Model Driven BPM How BPM enables a higher level of Business agility

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1 Model Driven BPM How BPM enables a higher level of Business agility Executive Summary Model driven BPM represents the next wave in the evolution of Enterprise BPM and how organizations can deliver on the premise of application modernization in an intelligent and effective manner. The following white paper examines how Model Driven lets organizations build for change rather than invest in traditional development techniques that are expensive, time consuming and resource intensive. The paper also talks about making Line of Business (LOB) stakeholders in your organization self-sufficient and IT teams effective when it comes to supporting them and meeting business objectives that define your success in the marketplace

2 Introduction Enterprises today are faced with unique challenges in a highly competitive market place and need to demonstrate business innovation while staying agile and responsive to customer needs. Innovation efforts however are often hampered due to the business and IT divide. Business stakeholders and IT personnel are often at loggerheads when it comes to consistent problem solving that can reap benefits for the entire enterprise. There is a break in the collaborative glue that binds these two critical forces together. Business stakeholders often frustrate IT personnel with adhoc models that play havoc at the development stage, with the result that long development cycles hamper a business stakeholder s quest for operational excellence. There is a certain lag that eventually hits the bottom line if not addressed and remedied in the right way. BPM background: Business process owners, department heads and business unit heads the very people driving business processes often face implementation gaps resulting in needless downtime to reengineer critical business processes. CIOs are concerned with continuous process improvement as a high impact factor on delivery times of new products and applications. Business process management software allows enterprises to model & streamline business processes for maximum efficiency and reduced down time. Web based, visual, intuitive design environment offer a minimum code option for business users to create streamlined processes with minimum IT dependency. Organizations using BPM quickly adapt to business change enabling them to: Reengineer business processes continuously for operational excellence Leverage their existing IT infrastructure for faster ROI Understand and improve organizational performance Build BPM applications and solutions rapidly saving on development time and costs Innovate and continuously deliver new applications to stay ahead Agile Enterprise To remain agile in the today s constantly changing business world, CIO s need to make technology open up new avenues for innovation, new markets and better business models. An agile organization responds quickly to market dynamics leveraging chiefly on the flexibility of its internal systems for improved business responsiveness. CIOs realize that LOB stakeholders and IT teams need to work together effectively bridging the divide that hampers agility. Challenges Enterprises today are faced with unique challenges in a highly competitive market place and need to demonstrate business innovation while staying agile and responsive to customer needs. Business process management software allows enterprises to model & streamline business processes for maximum efficiency and reduced down time. Schneider Electric White Paper Page 2

3 Drivers Businesses are grappling more and more with staying ahead in a constantly changing environment. Being able to continuously deliver improved products and modernized applications means heavy dependency on process flexibility and shorter development cycles. So what drives Enterprise Agility? Frequency of new releases Continuous technology improvements Lower cost of development Better resource utilization Closing the gap between business and IT Organizations that take cognizance of these drivers stand to benefit in the short term as well as the long term since the time-to-market and responding to dynamic changes in the market are already factored in. Model Driven BPM Overview What is Model Driven? As per Gartner, Model driven describes an approach to separating business-level functionality from the technical nuances of its implementation. The premise behind a model-driven approach is to enable business-level functionality to be added using standards, like Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Business Process Modeling Notation. These offer a common language and visualization method to drive repeatability thereby lowering modeling time and associated costs. Model driven is also about expanding operational and collaboration boundaries to coordinate people and applications across the organization in an intelligent, effective and governed manner. It delivers a model-driven application framework that enables customers to adapt and extend application model to deliver new applications faster and at lower development costs. Enterprise Integration Centralized Administration Business Rules Management Figure 1 BPM Drivers User and Group Collaboration BPM Simulation and Optimization Model-Driven Development Advanced Workflow Engine Business Activity Monitoring Schneider Electric White Paper Page 3

