Business Process Automation Managing Cost in Your Automation Enterprise David Chernicoff Susan Perschke sponsored by
i Contents Business Process Automation Managing Cost in Your Enterprise Chapter 4: BPA Tools... 1 Executive Overview... 1 Key Features of BPA Tools... 1 Guidelines for Selecting a BPA Platform... 1 Usage Scenario 1 Desktop BPA Application... 2 Usage Scenario 2 Designing Workflows with a BPA Server Application... 5 Case Studies... 8 Power Company Uses BPA to Resolve Data Backup Challenge... 8 Medical Technology Manufacturer Speeds Financial Reporting with BPA... 9 Summary... 9
1 Chapter 4: BPA Tools Executive Overview In chapter 4 we discuss the specific capabilities of business process automation (BPA) tools in more detail and provide you with guidance for selecting the best BPA software. We provide some usage scenarios; and finally, we review case studies that show how two companies have implemented BPA to solve real-life business challenges. Key Features of BPA Tools In prior chapters we ve discussed how BPA can benefit organizations by streamlining and improving workflow processes. BPA as a concept has been around for some time, but most traditional methods for implementing BPA use disparate tools and require extensive knowledge of programming. Newer-generation BPA software products now let you streamline, optimize, and automate key processes within a unified development environment. With today s top-shelf BPA tools, your organization can create or improve workflow processes at multiple levels, from high-level business workflows to simple infrastructure tasks, without anyone having to learn new automation languages or spend valuable time writing code. These processes can range from application integration, to data transformation, to workflows that span geographically dispersed networks. Guidelines for Selecting a BPA Platform BPA tools are available in desktop and server versions. The differences between the two vary among vendors, but the best desktop tools offer a comprehensive list of built-in actions that will let users quickly automate processes without having to write any code. Desktop BPA tools should include the capability to interact with the Windows system, perform both simple and complex file operations, and allow for conditional logic. BPA server products typically offer additional features, such as client/server architecture, workflows, multi-machine execution capabilities, and reporting. BPA server tools should allow the development of orchestrated solutions that span across logical and physical lines of business and IT architecture. Look for a BPA server tool with the following features: Cost justification You don t want to spend a fortune on an automation software package, and you need it to pay for itself in weeks, not months or years. No code required Your automation software should not require your staff to learn a new programming language; instead, you should be able to realize the benefits of automation immediately through easy-to-understand drag-and-drop tools. Visual interface Leading software packages include a visual interface that lets you harmonize work processes with IT infrastructure. Feature rich tools Make sure the package you choose has a wide range of tools for automating common tasks.
2 Business Process Automation Support for standards Any automation platform you invest in needs to integrate with your existing environment and offer support for common standards such as FTP, HTTP, XML POP3, SMTP, and SNMP. Orchestration Most organizations have multiple machines, and you need an automation tool that can intelligently coordinate automated execution across these servers. Multiuser support If you have a team responsible for designing, building, testing, and maintaining automation in your organization, the tool you choose must let you delegate work and keep track of each team member s progress. Centralization You need an automation package that lets you centralize automation and simultaneously execute it in a decentralized way. Relevant reporting and information A good automation suite should provide you with meaningful and actionable information regarding important automation events. Installed base You should evaluate tools that have a sizeable installed base in a variety of environments. Third-party endorsements You may want to look for endorsements and reviews by knowledgeable, independent third parties, such as analysts and trade publications. Both server and desktop BPA tools should be flexible enough that you can adapt them to your business requirements and deploy robust automation applications without the need for a large staff of developers. They should also include the capability to reuse objects such as tasks and conditions, to support easy editing and incorporation of those objects into new workflows. In the next section we look at a couple of usage scenarios that demonstrate some of the capabilities of good BPA tools, both at the desktop and server levels. Usage Scenario 1 Desktop BPA Application This example uses a BPA desktop application to automate a workflow process that combines data from two spreadsheets, uploads the results to an FTP server, and sends a confirmation e-mail. The exact sequence of steps used in the process follows: 1. Create a temporary folder on the local drive. 2. Locate two Microsoft Excel spreadsheets on separate network drives. 3. Copy these two files to the newly created folder. 4. Create a new blank spreadsheet. 5. Combine data from the two original spreadsheets into the new spreadsheet. 6. Upload the combined spreadsheet to an offsite FTP server. 7. Create and send an email message with the result to multiple recipients. The application we re using to automate the process has a number of built-in actions, and we start by selecting Create a Folder from the File menu on the left, as you see in Figure 1:
