Business Process Management - The Third Wave or BPR Recycled?

IBM to acquire Lombardi

2009-12-21T22:13:00.000-08:00

Pretty significant move in the BPM (Business Process Management) space - IBM announces it is acquiring Lombardi. That leaves even fewer independent players in the market - Pega, Savvion, Intalio, Ultimus and my former company - Newgen Software amongst those.

New stimulus bill contains complete health IT act

2009-01-24T18:04:00.000-08:00

The latest in HITECH is not what you think it is - it is the Health IT for Economic and Clinical Health Act. The act is part of the economic stimulus bill expected to be signed into law this February. It provides for a whopping $20 billion in health information technology spending - I realize a billion isn't what it used to be given all the numbers floating around in the current economic mess, but it still is more than pocket change :-)

The cornerstone of this Act is the emphasis on widespread use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) by doctors, hospitals, and payers. And for once it seems like even the privacy advocates like ACLU and others are lending support.

Read more here.

Technorati Tags: Electronic Health Records, EHR, EMR, HITECH, Health Information Technology

Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS)

2009-01-24T10:13:00.000-08:00

CMIS (pronounced See-Miss) is the first big thing to happen on the ECM standards front in a very long time, and it promises to be a big thing. In particular, as more business processes rely on underlying content in multiple structured and unstructured content repositories, CMIS will enable processes to interact with multiple content repositories seemlessly.

CMIS already has strong vendor support with the big ones already onboard - IBM, Microsoft, EMC, Open Text, Oracle, SAP and Alfresco.

Click here for CMIS standards page from OASIS.

Click here for Alan Pelz-Sharpe's take on it.

Watch this space for more developments...

Another one bites the dust...

2009-01-22T16:13:00.000-08:00

I haven't been keeping track of the fallen soldiers in the ECM army - but this is a big one. Interwoven has been acquired by Autonomy for $775m. See the full press release here.

So Autonomy is now an Enterprise Search, Web Content Management, Enterprise Content Management, Web Optimization, EDiscovery, ............. company. How much synergy is there really between these business / product lines?

The Case For Online Document Management

2009-01-04T13:15:00.001-08:00

This article from Forbes.com talks about a trend that's long overdue.

http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2008/12/22/online-document-management-ent-tech-cx_bm_1222bmightydocmanagement.html

For those of us that have spent our last decade in Enterprise Content Management, we have seen several attempts aimed at providing an always-on, outside the firewall, web-accessible document repository for collaboration as well as for archive and retrieval. What has happened this time around is that the attempt is led not by the third-party vendors like Xythos and others, but by the now onmi-present Microsoft Sharepoint infrastructure available to enterprises as well as small and mid-sized businesses. The seamless integration between Microsoft Office technologies (Word, Excel and Powerpoint), Microsoft Exchange and Outlook based messaging infrastructure and Sharepoint is making traditional ECM products redundant. Some have clearly moved to more of a Storage Management focus - EMC, for example. Others like IBM Filenet are focused more on the production workflows and documents associated with high volume business transactions.

Sharepoint may begin to see some Open Source challengers - like AlFresco, but in terms of sheer market share, the two don't compare. On the other hand, SaaS offerings like Salesforce.com are taking away a part of the market for document management, particulary document management needs related to sales, pre-sales and marketing functions in an enterprise.

What ground breaking innovations are your looking forward to in 2009 in the ECM space? Do comment here.

Technorati Tags: ECM, Enterprise Content Management, IBM Filenet, EMC Documentum, Microsoft Sharepoint

Season's Greetings and Happy New Year!

2007-12-20T21:49:00.001-08:00

Wishing all our friends all the very best this holiday season and in the new year! Click here for an animated greeting.

Six Sigma: So Yesterday?

2007-08-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

I guess I missed it when this article first published in June. Here's a quote from the BusinessWeek article - it's quite telling and resonates with a lot of us.

" But as its popularity endures, the notion of Six Sigma as a corporate cure-all is subsiding. Once a company has done the requisite belt-tightening, "the strategic needs of a business change," says Robert Carter, a consultant at defense contractor Raytheon (RTN ). Kick-starting the top line becomes paramount; the best way there apart from an acquisition is innovation. At Raytheon, Carter is leading a Six Sigma effort to promote innovation. But while "most Six Sigma practitioners are very strong on the left brain, innovation very much starts in the right hemisphere," says Carter. Even he, a Six Sigma expert, acknowledges the "define, measure, analyze, improve, control" mind-set doesn't entirely gel with the fuzzy front-end of invention. When an idea starts germinating, Carter says, "you don't want to overanalyze it," which can happen in a traditional DMAIC framework."

Six Sigma also has a lot of overlap with Business Process Improvement efforts in Enterprises. However, I truly believe that unless Enterprises start looking at BPMS as an enabler for process and business innovation as opposed to process efficiencies, they will be using only half the potential.

The Role of Business Process Management in SOA

2007-05-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

The Role of Business Process Management in SOA

A good article by Sandy Carter of IBM that addresses the relationship between BPM and SOA - both of which are top of the mind for CIO's and IT managers today. Sandy talks about the complimentary relationship between BPM and SOA - "BPM is growing in popularity and is complementary to SOA due to its ability to help make business processes more efficient and effective while enabling an organization to more easily adapt to changing business requirements. BPM based on SOA is technology's response to the growing demand for a flexible business environment that is not hindered by application silos."

This is quite helpful to vendors like us as it clearly identifies the relationship between BPM and SOA as being complimentary. Lot of people use BPM and SOA interchangeably which creates a lot of confusion and unrealistic expectations.

Another quotation on note here is this one that equates SOA to speed and agility of the IT organization for implementing and integrating process automation components, while BPM helps business analysts achieve speed and agility in designing the process.

"For BPM to be successful and valuable to the enterprise, the speed and agility of IT organizations implementing and integrating the process automation components must match the speed and agility of business analysts redesigning the process.

