BPM Perspectives Positioning and Fitment drivers BPM is a commonly used and much hyped acronym. It popularly stands for Business Process Management but now it achieves much more than just that. Especially if one is in the consulting or service provision industry one gets to see innovative application and usage of the BPM paradigm. Currently there is lot of hype around BPM as people and groups continuously learn of different ways process management can benefit business. When it comes to BPM there is no hard and fast thumb rule of applying it. BPM in its self is a very goal driven area and evangelization heavily depends on the enterprise vision. In this paper we look at different perspectives with which enterprises approach BPM. The needs which are met and the aims they believe will be accomplished by embarking on BPM journey.
About the Author Geetali Raj Geetali Raj is a BPM solution architect working for Corporate Technology Excellence Group in TCS with 5+ years of experience in the industry including EAI, RFID, SOA and BPM. She is also part of BPM and EAI think tank in TCS. 1
Table of Contents 1. Approach To BPM 6 2. Domain Wise Application 9 2
Approach to BPM BPM initiatives in an enterprise don t necessarily start of as an identified BPM fitment. The challenges and problem statements range from need to perform better in a competitive market place to being agile to changes in compliances or regulatory requirements. Here we look at the BPM advent into an enterprise from two perspectives; by business case and by temporal aspect of goals. By business case we can broadly categorize BPM fitment as - Driven by Knowledge management - Driven by Visibility requirements - Driven by Agile Change management Knowledge Management initiatives Knowledge management may not be the term used but is often the primary goal of many initiatives. This includes capturing knowledge, information, assets present in the enterprise in terms of Subject Matter Experts, hard media, data repositories even logs. Knowledge management also translates to being able to store this knowledge in a format which is easily accessible per company standards as well as discernible to knowledge user (human or system) in secure manner authorization matrix. Version management and access control thus form key features which are ready available in BPM enablers. Making BPM paradigm a ready fit for such initiatives. These initiatives also give way to more strategic planning such as knowledge transfer typically during mergers and acquisitions, Enterprise Architecture, Single unified view of enterprise, Requirements gathering and rationalization, alignment to Audit or regulatory requirements, Industry standards such as lean six sigma and frameworks. Visibility requirements Visibility drives the organization toward BPM in two ways. One; visibility for internal stakeholders in the main line business and initiatives that support business and two visibility for parties external to organization but having stake in the organization in terms of investors, regulators, government bodies, analysts, partners. Visibility is provided by BPM approach through ability to track, perceive, present and process events and information being broadcasted by the business processes and applications. Processes form the controlling layer for underlying systems, applications and other actors hence provide one of the best sources for business events. Not only processes but a well architected BPM will have ability to track, trace and present the interesting or context specific events. This ability supports the visibility challenge faced by most enterprises which want to stay ahead of trends and optimize company processes and performance and thrive with governance. Organizations use this ability to track business opportunities say in a customer service system as well as trace exceptions and mitigate risks. Visibility thus enables tracking performance as well as a foundation for benefit analysis and ROI calculation. To some even more than internal process harmonization, is the challenge of meeting increasing demand from external bodies to comply with industry standards and business protocols. The ability for these external parties to have insight into exposed aspects of the business in the form of reports, audit statements, history, progress is a value add for the enterprise as well as eco system of partners, vendors, regulators. 3
Change Management May it be internal policy changes or change in the industry trends and expectations; change is the only constant in the organization. In order to keep up and ahead of this continuous flux, the IT systems and overall landscape needs to be such that it is sensitive to these changes and can quickly adapt to absorb or respond to the same. The BPM paradigm and supporting structure is aimed at developing a layer, flexible and agile enough such that changes can be accomplished in short interval of time and cascaded further downstream and horizontally without impact. The BPM architecture forms a closed loop between the process change capture (modelling) and the implementation system. This arrangement not only allows changes made in modelling environment, typically by process owners, to be translated quickly into implementation but also provides the feedback route for needs discovered in live systems back to the process repository. In this way changes to any of orchestration levels are quickly absorbed throughout the system and shared with business and IT. Business drivers include - Business policy - Organization structure, people matrix - Compliance, regulatory measures - Market trends, competition - Mergers, acquisitions, partners - Global or strategic transformation programs, incorporation of industry products services - Results/goal orientation, proactive and reactive readiness - Governance, risk management, Controlled framework - Quality management IT change drivers include - Keeping up with technology trends e.g. Cloud computing, Enterprise architecture - Incorporate best of breed frameworks and standards e.g. Lean six sigma - Events management in terms of interesting/informational as well as exceptional events - Guided legacy modernization and application development - Alignment with architecture strategy e.g. SOA - Inclusion of best of breed functionality enablers e.g. DMS, Rules, ERPs - Access management platform 4