Chapter 4 BPA Tools 3 Figure 1: Create Temporary Folder on the Local Drive This action opens a wizard that will guide us through the next several steps to build our first automated process. First, we type in the folder name and specify any error handling we would like for this step. We can select from a number of error messages; for this example, we will have the various tasks notify us of any problem that may occur. We then specify what to do when an error does occur; in this case, we are going to generate an email notification to the IT administrator. Next, we select the file to look for and what action to take if it doesn t exist (in this case, we ask that an email be sent to us). Then, we select Copy File form the File menu, and we specify to copy the file only if the source file is newer than the destination file. To complete the copy operation, we repeat the steps above to locate our second spreadsheet file and then copy this file to the same directory where we copied the first spreadsheet. The next order of business is to create a new blank spreadsheet in the temporary directory using a template from the BPA software, as Figure 2 shows:
4 Business Process Automation Figure 2: Create Spreadsheet from Template Now that the new spreadsheet has been created, we add a couple of easy steps to input the data from the existing two spreadsheets into the new spreadsheet. We now have a new spreadsheet with merged information, ready to be uploaded via FTP to the remote server. We use the wizard to create the FTP action, which adds line items for logging on to the server, uploading the file, and logging off. Once the FTP transfer is completed, we send an email to ourselves and to the recipients who need to access the spreadsheet on the remote server. This series of steps completes the wizard portion of the BPA process. The next step is to choose a trigger that will automatically run the new process. As you can see from the screen in Figure 3, we have a number of options, and two in particular might be useful for our example. The first one (Schedule watcher) is simply to create a schedule that copies the file on a set schedule, such as every hour, week, or day. The other option (File watcher) is to wait for the files to appear and let this action trigger the new process.
Chapter 4 BPA Tools 5 Figure 3: Choose a Trigger Creating this BPA process took less than 30 minutes and replaces a daily process that takes at least 30 minutes to do manually. The entire process now runs in about 30 seconds and can be scheduled at a convenient specified time or when the files are available. Usage Scenario 2 Designing Workflows with a BPA Server Application As we discussed in the introduction to this chapter, when you select BPA software, it is important to find a tool that allows for a high-level representation of your IT or business processes. One of the higher-level processes involves designing workflows. The best way to do this is through a user-friendly GUI interface that encourages collaboration between business units and IT managers. By creating a visual representation through graphical workflows, your organization can gain better insight into these processes. Workflows should be more than graphical diagrams; they also should contain the actual information, such as logic, error handling, and notification that you need to automate complex IT and business processes. As we discussed earlier, a good BPA tool should include a large number of prebuilt actions that will allow for the construction of tasks without anyone having to write code. The flow-control objects should allow for the inclusion of complex logic within the workflow, and for conditional branching. It should also have the inherent capability to span multiple machines within the organization.
6 Business Process Automation The screenshot in Figure 4 shows a workflow designed to run a variety of tasks across multiple machines, represented through a graphical workflow design surface. Figure 4: Workflow Design Process The main components of workflow are conditions, tasks, and flow-control objects. Conditions are network or system events that can initiate workflow execution, or provide the basis for conditional, event-based decision making. Tasks are instructions for executing a series of processing steps. The workflow represented in Figure 4 uses a scheduler to launch a series of tasks. The workflow process begins by initializing a database, fetching job instructions, and proceeding to execute a number of tasks at different locations. Conditions specify actions to be taken upon success or failure of each step. Your BPA tool should let you drill down into each element of the workflow to examine the process behind it. For example, by double-clicking the Initialize database task (Figure 4), you should be able to open a task builder that represents this individual task, as you see in Figure 5.
Chapter 4 BPA Tools 7 Figure 5: Task Detail This level of detail shows the task as a Systemlevel task under Available Actions. You can view additional details about the task by drilling down to the next level the actual process behind the task -- as Figure 6 shows. Through this dialog box, you can view and configure the task at the detail level. Note that none of the levels Figure 6: Task Configuration Dialog associated with the task, from design to configuration, requires programming knowledge on the part of the workflow designer. This simplicity facilitates workflow collaboration without anyone having to get sidetracked on tedious programming tasks. Now let s take a look at two case studies that show how BPA solutions have streamlined and automated workflow processes in real-life business environments.