Just as BPM capabilities needed to evolve over time to add flexibility to process design, so too do application integration systems need to evolve to automate the new flexibility processes in the real world. This integration evolution requires the ability to create independence between process and service implementation, and to remove the tight coupling between a specific integration technology and individual business applications. This is where SOA comes in because it provides the technical ability to create that process implementation independence."

A good case study on the interrelationship between BPM and SOA can be found on my company's website http://www.newgensoft.com/images/cs_emea9.pdf.

If you are looking at implementing BPM+SOA initiatives in your organization, be sure to put Newgen Software on your list of vendors that can help you achieve the often promised yet rarely delivered speed and agility.

ECM Vendors - and then there was one less left standing

2007-04-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

The ECM marketplace consolidation juggernaut continues. Today Mobius Management Systems announced it was being acquired by Allen Systems Group. One wonders who's gonna be the next one on the block - there aren't that many left out there. Vignette, Interwoven, Hyland Software and Laserfiche are the ones that look likely. Woodrow probably sums it up best in his blog here.

Defining Document Management - Dec 2006

2006-12-18T17:13:00.000-08:00

Here's a good one on defining Document Management or Enterprise Content Management. Looks like AIIM needs to do a better job of popularizing a common definition of these terms - these are hardly new technologies anymore, but the terms have been so broadly used for so many different things that confusion abounds in the market.

"What document management and workflow applications mean to your enterprise

By Maryse de la Giroday

Have you heard the story about the blindfolded people, each given a part of an elephant to touch and are then asked to describe the rest of the animal? The person at the tail describes a very different animal than the person at the ears or the one at the feet and so on. Well, except for the fact that we’re not wearing blindfolds, we’re in pretty much the same situation when it comes to discussing document management. All the questions you ask about document management and the answers you receive reflect yours or the vendor’s perspective.""

technorati tags: document+management, enterprise+content+management, ecm, dms, AIIM, EMC, Filenet, IBM, Documentum, Kofax, Newgen+Software, OmniDocs

DMS: the Indian angle - Express Computer

2006-12-10T09:02:00.000-08:00

DMS: the Indian angle - Express Computer: "DMS: the Indian angle"

"New-found enthusiasm among government organisations to leverage IT as an enabler for their growth is propelling DMS adoption. Vendors foresee an opportunity in providing state-of-the-art products and solutions to Indian enterprises that are setting up offices abroad, as well as to MNCs coming to India. The rapid growth in telecom, manufacturing and retail has added fuel to this fire. The telecom sector expects to tap 500 million consumers by 2010. Forecasts Diwakar Nigam, MD, NewGen, “Greater storage capabilities and tools for automated management of data, increased demands of mobile users, integration of other enterprise applications with the DMS, superior workflow capabilities providing quick access to voluminous information such as high-quality video and pictorial data (in addition to the traditional documents flow), and last but not the least, compliance, will drive the market in India.”

Things are really hotting up in the Indian market - and Document Management is an idea whose time has really come. ‘‘Owing to the large number of public sector enterprises, which are still paper-based, there is considerable scope for DMS in India. Due to continuous geographical expansion and the launch of new operations, enterprises are demanding solutions to manage their massive amount of content, both structured and unstructured.’’ says Diwakar Nigam, Managing Director, Newgen Software.

technorati tags: ECM, Enterprise+Content+Management, Document+Management, Newgen+Software, Diwakar+Nigam

More on defining Business Process Management (BPM)

2006-12-09T11:34:00.000-08:00

Here's quite a telling post on the WFMC (Workflow Management Coalition) bulletin board. It seems clear that the organizations promoting BPM have themselves been unable to come to grips with defining what exactly is BPM. Here's an excerpt "We have a definition for Workflow, and Business Process in the glossary. Now we need a definition of BPM that we all agree on. We need this urgently for the asia tour." Read the full post here.

The situation gets even more complicated as AIIM continues to treat BPM as part of the overall Enterprise Content Management(ECM) domain. Click here for more.

technorati tags: BPM, BPMS, Business+Process+Management, ECM, Enterprise+Content+Management, AIIM, WFMC

Defining BPM (Business Process Management)

2006-12-09T09:37:00.000-08:00

An attempt to compile the various definitions of BPM floating around, on a rainy Bay area winter morning:

The term Business Process Management (or BPM) refers to activities performed by businesses to optimize and adapt their processes. (Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_management)

Business process management (BPM) is a systematic approach to improving an organization's business processes. BPM activities seek to make business processes more effective, more efficient, and more capable of adapting to an ever-changing environment. BPM is a subset of infrastructure management, the administrative area of concern dealing with maintenance and optimization of an organization's equipment and core operations. A business process is a set of coordinated tasks and activities, conducted by both people and equipment, that will lead to accomplishing a specific organizational goal. (from http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci1088464,00.html)

Business Process Management it is a term that describes activities and (or) events which are performed to optimize a business process. These activities are aided by software tools. These types of software tools are also called BPM tools. (from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/B/BPM.html)

The BPM Group defines full cycle BPM as including:

Discovery – the ability to reveal the current situation around the organisations business processes including people skills and aptitude, systems usage and usefulness for process integration, managements understanding and process maturity.
Analysis – moving beyond ‘mapping’ of activities and tasks into aspects such as change capability within processes, ideas concerning business performance and the ways and means by which we understand our organisation and its objectives.
Design – turning the Discovery, and knowledge acquired, with the Analysis, and understanding developed into a meaningful design. Again this must encompass not just the visible process flows and interaction but the supporting and managing frameworks, from management communication mechanisms to approaches to change etc.
Validation – ensuring that what we are planning to do, what we actually do, and then how we learn and develop BPM further is logical and sound. At a simple level this may involve feedback loops, process audits, skills profiling and score-carding.
Implement – moving from Design & Validation, which may be related into conceptual, logical and physical, into roll out of new ways of working. The implementation again goes beyond the technology and includes such aspects as people skills development, organisation shape and objectives and utilisation of best practice approaches to help achieve optimum implementation.
Integration – one of the strengths of a full life cycle BPM approach is its ability to include and complement existing ways of working and at the same time migrate to powerful and compelling new ways of working. Contrast that with Process Re-engineering’s slash and burn approach with often disastrous consequences.
Control – ensuring that all that is done is complete, effective and sustainable. Many solutions misunderstand this stage and implement report mechanisms and measurement processes that inadequately link to people issues, management objectives and organisation capability.
Improvement – moving to a continuous and step change capable BPM Framework that allows and enables ongoing change and improving mastery of process.

