BPM for All

One platform to run the whole company is everlasting dream and obsession of IT world. Many companies consider it a blessing to decrease a number of deployed IT solutions. Few, however, think that it is exactly this diversity and complexity that ensures stability and flexibility of corporate IT systems. Blind reliance on a single, even perfect in every way, solution is among most deadly illusions capable of destroying a successful business. Objective versatility of IT landscape, which appears with time in every company, is a natural safety belt against dependency from a single vendor and powerful long term reservation strategy. Growing complexity of corporate IT system is an objective reality expressing increasing complexity of the business in digital age. Any attempts of artificial simplification of this complexity lead to degradation of the whole business infrastructure. The epoch when one hero warrior (or worker, or system) was able doing every mission have gone forever. We live in t...

Dilemma between automation and manual execution is always a challenge for correct management decisions. It is not easy to decide, if an investment to automate a process will bring sufficient benefits and returns, especially, on a long term. However, decision here should not be voluntary. There exist simple and reliable criteria to clearly distinguish relevance of process automation in every practical case. The criteria is process volatility . Volatile processes are difficult and impractical to automate. Volatility of the process is easy to measure. Record multiple execution paths of the process. Build an average execution path. Measure deviations of each execution from the average. Measure volatility as median of these deviations. This will give uniform and universal criteria for processes of any nature and scale. As a rule, volatile processes appear in new and actively developing business areas. With time, these processes become a routine and acquire better formalization. When formali...

Process is a certain sequence of actions aimed to achieve certain business goal. As such this schema has no immediate value. Value appears when a process runs within an intended business environment. Process cannot operate in vacuum. To start and achieve its goals process requires a set of initial conditions, prerequisites and actors, which further interact in various ways to produce certain results of the process. These can be commonly referenced as business objects and tenants of the process. In a wide sense, most business objects can be considered as a sort of content. Even in case when an object is not purely IT based but has specific physical representation, such as a building, vehicle or equipment, it still has a mirror projection in an IT system to denote it as a process content. In this sense, practical execution of the process always involves relevant content management. Vice versa, any manipulation of content always goes on a certain process, either implied or explicitly enfo...

Continuous process improvement is regularly mentioned among top priorities crucial for success in modern business. Exactly this demand for consistent and directed evolution explains increasing focus of organizations on BPM technologies. Continuous improvement is impossible without detailed analysis and elaborate business model in place. Only valid model, which covers all aspects of business, can serve as a ground for informative vision of existing situation and reveals potential for further improvements. BPM creates a structure, which unites disperse corporate reporting into aligned knowledge enabling for qualified business decisions. Continuous progress is only achievable on a ground of accumulated knowledge and previous experience. BPM provides methodology and technology to accumulate this experience and further use for advantage of the business.

Question of reusing standard process libraries always arises in an organization starting its digital transformation. At first glance, ready process sets might look very attractive to borrow and avoid complex procedures of mapping your own processes. On another hand, blind implementation of standard process templates will effectively destroy all corporate culture and experience previously accumulated in an organization. Boundaries of applicability for standard processes are easy to distinguish by scale . Elementary business operations in most cases already exist as established and proven best practices, which are senseless to re-discover. Sometimes, changing these ground bricks is even prohibited by government standards and compliance requirements. However, these standard bricks are absolutely insufficient to comprise a building of successful company. To fuel continuous business growth company must combine standard business patterns common for the whole industry into unique combination...