CROSS INDUSTRY PegaRULES Process Commander Bringing Insight and Streamlining Change with the PegaRULES Process Simulator
Executive Summary All enterprises aim to increase revenues and drive down costs. Using business process analysis (BPA) technology, organizations can achieve these objectives by identifying opportunities for alleviating bottlenecks, reducing error cycles, and identifying revenue leakage points. With BPA technology, agile enterprises can quickly analyze process-scenario models to help plan alternative business processing procedures, and business managers can time-box their efforts and quickly simulate alternatives. PegaRULES Process Commander is the only business process management suite that not only enables enterprises to quickly build rule-driven process applications that automate work, but also provides business process analysis tools to continually monitor, optimize, and evolve their business process application to meet market demands. Process Commander provides rich analytic capabilities through its robust simulation solution called PegaRULES Process Simulator. This white paper will explore how enterprises can leverage PegaRULES Process Commander to gain quick ROI wins through a rapid application development environment, and leverage its simulation engine to fine tune applications to meet specific business demands.
Achieving Quick Wins with PegaRULES Process Commander PegaRULES Process Commander is the latest generation of Pegasystems industry leading, rules-based business process management (BPM) solution and provides a complete suite of BPM lifecycle tools to build, execute, simulate, and analyze business processes. Delivering a unique blend of process and practice rules, Process Commander provides a BPM lifecycle architecture that includes a patented enterprise business rules engine, process engine, simulation engine, and robust business activity monitoring (BAM) and online analytical processing (OLAP) reporting tools within one common solution. With PegaRULES Process Commander, enterprises can strategically optimize their business operations by: Utilizing drag-and-drop process definition rules to model process flows that incorporate rich business rules, driving work to done. Enabling smart business processes that not only route work but also automate the completion of work through Pegasystems patented, inference-based rules engine. Simulating its rules-driven applications to optimize operations and continually enable process improvements that meet evolving market demands. Strengthened by 20 years of working with Fortune 1000 enterprises to deliver leading-edge BPM and rules automation solutions, Pegasystems provides the experience for understanding and optimizing performance in complex, highvolume, mission-critical environments. Monitoring real-time processes and assignment performance with out-ofthe box BAM and OLAP reporting. PegaRULES Process Commander s BPM development environment enables enterprises to quickly build, pilot, analyze, and improve upon their BPM applications. Its unique development tools provide an iterative approach to building BPM applications (Figure 1) enabling enterprises to gain immediate business benefits versus having to wait and build an end-to-end solution that could take months to complete. Figure 1: PegaRULES Process Commander Provides an Iterative Approach to Application Development 1
Gain quick wins Process Commander helps achieve quick wins through a number of wizards and accelerators. For example, Pegasystems application accelerator guides system architects through the application definition process. For simple applications, a significant part of a structural development effort is done once the steps are completed in the application accelerator. For complex applications, the application accelerator builds a functional application to get a business unit up and running, and provides a solid framework upon which to expand and build. Execute and profit Process Commander is the only BPM solution that provides a process engine and rules engine within one common object model. Once the accelerator completes the application definition, Process Commander immediately executes against this blueprint and begins processing and orchestrating work, providing immediate results. Monitor and analyze To gauge and monitor the work performance of an application, Process Commander provides dozens of BAM reports, OLAP cubes, and electronic agents that monitor service level agreements to assure work is being completed efficiently and as expected. Model and design To easily model and incorporate changes to rules and processes, Process Commander leverages Microsoft Visio as the front end to its execution engine. Using Microsoft Visio, business analysts not only easily create a process diagram to manage work, but also incorporate execution changes on how work is processed in real-time. Pilot and simulate Before an application or changes to an application are put into production, they can be simulated with PegaRULES Process Simulator. Process Commander makes it simple to simulate applications because all of the lifecycle management tools exist within a unified development environment. Once business analysts are happy with the simulation results, they can easily pilot the application with a subset of users through Process Commander s robust version management. Figure 2: Speeding Development with the Application Accelerator. 2