More to follow...

Please feel free to add your definition(s)

technorati tags: BPM, BPMS, Business+Process+Management, Definition

Less coding, less outsourcing?

2006-11-25T10:31:00.000-08:00

Less coding, less outsourcing?

Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 1:15 pm
http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/index.php?p=764

Will SOA take away a lot of outsourcers' business? Or will its impact be negligible?
Joe makes a good point here - technologies like SOA, and may I add BPM (Business Process Management), will have significant impact on the amount of coding going on in many large organizations. SOA's promise of reusable services and standard interfaces, combined with the revolutionary shift in way applications are developed using Business Process Management Suites will result in organizations becoming more and more adept at continuously modifying their information systems to keep in line with business requirements, without requiring down and dirty software coding.

However, in the short run it actually creates a lot of outsourcing potential as organizations rework legacy applications to bring them into the SOA framework. Also, there is a good chance that as SOA and BPM improve the agility of organizations in acting proactively or reacting to business needs, there will be considerably more work done in the future - and that would make up for any reduction in outsourcing. Outsourcing vendors are also keeping this in mind and upgrading their offerings from coding to business analysis, process consulting, etc.

Tags: BPM, BPMS, Business Process Management, Outsourcing, SOA, Service Oriented Architecture, Web Services, Legacy, Offshore

ECM consolidation - afterthought to my earlier post

2006-11-06T19:07:00.000-08:00

I think SAP might beat HP to the next announcement - by OpenText's silence it looks like SAP buys OpenText is the next big announcement! Any betting men out there want to define the odds?

technorati tags: ECM, consolidation, stellent, oracle, opentext, hp, sap

Another one bites the dust - ECM Consolidation Juggernaut continues

2006-11-03T14:51:00.000-08:00

Oracle announced its bid for acquiring Stellent yesterday - most people were expecting Oracle to be the likely suitor for Filenet a couple of months ago. Stellent is a poor cousin to Filenet - but then Oracle has a need to fill the ECM gap in their product portfolio and Stellent may just do that.

What it doesn't bring to Oracle is the strong business process management / workflow platform that they would have got from Filenet. But I guess they could make an interesting play combining their BPEL Server (the one they acquired from Collaxa and is now renamed to be part of their Fusion middleware) with Stellent's ECM.

Stellent itself was mostly a web content management company till a few years back when they acquired Optika - a Filenet wannabe with strong Imaging and Workflow solutions. It will be interesting how this mix and match portfolio will be integrated into Oracle's offerings.

I guess now that Oracle has played its hand, the speculation moves on the next big acquisition - HP and Microsoft are the likely ones to make such an announcement. My bet is on HP acquiring either Opentext, Interwoven or Vignette within the next quarter.

technorati tags: ecm, consolidation, acquisition, document+management, imaging, workflow, bpm, bpel, oracle, stellent, hp, opentext, microsoft, vignette, interwoven

Sarb-Ox Compliance: Five Lessons to Reduce Cost and Effort

2006-10-10T23:40:00.000-07:00

Sarb-Ox Compliance: Five Lessons to Reduce Cost and Effort

The article correctly identifies the need for implementing financial compliance process management software. Newgen OmniCompliance - built on the award winning Newgen OmniFlow Business Process Management Suite offers out-of-the-box implementation of COSO framework along with an unparalleled process modeling interface to tweak and modify control and audit processes to individual enterprise requirements. Look up http://www.newgensoft.com/2005/products/omnicompliance.htm for more information

ECM Acquisitions: What's Going On? -- CMS Watch

2006-08-10T14:12:00.000-07:00

ECM Acquisitions: What's Going On? -- CMS Watch: "ECM Acquisitions: What's Going On?"

Seriously, everyone saw it coming - I mean the sell-out of Filenet, but all were pointing to Oracle and HP as the potential suitors. I guess most people thought that IBM already had a very well rounded ECM and BPM product suite and they didn't need a high priced acquisition like Filenet. However, what's interesting to note is that IBM was coming in third in the rankings - behind Filenet and EMC and this firmly puts them back in the lead - by a considerable margin.

It will be interesting to see where IBM goes with this - already there is a lot of confusion in the IBM portfolio with BPM coming under there Websphere product group and Content Manager coming under their DB2 group. Are they gonna split up the Filenet products into ECM and BPM and have two different groups handle it?

technorati tags: bpm, bpms, business+process+management, filenet, ibm, hp, hewlett+packard, ecm, enterprise+content+management, acquisition, merger, consolidation,

David Ogren's BPM Blog - ebizQ

2006-07-25T00:25:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-25T00:17:00.000-07:00

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.

technorati tags: BPM,, BPMS,, Dr+Prahalad

ECM - and then there were fewer left

2006-07-06T15:48:00.000-07:00

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.

technorati tags: ECM, Enterprise, Content, Management, BPM, Document, Management, Canada, Acquisition, Merger, Consolidation,

Agile Outsourcing

2006-06-30T16:07:00.000-07:00

"Communication barriers, time zone and cultural differences all hinder offshore development. But what if offshore titans learn to work with collaborative techniques?" By Scott W. Ambler

Scott has written an article very close to our hearts. My company and I have been involved in many large and small product development outsourcing projects over the last decade. We ourselves have seen the great difference made by collaboration tools over this period. When we started in mid 90's, Internet basically meant email only as far as enabling collaboration between far-flung members of a software development team. Then came Instant Messenger - and that was the first dramatic step. At a time when international telephony costs were astronomical (I remember at one time paying more than $1 per minute between USA and India), instant messengers really enabled team members to be always connected.

