Enabling Enterprise Business Process Management

Much has been written about the need to maximize operational efficiency in order to survive in today’s highly competitive, global business environment. Business process management (BPM) is viewed by many as the key to achieving this efficiency. Yet, BPM faces challenges, including:

• Increasingly stringent regulations that dictate requirements and place constraints on process flows;
• Mergers and acquisitions that drive the integration of disparate processes;
• The need to cater to a broad range of skills and experience because BPM cuts across business functions and hierarchies;
• The fact that BPM has implications for every process in the enterprise precludes any single vendor from meeting all business process needs; and
• BPM-driven actions can seriously impact—positively or negatively—workflows, customer and supplier relations, and IT infrastructures.

Process optimization, as achieved through BPM, requires transparent operations that allow organizations to fully understand all process inputs, outputs, workflows and constraints. To understand how operations function, organizations have to model the "who," "what" and "how" of their business processes. This modeling requires broad collaboration across multiple business process stakeholders because processes have many touch points and normally involve many users, including process experts, managers, subject matter experts, business analysts and IT staff. Additionally, the modeling exercise comprises several stages, which typically include creation, review and approval. Success requires that organizations understand what their processes do, who is responsible for managing them and which systems support them.

BPM offerings fall primarily into two categories: business process management suites (BPMS) and business process analysis (BPA) solutions. Both categories include numerous products with valuable features. However, these solutions have notable limitations:

• Lost productivity due to the lack of integration between the user interfaces of the multiple products typically used within an organization;
• The difficulty in finding a single user interface that serves the varied needs of different users well;
• The inability to meaningfully integrate all of the information generated by detailed enterprise architecture analyses; and
• The lack of linkage between BPM products and the increasingly popular model-driven development solutions that are used for implementation.

Overcoming these weaknesses requires a BPM platform that provides:

• Multiple interfaces tuned to various user capabilities, including provisions for Microsoft Visio® users, a Web interface and portal and Windows support;
• Multiple implementation pathways to BPMS workflow engines as well as to ERP, CRM and other mission-critical applications;
• Strong, seamless integration to enterprise architecture and model-driven development products; and
• Broad support for modeling notations and interoperability.

Process Flows
A process model documents the process flow and enables detailed examination of the process. The model can be used for simulations that reveal fundamental performance characteristics. These simulations allow analysts to predict resource utilization, anticipate bottlenecks, analyze costs and identify redundancies. The simulation also reveals impacts on systems, data and associated applications that must be taken into account before implementing or changing a process.

Organizations may have thousands of processes, ranging from informal activities to highly regulated procedures. Thus, the first step on the road to optimization is the prioritization of key processes. Teams can then focus on those processes that will have the greatest impact on the organization.

In larger organizations, the probability is very low that a single workflow engine, typically based on business process execution language (BPEL) or a proprietary approach, will optimally serve all of an organization’s requirements. Consequently, most organizations benefit from rendering workflow or process automation via multiple paths. This makes the use of standard modeling notations, such as BPMN, IDEF and UML, essential to ensuring model transportability and interoperability. Standard model notations also permit the exchange of industry reference models that provide generic business process templates. Organizations can then quickly adopt industry best practices by tailoring a template to their particular need.

Increase Agility and Promote Reuse
BPM is a rigorous discipline that can improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency, but it doesn’t just happen. To fully leverage BPM requires considerable skills, knowledge and the right products. Without these elements, unintended, negative consequences may outweigh the benefits.

A technology platform for BPM goes beyond engines for modeling and execution. It must encompass enterprise-wide modeling and accommodate all users. Organizations typically employ drawing tools, such as Visio, to tap "community" knowledge. They then repurpose the drawings to fulfill their BPM objectives, so a BPM platform must provide a structured environment for Visio models.

To clearly understand the consequences of change, organizations need a platform that integrates process analysis with enterprise architecture and data modeling. The activities of modeling and architecting processes should link to multiple workflows and process automation, including popular BPM execution suites and ERP and CRM applications. Finally, custom and legacy applications must be mapped to business processes and driven through the usage of Model Driven Development™ and SOA to promote agility and the reuse of existing functionality.

To find out more, please visit www.telelogic.com/bestpractice.

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Telelogic is a leading global provider of software solutions for enterprise lifecycle management. Telelogic software helps customers design, develop and deliver advanced and innovative products, systems and software more efficiently by aligning and optimizing development lifecycles and business processes with business objectives and customer needs. Telelogic helps customers improve quality and predictability while reducing time-to-market and overall costs. Headquartered in Malmö, Sweden, with US headquarters in Irvine, CA, Telelogic conducts business in more than 40 countries. More than one-third of the Fortune Global 500 companies use Telelogic software, including market-leading aero/defense, automotive, financial services, software/electronic and telecommunications companies and governments worldwide. For more information, see www.telelogic.com.