Tuesday, July 25, 2006

David Ogren's BPM Blog - ebizQ

David Ogren on the difference begtween BPM and SOA - "The difference, fundamentally, is the direction at which SOA and BPM approach the problem. BPM starts with a business process and develops a solution from top down. SOA starts of an existing catalog of services and builds up. As a result, BPM projects tends to be tactical and SOA projects tends to be strategic."


Innovation through Co-Creation

SandHill.com | Management | Innovation through Co-Creation:

Dr. C.K. Prahalad has identified technology to atomate Business Processes as a key opportunity for IT vendors today and into the future in this article on SandHill.com

"Opportunities for Technology Vendors

At a time when personalization, flexibility and scalability are key considerations for enterprises, the entire IT industry must redirect its focus to the areas which matter most for businesses.

# Interoperability - Much attention is focused on open source. While many consider the greatest value of open source is that it is 'free,' the reality is that the main advantage of open source is its interoperability. Is the industry putting enough energy behind delivering on open source's potential for interoperability and transparency?


# Large Databases - Ten terabytes used to be considered a large database. Today, WalMart is working with approximately 500 terabytes-worth of data. There is a huge opportunity to increase the size and speed with which data is accessed. These systems must go beyond providing decision tools to providing more sophisticated analyses. They must perform data mining and understand behaviors through analytical models - both industry-oriented and strategy-oriented. There is a huge opportunity for application developers to be analytically focused.

# Simple Interfaces - Whether for an on-demand application, a database or a large network, there is a huge opportunity to improve user interfaces. Increasingly, people with less experience or lower-level skills will be using the systems. Software vendors must work to create less-complex user interfaces, ones not dependent on language skills, yet functional enough to deliver productivity to users with higher skill sets as well. Take OnStar. You press a button and hear a human voice. There is no training required.

# Business Processes - Dell can turn over its inventory 100-times during the same time that HP converts 10-15-times. UPS can handle packages so efficiently that it created a new industry called 'logistics.' FedEx invites customers into its operations to gather critical data. The common thread for these competitive advantages is that they are all driven by business processes. These companies have leveraged a deep understanding of their business operations and converted it into a competitive weapon. Technology to automate these areas will be critical in the coming years."

I think that as always Dr. Prahalad is right on the mark here. Processes are the main differentiator in today's economy focused on operational excellence. And software tools that automate, control, monitor and manage these processes are the key enablers for continuous process improvement.

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Thursday, July 06, 2006

ECM - and then there were fewer left

The consolidation in ECM (Enterprise Content Management) industry seems to be unstoppable - no one seems to be able to buck the trend - it's an open question as to how long Filenet will survive as an independent company.

The latest one to bite the dust maybe Hummingbird http://www.hummingbird.com. After reports in May that they were selling out to Symphony Technology Services, OpenText today hiked the offer price by $1 over the Symphony Offer. OpenText and Hummingbird make sense from a geographical standpoint - two Canadian companies in the ECM space. From a product standpoint though, there is a lot of overlap - I guess only one set of products will survive eventually. OpenText does stand to double its installed base though if this merger goes through.

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