4 The Business & IT divide? The complex nature of organizations today directly impact complexity of business processes as well. To ensure that businesses remain competitive, organizational leadership needs to ensure efficiency at every level of the business and the flexibility to make continuous process improvements. Line-of-business (LOB) stakeholders typically avoid leveraging resident IT teams since the costs of engagement are either high or the development time is too long. This results in workarounds that bypass IT completely. Business stakeholders end up using simplistic ad hoc modeling techniques comprising of mind maps, spreadsheets, and other modeling tools. These are ineffective since the output generated - process maps - are deficient and do little to help LOB stakeholders create a lasting impact on process excellence within the organization. A Model Driven BPM approach usually achieves the following objectives for your business: Lesser complexity for the LOB stakeholders Faster development times for the IT teams Quicker response times for business process modifications Lower costs leveraging IT teams only when needed Better collaboration between LOB and IT for process excellence Model Driven BPM allows LOB stakeholders and IT teams to work effectively in creating process models that drastically cut down on the time and the complexity required to achieve process excellence for your organization. Model Driven BPM balances out the less technically inclined LOB users to model processes efficiently and technically inclined IT teams to work effectively in developing applications that are high performance, meeting the expectations of the LOB users and the business objectives as a whole. Lesser Complexity Business users primarily optimize processes within your organization resulting in process excellence that contributes directly to your bottom line. Having them work on complex modeling applications can kill their productivity and affect process change that is being designed to help your business engage effectively with the marketplace. IT teams typically work with LOB stakeholders to ensure the efficient process models that they have envisioned can be executed in reality. Having lesser complexity at the business user s end can greatly help reduce the primary barrier to process modeling and execution. Faster Development IT teams working with LOB stakeholders can turn around BPM projects faster ensuring your business objectives are met and your company stays agile in the market. A Model Driven BPM project helps your IT teams quickly grasp the business objectives helping them create processes that can be used later on by the LOB stakeholders. Model Driven BPM works on the principle of BPMN specifications that help IT teams quickly retain and reuse the business processes that are event driven and complex in nature. Schneider Electric White Paper Page 4

5 Quicker response times LOB stakeholders that are concerned with process excellence throughout your organization can quickly respond to changes in the business environment. Model Driven BPM greatly reduces their dependence on IT support since it delivers a model-driven application framework that enables LOB stakeholders to adapt and extend application models to meet specific business needs and objectives. Lower IT Costs Limiting LOB stakeholder engagement with IT teams for technical support related to business process modeling can greatly lower your costs and free up time needed for other IT related activities within your organization. Self-sufficient LOB stakeholders can easily use Model Driven BPM for their process modeling needs providing them with intuitive tools for continuous improvement and collaboration. Better collaboration Model Driven BPM helps LOB stakeholders design business processes that can also be easily understood and worked on by IT teams within your organization. Models can be easily created, shared and collaborated upon by seasoned as well as new users that are part of your organization both on the business side as well as the IT side. Model Driven BPM greatly enhances participation and discussion amongst business teams that formulate business process and IT teams that are instrumental in executing the processes that make your organization agile. Application Modernization Application development in the context of business process serve one major goal - creating applications/products - that can be used by the business stakeholders in meeting their objectives. Business stakeholders have one major objective - improving process excellence - that helps your organization stay nimble and react better to market forces. Modernization nets key benefits for organizations such as better collaboration between business and IT teams, continuous innovation and improved agility. Application modernization is an approach used by Model Driven BPM that enables IT teams supporting LOB stakeholders to leverage on existing models. These models greatly help the IT teams create high performance applications that are linked directly to process excellence designed by the LOB stakeholders. Your organization and its ability to compete in the market depends on how well your LOB stakeholders and IT teams can work together to deliver what matters to you most a healthier and robust bottom line. Application modernization helps IT teams deliver applications to LOB stakeholders in an optimized fashion cascading their IT expertise to business process through Model Driven BPM. Schneider Electric White Paper Page 5

6 Conclusion Business Process Management has evolved in the last decade from being a TQM tool to a complete suite that delivers modern, intelligent process management solutions including mobility, social collaboration, big data analytics, cloud solutions and more. While the current plethora of BPM solutions are feature laden to address ever changing collaboration tools and delivery systems, a critical differentiator is how they further enable businesses to stay ahead and break new ground. How does BPM continue to deliver on the premise of intelligent process management driving operational excellence and innovation? The answer likely lies in the next and evolving wave of BPM - a model driven framework to integrate disparate systems and drastically cut down the time to create, improve and optimize on functional business process models that benefit the enterprise adapt to dynamic market conditions. Invensys Systems, Inc Rancho Pkwy South, Lake Forest, CA Telephone: +1-(949) Fax: +1-(949) software.invensys.com 2014 Invensys Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Avantis, SimSci and Wonderware are trademarks of Invensys Limited, its subsidiaries or affiliates. All other brands and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. PN WW-4214 Rev. 09/14 Schneider Electric White Paper Page 6