Building and Modeling Process Applications Out of the box, PegaRULES Process Commander provides an array of prebuilt application components to further streamline the development process. These components can be reused, customized, and deployed at any time during your application s lifecycle, and can also be leveraged through the application accelerator when building an initial application. These components consist of best-practice business rules, user interfaces, properties, and process flows that orchestrate work to completion. As mentioned previously, PegaRULES Process Commander takes advantage of Microsoft Visio for modeling and building process designs (workflows) and the business rules that interact with the process. These process designs specify how work is initiated and how it proceeds through a business process to completion. Process Commander includes a custom stencil with specialized design shapes, each of which represents a part of a business process, business rule, human-based task, process flow, or connection to an external system. Each shape automatically prompts for the appropriate rules to execute as well as the associated parameters. When business users drag a shape onto the Visio worksheet, they are creating a functioning process not just a model of one. After they save the worksheet, Process Commander identifies and links the referenced rules to create dynamic, functioning workflows to manage and automate work. PegaRULES Process Commander s built-in versioning facilitates real-time production changes and streamlines application deployment to pilot applications. Once the process flow is put into production, the PegaRULES Process Simulator detects capacity constraints, highlights operational metrics, and identifies process bottlenecks to fine tune the application and optimize work performance. PegaRULES Process Simulator enables business analysts to build what-if process scenarios, and simulate and compare scenarios against other historical data or computer-generated alternatives. In this manner, business analysts can test their ideas to assure that the right process and application changes are implemented so time, money, and effort is not wasted. Figure 3: With Process Commander users not only model how work gets resolved, but also automate their business processes. 3
PegaRULES Process Simulator performs the following strategic functions: Simulates what-if process and business rule changes based on historical and statistical work data Simulates multiple top-level and sub-level process flows concurrently Visually detects bottlenecks, throughput, and capacity constraints with a graphical animator Graphically monitors flow routes as work progresses through a process flow Provides a full range of comparative analytics by seamlessly integrating with PegaRULES Process Analyzer, Pegasystems out-of-the-box OLAP reporting facility PegaRULES Process Commander leverages the ease of Microsoft Visio and provides fitfor-purpose rule forms to incorporate change empowering business managers to evolve their applications independent of IT resources. 4
Simulation Wizard and Rule Forms PegaRULES Process Commander makes simulating work a seamless process. PegaRULES Process Simulator provides a simulation scenario builder (wizard) to facilitate the preparation of the process models to be simulated. The Simulation Scenario Builder was designed so business managers and process owners can quickly analyze existing and predictive process models without requiring the help of a system architect. Process Commander s thin-client dashboard invokes the simulation scenario builder for easy access and user distribution. Through the wizard, users can build simulation scenarios from scratch or retrieve past simulation models for further analysis. When building a simulation model from scratch, users simply select the Process Commander application they want to analyze and simulate. The system dynamically retrieves and presents all the available process flows (top-level flows and sub flows) that correlate to the chosen application. When establishing a scenario, business users select which process flows they want to simulate concurrently. The wizard also prompts users to title the scenario so it can be retrieved from the database for later use. Rules-driven simulation makes it easy to manage, edit, and customize simulation data. The following key rule forms define the makeup of a simulation scenario: Flow Package Defines the collection of related process flows and related business rules to be simulated concurrently Arrival Patterns Defines various patterns and intervals of incoming work based on historical, statistical based arrival patterns as well as custom parameters based on start times of individual tasks, batch tasks, reoccurrence of work, quantity, and types of incoming jobs Figure 4: PegaRULES Process Simulator Scenario Builder. 5
Resource Definition Defines work schedules, skills, roles, performance levels, quantity of staff, costs, and more Simulation Options Sets simulation controls including date range, animation speed, queuing priorities, and analysis output Once the system dynamically builds and generates the simulation rules, the user can run the simulation immediately using the best-practice default setting the rules have created. Or the user can edit the rule data to better mimic actual day-to-day operational metrics. All of the contents and data, such as flows, resource definitions, arrival patterns, etc., can be highly customized to conduct quick what-if analysis testing without having to build multiple scenarios. For example, Figure 6 depicts the simulation console that was generated based on the rules shown in Figure 5. Tabs at the top of the console enable access to the data that defines the simulation run. Through this console, a user could change the actual configuration of a process model and its related business rules, or change key defining metrics such as work arrival patterns and its statistical distribution (uniform, Bernoulli, Poisson, random, etc.) PegaRULES Process Simulator is a discrete event simulator designed to test ideas before incorporating rule and process changes optimizing the evolution of systems to meet changing demands. Figure 5: Simulator Rule Forms Streamline the Creation and Edits of Simulation Scenarios. 6
Once a simulation scenario has been built, it can be saved to the PegaRULES database for future use and comparison to other simulation runs. When users need to retrieve an existing simulation scenario, all they need to do is type the scenario name in the simulation scenario builder. Based on the scenario name, the system will automatically retrieve the correlating simulation rule forms from the rules database to run the simulation. Rules-driven simulation makes it easy to manage, edit, and customize simulation data. Figure 6: Simulation Console Empowers Business Analysts to Conduct Rich What-If Analysis Modeling. 7
