live presentation of ARIS and related tools. Following the process lifecycle, he first shows ARIS tools needed for documenting and communicating a company strategy. For example, he shows a product model detailing key markets. After showing the models, he runs a report live in ARIS, which shows strategic objectives already achieved and goals where competitors are doing much better.
From strategic goals maps, he moves over to models documenting the KPIs defined to measure those strategic goals. From there, he can navigate to the actual business processes, where those KPIs are incorporated as control points. I think the main point here is not really that people exactly understand how all those models relate to each other, but instead to show the benefits of an integrated repository.
Eric now jumps over to ARIS Business Publisher and showcases how to find relevant information using the Rocket Search technology. I would love to include a video here, because that's really an eye catcher. While typing the search term, search results are already returned. In the backend, the search results are filtered e.g. by the role using the system.
Jörg takes over again to give an introduction to process automation. Again, he has some best practices to make process automation successful:
- fulfill the proper requirements
- be ready for ongoing process changes
- build a bridge from the abstract process to the work environment
I think especially the second point is important to stress, because in the past process automation was based on the assumption that the process won't change while it gets implemented. Now, we live in more agile times and business users don't accept that they can't change the requirements while they get implemented
Now we are back to technology demonstration and Eric takes over again. First, he quickly shows ARIS Collaboration. In the latest version of ARIS Platform, you can initiate an online collaboration session directly within ARIS. It is very similar to Skype or NetViewer and a very lightweight way to share your ARIS session with a colleague or a modeling expert from your BPM center of excellence.
But the main part of his demo is about marrying business and IT by bringing an ARIS model down to webMethods. He starts with an EPC model and transforms it automatically to BPMN 2. He hands over this model to CentraSite, the service registry provided by Software AG, so that service information gets added. CentraSite itself forwards the BPMN 2 model to webMethods Designer, where a developer would implement it. Eric shows how in webMethods Designer the developer can ask the process owner to check changes done to the process during implementation. Eric introduces a change to the process in webMethods Designer. Back in ARIS, he pulls in those changes and gets a special view where he can see which parts were changed. All three tools, ARIS Platform, CentraSite, and webMethods, access the same repository and share all meta data.
Jörg stresses the point that the main advantage of this integration is that all tools work on the same data and that changes are shared between the different tools. This ensures that business people and IT have the same view on the current implementation. As we are already running out of time, Jörg just shortly motivates the need for process intelligence before he hands over again to Eric for live demonstration.
Eric starts with a demonstration of ARIS MashZone. I think, if you are a regular reader of ARIS Community, you have already seen the cool ways how to create interactive dashboards using MashZone. Eric points out that a dashboard is usually not used for data analysis, but to visualize the current state. If a problem is found, a more detailed analysis is needed, which he does now in ARIS Process Performance Manager (PPM). Of course he shows a process model generated by ARIS PPM based on log files of existing systems. In fact, many customers start their BPM initiative by not modeling the as-is processes, but instead mining them using ARIS PPM. Besides ARIS PPM, there is also a webMethods component to analyze process instances deployed on a webMethods BPMS server. So ARIS PPM provides tools to do analysis on a large set of processes, whereas webMethods provides advanced tools to analyze the current execution state.
That was a quick walk-through of the main parts of the process lifecycle and the tools supporting it. Now at the end of the presentation, Georg summarizes what was shown and mentions that participants should also try to attend case studies presented by customers to see how BPM is implemented in real-world projects. That's exactly what I will do - after the lunch break ;-)
Note: Check this overview post to get all links to the other live posts from ProcessWorld 2011 in Berlin