8 Business Process Automation Case Studies Power Company Uses BPA to Resolve Data Backup Challenge A multinational power-generation and wholesale marketing company 1 manages the production and delivery of energy resources over a wide geographical area. One plant alone monitors more than 1,500 measurements in real-time, 24/7. These measurements are recorded via TCP/IP on a dozen computers, where the information is processed and logged. The IT staff s real work begins whenever a gauge malfunctions or a reading surges past the safety threshold. The goal of the workflow process is to detect and resolve the problem before a small incident escalates into a massive power outage. When a problem occurs, the IT staff first looks at the server event logs in an attempt to pinpoint the source. In the past, doing this was easier said than done because all logs were written to tape backups, and it could take hours to retrieve the data a less-than-ideal setup during an emergency. To address this problem, the company attempted to build a homegrown application that would retrieve the data, but the application kept crashing because it could not handle the sheer volume of data. When the application crashed, the data was frequently lost; even worse, the IT staff often didn t know the data had been lost until they needed it during an emergency. The head engineer, who is not tech-savvy, was tasked with finding a solution. He decided on a BPA solution that would give him a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface to automate routines. After just a few days, he had created an automated routine that sorts, compresses, archives, and deletes large event log files daily. Now the data from each computer is readily available in case of an emergency. In addition, he has been able to automate a backup task that previously required an experienced operator to interact with the GUI, thus saving time and giving the company the peace of mind that the data is safe and secure. The bottom line for this company is that it has reduced data loss by 100 percent: it has lost no data since it implemented the BPA solution. The diagram in Figure 7 shows a simplified view of a similar backup operation. Figure 7: Simplified View of Backup Operation 1 TransAlta Corporation, Ontario, Canada
Chapter 4 BPA Tools 9 Medical Technology Manufacturer Speeds Financial Reporting with BPA To collect, compile, and analyze daily financial data and produce its daily reports, a large medical technology company 2 needed 18 hours of manual effort every night. This process often required both IT staff and a financial analyst to stay past 11 pm to collect and consolidate spreadsheet data from five different offices in Latin America. Each office maintains its own ERP system, and because of version incompatibilities, no direct link is possible. The company considered both a new data-collection program and an in-house automation solution, but it found both options too time-consuming and expensive. The IT director decided it was time to find a different solution, and she had decided early on that automation was the way to go. She initially considered assigning the task to in-house developers or outside contractors but had rejected this solution as also too time-consuming. And she did not want her IT staff spending valuable time maintaining custom scripts. The team eventually decided on a BPA tool they could use to automate the cumbersome data-collection and reporting process. With the best-of-breed BPA tool they implemented, IT rolled out the new automated process in just two weeks. They created the automation sequences in just a few hours and spent the rest of the time testing the solution. Now, at each country s local time of 7 pm, a task is automatically launched to collect the needed data from each division s ERP system. When this task has completed, a connection is opened to the FTP server, and all the data is transferred via FTP to a server stateside, where the data is combined and posted to the proper directory locations on the publishing server. Each division has the capability to monitor its individual processes; in the event of a problem, alerts can be sent via SMS, email, and SNMP. With this BPA solution, the company freed up the staff s after-hours duties and in the process achieved compliance with corporate reporting requirements. There was no custom code to write because all tasks were preprogrammed and simply dragged and dropped into place, which saved the company tens of thousands of dollars in custom development costs. Summary In this ebook we ve shown how BPA solutions can leverage your existing IT assets and applications to accelerate the flow of information, reduce operational errors, and eliminate delays. In chapter 1 we introduced the subject of business process automation (BPA) and explored the differences between BPA and business process management (BPM). We discussed the three different activity classes that define a BPA solution: integration, orchestration and automation, and BPA s impact on business workflow. In chapter 2 we talked about the benefits of BPA to IT and how BPA can reduce the impact of human error. We showed how BPA assists organizations in improving collaboration and information sharing while optimizing both IT and business-level workflow processes. By helping improve IT response times and delivering on Service Level Agreements (SLAs), BPA can give IT a competitive edge. Chapter 3 focused on how to set up and implement a BPA solution, and the importance of planning, design, and deployment. Finally, in this chapter we have discussed what BPA tools can do and have offered guidelines for selecting the best tool. In addition, we have presented real-life case studies from organizations that have already successfully implemented BPA. 2 Stryker Corporation, Michigan
10 Business Process Automation Throughout this ebook, our goal has been to demonstrate how, with good BPA tools, you can streamline, optimize, and automate key processes that drive value for your organization and your customers. BPA as a platform or engine can reduce costs and free up workers to focus on higher-level tasks. With automated business and IT processes, you can more easily maintain quality control and uptime and make better use of FTEs. All this translates to better value for the organization. In addition, any other application that becomes part of a BPA process also becomes more efficient, proving even further ROI. The right BPA tool can make a significant difference in the success of a BPA deployment. BPA tools with inherent multi-machine capabilities support better cross-departmental collaboration, making the entire organization more efficient. By selecting a BPA tool that lets you design workflow processes in a logical, user-friendly graphical environment, IT can show instead of just explain its value to business units and users. Small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs) that use state-of-the art tools to leverage the power of BPA also can compete more effectively with larger enterprises. In today s environment of budget cuts and the need to do more with less, companies increasingly are finding BPA an indispensable partner as they create more efficient organizations that drive value for their business and customers alike. Planned and executed properly, BPA can lead to significant costs savings, productivity gains, improved SLA performance, and better customer service and satisfaction throughout your enterprise.
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