At that time online collaboration tools for project management were still not there - eRooms - that Documentum bought out later was one of the first major one. However, my company was building its own workflow and document management products at the time, and we came up with Newgen eWorkStyle - a web-based collaboration suite that provided project spaces, integrated document management, workflow, bulletin boards, messaging, group calendar and other tools. The product may have been a little ahead of time as far as the Asian markets were concerned, but we ourselves have been using it for our Outsourced Product Development business ever since.

Today, we have many projects where teams span 3 or 4 countries - e.g. R&D in Japan, Product Management in USA, Marketing inputs from USA and Europe, etc. Use of Newgen eWorkStyle and other collaborative tools like a secure, within the firewall implementation of Jabber instant messenger, GotoMeeting, GotoMyPC, etc. enables team members to be literally on the same page. Some time back we also started using Web 2.0 and Office 2.0 tools - Google Spreadsheet is an excellent example. Other tools we use are Open Office, Writely, Thumbstacks, Zoho, etc.

If you would like to have more information about Newgen's multi-shore Outsourced Product Development services and how we use collaboration tools to bring teams close together, write me an email at sanjay [at] newgen [dot] net.

You can read Scott's full article at Dr. Dobb's Portal

IT Redux - The 10 Flatteners

2006-04-18T12:37:00.000-07:00

I attended a very interesting event this morning - arranged by Ismael Ghalimi, CEO of Intalio. Apart from being CEO of Intalio, Ismael is also a leading proponent of Office 2.0 and the convergence of SOA/BPM with simple, next generation front-end interfaces like those provided by Office 2.0 applications. Apart from my interest in the BPM space and outsourcing (both of which are my company's commercial offerings), it was the title of the event that tickled me into attending.

Ever since Tom Friedman's book came out, outsourcing has moved out from being discussed in only technology and business circles to being discussed in every social circle. Indeed, the impact of this book is so great, I sometimes call it the best brochureware for the Indian and other offshore outsourcing vendors. The case Friedman makes is both compelling and self evident. And Ismael did a good job of connecting Friedman's postulates with his own anecdotes and show a way for small technology companies to leverage this macro level global shift.

The event was co-sponsored by an outsourcing company called Lohika ("Logic" in Ukrainian) from Ukraine - seemed like an enthusiastic bunch of people and must be doing a great job for Intalio for Ismael to endorse them so publicly. Of course, Lohika gave a good pitch for why Ukraine and their company is a good outsourcing partner to small to mid-size product companies. However, the larger lesson is that all startups and small to mid-size companies need to have a very active outsourcing strategy as an integral part of their business plan if they want to succeed. And as Lohika's VP of Engineering put it very well, it's not just about cost anymore -of course cost is the key driving factor - we wouldn't be talking outsourcing today if it weren't for cost, but lower cost is a given with any offshore outsourcing plan. However, cost is not a determining factor when it comes to your choice of outsourcing partner. The points that Lohika made were:

- Partnership
- Innovation
- Requirement specification process

I may want to add to that and say that the key to finding a good partner is to find one that has a good track record in onboarding (bringing requisite skills on board), training and retention, ability to handle up and down movement in resource levels, and mature processes and quality standards.

On innovation, I must point out that if you are a product development company, hiring an IT services company will not work - you need a partner with a product development mindset. Commercial software products are developed keeping in mind the requirements of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of customers - very different from a custom application development project. The software engineering processes, the innovation mindset, the quality standards are all very different in case of product development outsourcing.

Of course finding such partners is no easy task - I might want to plug for my company here - apart from providing outsourced product development services to our partners, we are first and foremost a product development company ourselves. My company - Newgen Software (www.newgensoft.com) - is the leading provider of BPMS and ECM suites in India and Asia. We have translated our ability to develop and market software products into a winning service for our partners.

Well, running out of time - gotta rush for my post lunch meeting. However I will post some more later - specially on Ismael's points about the open source model and his company's unique approach to sales and marketing. There are some good pointers there for the way these things would be done in the future - but there are also things to be cautious about - it ain't as easy as it seems.

technorati tags: BPM, friedman, the+world+is+flat, outsourcing, offshore, product, development, software, office+2.0, web+2.0

Words of wisdom from Peter Drucker that BPM practitioners might want to pay heed to

2006-04-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
- Peter Drucker

technorati tags: peter+drucker, BPM, management

Gartner BPM Summit

2006-03-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

I'm attending the Gartner BPM Summit for the first time this year. The location is great - Opryland in Nashville. While I have a passing interest in country music, my brother is somewhat of an authority on it - he finished a Master's program in ethno-musicology in another Tennessee university and went on to do a doctorate in the same. Anyway, it's a curious location - high-tech combined with old world tradition.

I hope to be blogging about my experiences at the Gartner summit - I don't know if Gartner is doing anything special for bloggers - if you know anything about it do let me know. Also, I'd like to meet other bloggers who are attending Gartner BPM summit. You can leave me a message on this blog and we can get together at conference venue.

BEA's acquisition of Fuego - and its impact on valuation of other BPM vendors

2006-03-03T11:56:00.000-08:00

BEA bought Fuego for $87.5 million, almost 6-8 times Fuego's last year revenues which were in the $11-$14 million range. What does that say about the valuation of other BPM vendors? How about Ultimus - as per Deloitte and Touche Technology Fast 500, Ultimus had revenues of over $18 million in 2004. Given their excellent growth rate, they must have done anywhere between $30-$35 million in 2005. So are we looking at a possible $200 million plus buyout for Ultimus? I'm sure Rashid must be running these figures in his mind right now :-)

As BPM becomes more mainstream, a consolidation is bound to occur and some of these companies make excellent targets for big players like Microsoft and others who are still rounding up their portfolios.