Organization s leverage of BPM can also be categorized by the timeframe of the needs Need of now So what are these needs of the now that drive establishments towards BPM. These translate to immediate requirements that the enterprise just cannot function without or which are much needed for smooth functioning. These include - Exception handling frameworks - Close gap and problem area resolution solutions - Compliance related frameworks - B2B management - Application development Short term Short term goals aim at implementing the trends observed in a live system or business or per market or industry expectations. These are required but generally not urgent in nature. These are aimed at - Process diagnostics and improvement, implement BAM trends - Application security, authorization and authentication enablement - New business management, mergers, acquisitions - Business Event Management Rules, BAM, Event processing and handling - Enterprise Architecture, SOA alignment - Process standardization, harmonization - Legacy modernization - Controlled framework Long term The company s vision translates to various long term goals. These are strategic initiatives for achieving a higher business goal. - Single view of Business across divisions and geographies - Business Process Outsourcing - Organization change readiness, agility - Process harmonization based on feedback mechanism, Business Intelligence outcomes - Cloud computing, Business offerings as a service enablement - Self sustaining, intelligent and dynamic processes 5
Domain wise application BPM fitment is also very domain or industry specific i.e. different industries find different ways of using BPM. They see benefits and fitment very specific to their industry. Here we note some key trends for industries where BPM is already rampant, gaining mileage as well as ones where it s relatively new. BFS BFS has been one of the earliest adopters of BPM. Needs include: - Compliance and Regulatory requirements - Wide gamut of services and functions - Unavailability of standards and frameworks - Mergers and acquisitions - High value and sensitive transactions - Event driven processing - Real time monitoring and dynamic processing Areas of BPM penetration include - Compliance processes (Base, MiFID, SOX and others ) - New Account/Client management (Client on-boarding etc.) - Loan management - Trade management (especially monitoring and event management) - Customer management (online transactions, credit card processes etc.) Government Government sector has a lot of sensitive, security intensive and streamlined processing needs. Some include: - Standards maintenance - Regulatory compliance - Process improvement and optimization - Volatile market needs - Opportunity management - Intra and inter government agency processes Areas of BPM penetration include - Compliance and regulatory processes - Agencies consolidation - Strategy management - e-governance processes - Information provisioning 6
Hi Tech Hi Tech domain is relatively new in the BPM field. Needs include - Competition - Process improvement and optimization - Market trends - Standardization of product line - Agility towards changes in product line Areas of BPM penetration include - Manufacturing planning - Inventory management - Product lifecycle management - Order management - Customer management TTH TTH is another relatively green field with respect to BPM Needs could include - Standardization and connectivity spanning geography- - Customer experience optimization, retention - Capacity, services planning- - Information management- - Competition Areas of BPM penetration include - Customer management (online services, reservations etc.)- - Capacity management - Back office processes- - Loyalty, customer retention management - Information provisioning - Alliance management (partners, service providers) Insurance is an industry which finds heavy use of BPM and has thus been the topic of discussion in several forums. Manufacturing and Retail have begun coming out of the industry specific products and into the BPM arena. BPM has thus touched every industry and application area because of its wide range of offerings. The offerings appeal to Business as well as IT for being the best enablers of collaborative yet optimum solutions. BPM is thus not restricted to process or workflow management and a case for BPM can be made in a variety of ways even beyond those listed here. The governance and controlled environment provided by BPM is conducive for various requirements and solutions. People talk about benefits of BPM during recession times but BPM is an all season paradigm benefiting even many mature and thriving enterprises. BPM is thus not all hype but when positioned appropriately is an actual success enabler for the organization. 7
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