Simulating Business Processes and Rules Once all the scenario parameters (simulation data) have been set, the system connects to the simulation engine, which runs and animates the simulation scenario. PegaRULES Process Simulator provides enterprises with a clearer view of their complete applications because it is the only simulation engine that concurrently simulates multiple top-end and sub-process flows in conjunction with its respective business rules. Therefore, when a simulation run is conducted, it simulates the processing of work as well as the business rules that govern how work gets completed. When a simulation run involves multiple process flows, it graphs and depicts each of the flows within the simulation console so that the simulation animation can be aggregately viewed and analyzed. Figure 7: PegaRULES Process Simulator is the Only Simulation Engine That Simulates Process Flows and Business Rules Simultaneously. 8
The animation depicts four different simulation techniques: 1. The most trafficked flow routes as work progresses through a process model. 2. Numerical counts associated with individual tasks. (Some counts change color when set thresholds are met or exceeded.) 3. Recording of global statistics such as execution metrics, cost metrics, throughput, number of work steps, etc. 4. Simulation of total time to process work for each process model depicted in the simulation run. As shown in Figure 8, the PegaRULES Process Simulator dynamically interprets the Visio Smart shapes that are used to build a business process model. For each node, the number on the left side indicates work items in queue. The number in the middle depicts the tasks that have been resolved, and the number on the right indicates assignments that are past deadline. Both the left and right numbers change colors (black to red) to indicate if a queue is over capacity and if assignments are late. This depiction of work-in-process and work completed gives business managers a quick snapshot of possible process bottlenecks, capacity constraints, revenue leakage points, resource constraints, etc. PegaRULES Process Commander is the only BPM provider that can simulate business processes and the business rules that drive work to done. Figure 8: The PegaRULES Process Simulator Dynamically Interprets Visio Smart Shapes. 9
Simulating Business Processes and Rules After the simulation run is complete, business managers can dynamically analyze and inspect the simulation results using PegaRULES OLAP facility called PegaRULES Process Analyzer. The OLAP reports are conveniently accessible directly from the simulation console. As shown in Figure 9, there is an analyze option within the console s top toolbar that enables business managers to seamlessly retrieve the Process Analyzer s OLAP cubes without having to leave the simulation console or open a separate application. The OLAP cubes from the Process Analyzer can be used to examine historical work data with the data generated from a simulation run. This capability empowers business managers to slice, dice, and compare the what-if analysis data with real work data side by side so that smart changes can be made. Rich OLAP graphical and textual reporting tools enable users to make smart decisions when changing business processes, assignments, and business rules to meet changing market conditions. Figure 9: PegaRULES Process Simulator Seamlessly Integrates with PegaRULES Process Analyzer. 10
PegaRULES Process Analyzer s OLAP reporting enables managers to analyze aggregate information for process improvement in these four areas: organization workload, queue load, cycle time, and performance. Each of these cubes includes four predefined Microsoft Excel templates to provide sixteen analytic reports to conduct data mining. Based on how the data is sliced and diced, the information is calculated and instantly displayed within the Process Commander portal so the results can be easily shared and retrieved. With this OLAP reporting capability, business managers have easy access to essential information for process and quality improvement. The thin-client manager s portal provides access to Web-based OLAP reports so business managers can analyze critical information at any time and from anywhere. Figure 10: PegaRULES Process Analyzer OLAP Reports Being Retrieved from the Manager s Portal. 11
Optimizing Operations for Success Since its inception, PegaRULES Process Commander has enabled business managers to easily modify and evolve their process applications as their businesses evolve. If simulation results prove that change is warranted, users can incorporate the necessary changes to their PegaRULES Process Commander applications in minutes as opposed to days. How is this possible? Unlike other development environments that require code and database changes, as well as recompilations to implement change, Process Commander was built so that changes to Visio flow diagrams automatically drive changes to the underlying rules and processes that operate your business process management system. The ease of building, simulating, changing, and updating process applications is the core strength of PegaRULES Process Commander supporting progression through the application lifecycle, providing the flexibility and productivity that business requires, and assuring that businesses can quickly optimize their operations to compete effectively. 14
About Pegasystems Pegasystems (NASDAQ: PEGA), the leader in Business Process Management, provides software to drive revenue growth, productivity and agility for the world s most sophisticated organizations. Customers use our award-winning SmartBPM suite to improve customer service, reach new markets and boost operational effectiveness. Our patented SmartBPM technology makes enterprise applications easy to build and change by directly capturing business objectives and eliminating manual programming. SmartBPM unifies business rules and processes into composite applications that leverage existing systems empowering businesspeople and IT staff to Build for Change, deliver value quickly and outperform their competitors. Pegasystems suite is complemented by best-practice frameworks designed for leaders in financial services, insurance, healthcare, government, life sciences, communications, manufacturing and other industries. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, Pegasystems has offices in North America, Europe and Asia. Visit us at www.pega.com. Copyright 2010 Pegasystems Inc. All rights reserved. PegaRules, Process Commander, SmartBPM and the Pegasystems logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Pegasystems Inc. All other product names, logos and symbols may be registered trademarks of their respective owners.