Compliance and the CIO - Express Computer

2006-03-03T11:46:00.000-08:00

Compliance is becoming top priority for CIO's - not only in USA but also in India as Indian companies increasingly become an integral part of the global supply chain. “Compliance is moving away from being seen as a cost-oriented process forced upon organisations to being an absolute imperative for smooth business operations, although limited to large organisations where IT is mission-critical,” says Diwakar Nigam, Chairman and CEO of India's leading provider of BPM and ECM solutions. Newgen's Compliance Manager - built on the class leading Newgen OmniFlow platform is providing Indian companies and excellent tool to get their compliance projects up to speed.

Check out more details here.

BEA Buys Fuego for $87.5M

2006-03-01T19:48:00.000-08:00

BPM is headed for prime time - IBM has always been a big player, TIBCO bought Staffware a coupleo years back, last year Oracle made some big moves and bought Collaxa, Microsoft with its BizTalk suite has been dabbling for some time - an now BEA makes a big commitment shelling out almost a 100 million dollars to buy Fuego. I wonder what this would mean for the remaining independent pure plays in the market - Ultimus, Handysoft, Intalio, Savvion, etc.

IT|Redux � The World is Flat

2006-03-01T00:09:00.000-08:00

Here's a great piece relating the 10 flatteners from Tom Friedman's "the World is Flat" and the rise of BPM.

IT|Redux � The World is Flat

technorati tags: BPM, SAAS, SOA, The+World+is+Flat, Thomas, Friedman, Intalio, Business+Process+Management

Active Journal of Business Process Management

2006-02-22T19:52:00.000-08:00

Here's another good blog on BPM that I came across recently. They have a nice collection of articles on BPM and some product reviews. Look it up at

technorati tags: bpm, business, process, management, him, human, interaction, management

HIM - Human Interaction Management

2006-02-22T10:41:00.000-08:00

There's a new buzzword in the BPM space - HIM (Human Interactions Management

Human Interaction Management: "There are a number of collaborative activities that go beyond workflow and knowledge management, which I call human interaction management, and that is going to be the next envelope pushed in the whole BPM space." - Peter Fingar

While I appreciate the new focus on the human side of processes, I am not sure that this is entirely new. Wasn't Workflow and then BPM supposed to be able to take care of both machine to machine and machine to human interactions in a process? Maybe I am missing something here. Please feel free to share your thoughts...

technorati tags: HIM, human, interaction, management, business, process, management, bpm

Technorati: Favorite Buttons

2006-02-22T08:41:00.000-08:00

Technorati has introduced a new Favorites feature - you can add upto 50 blogs to your favorites - and you can share your favorites with the world. Try this feature by clicking on the button below - if you want to add my blog to your favorites.

Get $5 for signing up for this free service

2006-02-20T22:15:00.000-08:00

This is a great new service for sending and receiving cash through your cell phone - almost like a Paypal for cell phones :-) And the great news is, they are paying you $5 to sign up for this service. The service itself is absolutely free and there is no contract. This is sure to be a huge thing. It should be great for paying your half of the lunch you had with a friend, or the movie tickets that your friend bought for you or for making and receiving payment on craigslist etc.

If you want to make $5 for reading this blog, just sign up by clicking on the TextPayMe banner below.

Five Reasons to Invest in Process Management

2006-01-26T12:47:00.000-08:00

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Analysis: Five Reasons to Invest in Process Management: "BPM is both a management philosophy and a software tool. As a management philosophy, it calls for organizations to document, analyze and measure their business activities not in terms of discrete functions such as marketing, sales, manufacturing and customer service but in terms of end-to-end business processes that cross functional boundaries."

Very precise article by Bruce Silver - he does a great job of capturing the essence of BPM solutions and articulating the benefits in simple, yet powerful terms.

CIOs strive to improve business processes | InfoWorld | News | 2006-01-23 | By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service

2006-01-26T11:21:00.000-08:00

While the top business priority is improving business processes, top technology priority is business intelligence applications.

Although I can appreciate how business intelligence applications may help in improving business processes, I am kind of surprised that BPM suites do not get a mention in this survey - or maybe I am missing something here. Would appreciate any comments from readers who have access to the full survey.

Survey: CIOs strive to improve business processes | InfoWorld | News | 2006-01-23 | By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service: "A recent survey of global chief information officers (CIOs) found that using IT to make improvements to a company's business processes is the top priority for them in 2006, according to Gartner Inc."

Business Standard - Serious Developer - Profile of Mr. Diwakar Nigam

2006-01-10T19:25:00.000-08:00

Business Standard is profiling some of the luminaries of the Indian IT industry. This one features Mr. Diwakar Nigam - often regarded as the original software product leader in India. While most other Indian IT companies focused on delivering IT services, Diwakar carried the torch in terms of building his own intellectual property and delivering products and solutions that were truly "Made in India".

ICE World

Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs

2006-01-09T20:29:00.000-08:00

Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs: "Blogger. n. Someone with nothing to say writing for someone with nothing to do."

Newgen Software helps SEC, Philippines improve access to company information

2006-01-09T04:11:00.000-08:00

Newgen Software - India's leading provider of Business Process Management and Document Management solutions recently assisted Philippines' Securities and Exchange Commission launch an Internet-based service that aims to ease and hasten access to information on companies.

This is just one in a long string of successes that New Delhi based Newgen Software Technologies has achieved in the last few years after it started leveraging its leadership position in BPM and EDMS in the Indian market. Today Newgen is perhaps the leading provider of such solutions in much of Asia, Middle East, even Africa.

Companies like Newgen have a lot to offer to Enterprise and Government customers in Asia - their focus on end-to-end solution delivery, leverage of their own IPR (intellectual property rights), offshore resource base and pricing, understanding of application requirements attained over almost 15 years of experience in these markets give them an edge over US based majors in these areas.

Newsbreak

NASSCOM Product summit to honor Newgen Software and others for championing software product development

2005-12-20T10:39:00.000-08:00

My company - Newgen Software - was recently honored by NASSCOM as an outstanding company in the area of packaged software products. Newgen under Diwakar's leadership has long been a leading light in developing its own intellectual property in the software arena. Today, we are by far the leading provider of Business Process Management and Document Management solutions in India and the emerging markets encompassing South East Asia, Far East Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Click on the link below for the complete article from CIOL.
CIOL : News : NASSCOM Product summit to honor six companies: "NASSCOM Product summit to honor six companies
The event provides an overview of India's existing positioning in the packaged software segment and the future product scenario in the country
Goutam Das
Monday, December 05, 2005

BANGALORE: Six Indian software product companies will be honored at this year's Nasscom Product Summit in Bangalore on December 6. Cranes Software, Impulsesoft Pvt. Ltd, Newgen Software, Pramati Technologies, Ramco Systems, and Tejas Networks are the 'outstanding' ones, chosen based on factors such as the management team, marketing strategy, proprietary nature of products or services and financials.

The summit is being held in association with the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore's NSRCEL. The entrepreneurial learning arm of IIMB is planning to develop the department into a hub for angel investors and create an ecosystem for product firms by offering evaluation or due-deligence service free to the angel investor, similar to what happens at US where leading universities organize a platform for nurturing startups.

Prof. TR Madanmohan of IIMB, also a member of the Nasscom Product Forum, explained that early stage capital is not easy and but innovation has not ceased either going by the number of new product companies emerging across cities in India ? he estimates 364 such firms in India.
"

Wikis in Business

2005-12-07T19:19:00.000-08:00

Wikis are yet to make a major dent in the business market. Once touted as the killer collaboration application, the format is not quite suitable for many of the processes that take place in a typical business. Businesses do not always run by peer review or consensus - in fact the more successful leadership styles do not necessarily encourage too much consensus building, etc.

Also, Wikis are notoriously prone to being misused - as the LA Times and Wikipedia incidents have shown recently.

Anyway, here is a good primer on Wikis and their potential use in the workplace.

Russell Beattie Notebook ? RealNames Next

2005-11-16T15:54:00.000-08:00

Russell Beattie Notebook ? RealNames Next

It's strange how I was thinking of the same thing this morning - when I saw my wife keying in full url's like www.webmd.com. And I was reminded of the Realnames concept from a few years back too. That made me wonder as to why this never took off.

But then I thought some more and I noticed my own usage of the web browser - strangely I observed that in most cases I was just putting in the descriptive word for a website or company that I wanted to visit and the google address bar search combined with the setting to take me to the most appropriate result did the rest (you can do the same by configuring your browser address field to use Yahoo search or MSN search and it will take you to the most appropriate result). Now granted that sometimes it doesn't take you to the right website, however the same issues would be there with Realnames also. As it is, in USA there are companies with same names registered in different states. How will you decide who gets to register the name? What about all the other companies with the same name? How about the international stuff - when the web started, US was way ahead and everyone accepted that US based ICANN will administed the .com domain. How are you going to get every country in the world to accept such a scheme at this time - when the growth of internet is much faster in other countries.

My suggestion is that you let Google and other search providers to worry about taking you to the best match - no need to reinvent the wheel.

Compliance, SOXA and BPM

2005-11-07T12:20:00.000-08:00

BPM (Business Process Management) suites are providing a whole new way of building applications that enable companies to clearly define their risk management strategy, identify risk mitigation processes and checks and balances, define and deploy organizational processes to monitor the performance against these and provide a high level Risk Management and Compliance Score Card Dashboard to the senior management.

Recently, a lot of BPM suites vendors have come out with such solutions. Some have even tied up with Risk Management consulting companies (e.g., Stellent and Protiviti).

However, my company - Newgen Software - has a new offering that puts a different twist on this solution. Newgen has been building its products and solutions in India, where the Indian government is increasingly following the US lead in areas like corporate governance. Modeled on the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOXA), the revised Clause 49 in India was introduced last year and companies have till this December to comply. Newgen has been working with several Business India 500 (equivalent to the Fortune 500) companies in India and also with the Big 4 consulting companies - and their compliance and auditing practices. Recently, we introduced our Compliance Management framework - based on our BPM platform in the US market. You can view the full press release at the AIIM web site (The Content Management and BPM industry association):

http://aiim.org/article-pr.asp?ID=30667

I am looking forward to suggestions from the BPM community - specially opinion leaders writing blogs and practitioners who are leading such initiatives in their companies - as to how we can help them in implementing compliance management solutions using BPM technology. You can respond to me at my email address sanjay [at] newgen [dot] net.

NewsFactor Network - Tech Trends - Open Source Steps Into ECM Shoes

2005-10-25T13:15:00.000-07:00

While EMC, Stellent, Verity, Opentext and all are consolidating their ECM empire by acquiring whatever remaining independent companies are left out there, one of the co-founders of Documentum (now part of EMC) - John Newton - is trying to take ECM open source by introducing the Alfresco platform. Alfresco is a Java based approach which provides functionality for workflow, metadata support, hierarchical folder structure, and indexing and retrieval.

However, "it is initially targeting very simple document-collaboration scenarios of the type that SharePoint has addressed so successfully," said Tony Byrne, analyst and founder of CMSWatch.com.

To me, challenging Sharepoint seems to be a tough strategy - considering not only Microsoft's pervasiveness but also the fact that the basic Sharepoint server is almost free as part of MS Server offerings. Only diehard Java junkies may have need for this technology.

NewsFactor Network - Tech Trends - Open Source Steps Into ECM Shoes: "other "

Adobe still trying to solve the BPM puzzle

2005-10-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;328732938;fp;4;fpid;1854890668

In this case the sum of the components may not quite add up to a full BPM suite!

- Sanjay Kalra

IBM, SAP acknowledge limtations of BPEL in processes involving human interaction

2005-10-21T13:22:00.000-07:00

IBM and SAP have propose BPEL4People - an extension to the BPEL4WS standard. This acknowledges the known limitations of BPEL when it comes to orchestrating human interactions in a process apart from the Web Services.

Maybe it is time for WfMC and OASIS to come together on this issue and address the need for standards for both human as well as system-to-system workflows. Or maybe we don't need these standards at all - look at Fuego - a very successful BPM vendor that doesn't support BPEL.

Cover Pages: IBM and SAP AG Propose WS-BPEL Extension for People (BPEL4People).

http://www.looselycoupled.com/stories/2005/bpel-gaps-bp1010.html

- Sanjay Kalra

Process For The People - What is a Process?

2005-09-21T00:15:00.000-07:00

Peter Keen, writing in the invaluable Every Manager’s Guide to Business Processes defines Process as

"Any aspect of organizational functioning to which the word process can be meaningfully added."

Sanjay Kalra

The Vision Thing | Business. Process. Management. | Weblog

BPM and the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2005

2005-09-19T16:37:00.000-07:00

Here's an excellent piece on the Gartner Hype Cycle. Note the position of BPM - right on top of the Hype Cycle - "the peak of inflated expectations".

As for me, I don't agree with the inflated expectations part. I think that BPM is certainly high on the hype cycle - but it is actually more like being on the "Slope of Enlightment". That is because its earlier avatars of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and Workflow have already gone through this cycle. I see 5 years of strong growth before this technology begins to plateau.

You can download Gartner's presentation and listen to their webcast at http://www.gartner.com/teleconferences/asset_129930_75.jsp

Sanjay Kalra
Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies - 2005 | Daniel Neamu Weblog
Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2005

Next generation workflow - Vendor Voice - Network Magazine India

2005-09-16T12:25:00.000-07:00

An excellent perspective on how Business Process Management practices can make organizations speedy and efficient. The author is Diwakar Nigam, founder Chairman of Newgen Software Technologies - a leading provider of BPM and Content Management solutions worldwide with 40% market share in its home base of India.

Diwakar makes a few very good points here - the primacy of processes in today's business environment, well defined objectives of BPM, the various underlying technologies that come together in a BPM solution (EAI, Middleware, SOA, etc.). He also talks about how BPM is helping companies in the emerging markets where paper based processes still reign supreme - by streamlining process flow and providing central repository of images of business critical paper documents.

The author feels very strongly that BPM would be a significant technology in the coming years that will help businesses in all industries across the board. E-Governance is another key area that would gain a lot from BPM technology.

Sanjay Kalra

Next generation workflow - Vendor Voice - Network Magazine India: "activities"

The ASP reincarnation - Computerworld

2005-08-31T16:05:00.000-07:00

Computerworld has this article on the reincarnation of ASP model. It is amazing how the IT industry has come a full circle - starting with the mainframe oriented central computing model, moving over to the client-server model in the 80s and 90s and returning to a server based model. Not only business applications, if Google's vision is given shape, all computing will be on the server with the devices only acting as a means for interacting and rendering information.

On the ASP note, a leading Indian software company that I know is looking for ASP / Hosting partners for its Business Process Management and Content Management software in USA and Canada. If you or someone you know is interested, please get in touch with me at "sanjay at newgen dot net".
The ASP reincarnation - Computerworld: "Software as a service -- which typically eliminates hefty upfront license costs and requires little or no hardware or IT personnel to install, configure or maintain -- is growing in popularity among large corporations and small businesses alike. Last year's successful public stock offerings by fast-growing providers Salesforce.com Inc. and RightNow Technologies Inc. have shined a spotlight on a software delivery model reminiscent of the buzz surrounding application service providers (ASP) in the late 1990s."

New definition of Business Process Management - by Gartner

2005-08-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

New definition of BPM by Gartner:
BPM.com - Analyst Briefing: "BPM is a management practice that provides for governance of a business's process environment toward the goal of improving agility and operational performance. BPM is a structured approach employing methods, policies, metrics, management practices and software tools to manage and continuously optimize an organization's activities and processes."

How organizations approach BPM

2005-08-18T14:48:00.000-07:00

I like this article by Terry Schurter. I don't know what the 2nd and 3rd approaches will be - but I would imagine that the tactical approach to BPM is perhaps the one with the highest and easily measurable ROI.

Come to think about it, isn't it obvious that when you tackle a problem that is well defined, where you can put your arms around it, where you can define the parameters on which you would measure the success of the solution, where these parameters would be rather tangible and easily measurable -your chances of success are the highest.

I am looking forward to reading about the next 2 approaches before I comment any further.

How organizations approach BPM

Thursday 18th August 2005
BMP Group
Written By: Terry Schurter, BPMG Chief Analyst
Copyright © 2005 BPM Group

http://www.it-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=12857&

InformationWeek > India > India's Next Step > August 8, 2005

2005-08-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

A very insightful article by Paul McDougall at InformationWeek magazine. Paul is the resident Outsourcing expert at InformationWeek and has written many good articles on the subject. Here he writes about the "Next Step" in the evolution of the Indian software industry - the move to selling software products as opposed to only services.

While selling software products bring to the mind the specter of Indian companies getting even higher value addition and hurting US based competitors, the reality is likely to be different. In a mature free-market economy like USA, there is always room for competition and competition brings with it the added advantages of better products at lower cost for the customers and eventually results in an expansion of the market itself. This compensates for ay market share loss for the existing players.

Besides, software product development is becoming increasingly like car manufacturing. The so called "Japanese cars" like Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, etc. may actually have as much local content as cars from GM and Ford. Similarly, to sell products to US customers, Indian software companies are making great investments in establishing a team in US that works closely with potential customers in pre-sales, post-sale implementation, training and on-going support. These teams become the core of knowledge in these enterprises and continues to be expanded in USA to stay close to the customers.

Another advantage with Indian software companies offering products in the USA market is the new opportunites that it offers to US partners to offer more customer friendly business models. For example, document management used to be a very expensive, enterprise technology - where the customer had to invest huge amounts in software license fee and hardware to achieve the benefits. My company - Newgen Software - partnered with a Silicon Valley startup to offer Document Management to Enterprises as a hosted, subscription only business model. We are now trying to offer similar solutions in the Business Process Management area with our US partners focusing on vertical and horizontal segments of the market.

Read more in this article by Paul McDougall...

InformationWeek > India > India's Next Step > August 8, 2005:

Here's the reference to my company in this article:

"Like other foreign software vendors that saw big opportunities in the United States--SAP among them--Indian companies increasingly want to turn their local successes into a greater U.S. presence. That includes business-process and document-management application vendor Newgen, which says it has a 40% share of the Indian market for software that connects workflows. The company wants to partner with vertical-apps developers in the States to aim its offerings at health care, financial services, and the government. 'People take us more seriously now because many of these enterprises have themselves gone to India for services,' says Sanjay Kalra, VP for business development.

While he's focused mostly on large companies, Kalra believes the low price of the company's various business-process modules, which cover functions such as invoicing and accounts payable, also could appeal to the small- and midsize-business market. 'Even a company with only five or 10 people in accounts payable could break even on our product in a year,' he says. 'They could get rid of three people.' That raises the specter that low-cost automation will join outsourcing as a threat to U.S. jobs--again, thanks to India.

But that may be jumping the gun. While the comfort level with Indian IT expertise has greatly increased, and the cost savings of using lower-priced software is attractive, going up against name-brand players in more established Western markets won't be easy. Newgen offers a lower total cost of ownership, Kalra says, but he concedes that the U.S. market for the software his company sells is mature."

What is Business Process Management?

2005-08-06T00:10:00.000-07:00

Simply put "A business process is the essence of all business..."

Enterprises Focus on Business Process Management: "

Some of the most-elaborate business processes originated in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt (there had to be a fairly sophisticated engineering, supply chain and human resources process behind the building of the Pyramids). A business process is the essence of all business, then and now. Automation of business processes can push an industry into a new era (the way Henry Ford's assembly line revolutionized the automobile industry first and the whole society later). A new phenomenon of business process automation is taking place in front of our eyes."

Agility in deploying processes - the missing piece

2005-08-04T17:12:00.000-07:00

BPM vendors don't often pay much attention to the speed and cost of deployment of a process using their software tools. Most vendors describe in detail the various tools they have as part of the BPM suite - leaving issues like cost, time and ease of deployment to customer's imagination.

A look at some recent BPM implementations in the industry would highlight the fact that BPM implementations are mirroring deployment of Enterprise solutions like ERP, CRM, SCM and others. Not only that, vendors confuse the issues even more by clubbing architectural issues like SOA with a BPM implementation. Thus, often times BPM implementations get bogged down in complex discussions by purists regarding SOA, BPEL, etc. losing sight of key business drivers for implementing BPM solutions in the first instance.

An alternative checklists for users planning to implement BPM solutions should look somewhat like this:

1. Ease of taking an existing process (mix of ad-hoc automation and manual steps) and automating it using the tools and implementation services provided by the BPM solution vendor

2. Total time taken from Process Study to Process Design and Documentation to Development and Testing to Going Live.

3. Total one-time cost of the above - a combination of product license fee / usage based fee and implementation and custom software development services.

4. Ongoing cost of ownership - BPM implies continuous process improvement, which in turn means ongoing effort to improve the process model, user interfaces, integration points with other applications - both inside and outside the enterprise, etc. BPM vendors that can provide a lower ongoing implementation, support and maintenance cost - often leveraging their offshore bases can prove to be a real bargain.

Have you had similar issues implementing BPM in your organizations? Please feel free to comment with your experiences.

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Business Process Management is Under Construction

2005-08-01T16:39:00.000-07:00

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Business Process Management is Under Construction:

Continuing in the same vein as the earlier article - " IT Detours on the Road to BPM", thie article postulates that BPM tools are still in their infancy.

"Business Process Management is Under Construction

BPM systems have mastered process integration and automation, but the road to the future, which promises embedded process monitors and sophisticated simulation, has yet to be completed
"

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: IT Detours On the Road to BPM

2005-08-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: IT Detours On the Road to BPM: "BPM implementations aren't all that dissimilar from the summer family vacation. No matter how much time you spend planning the best cross-country route, you end up making detours that cost time and money. In the lab, our summer vacation with BPM software was no exception. More than a few times we exclaimed: 'Are we there yet?'"

TIBCO Faces Shareholder Suits - over faulty integration of Staffware

2005-07-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Looks like not all is well with the consolidation in the BPM industry. TIBCO's acquisition of Staffware and efforts to integrate it with its offerings are running into rough seas - and quite predictably so.

So what's the future for Staffware - with dwindling sales and many of the key people gone, Staffware may be heading towards an uncertain future. Jon Pike - the ex CTO of Staffware and widely seen as the architect of the original Staffware product now works for a competitor - Global 360 (the new avatar of Eastman Software).
TIBCO Faces Shareholder Suits: "its "

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: In Focus: What's Hot and Not-So-Hot in ECM

2005-07-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

Filenet ascribes its most recent strong earnings figures to BPM.

BPM vs. Content Management

While BPM market is growing at 27 to 32% annually while Content Management is only growing at 8%

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: In Focus: What's Hot and Not-So-Hot in ECM

Forbes.com: Overprocessed World

2005-07-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

A contrarian view on Business Process Management (BPM) by John Dvorak.

Forbes.com: Overprocessed World

IT-Director.com: What is a Business Process?

2005-07-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

IT-Director.com: What is a Business Process?: "is "
"getting the right product(s) to the right person at the right time based on existing orders"

Let me be very clear that this IS the definition of the order fulfillment business process – and that the detailed workflow expression of the process is NOT the definition of the process but is instead the "map" of how the process works.

SOA Pipeline | Review: Business Process Management Suites

2005-07-01T22:29:00.000-07:00

SOA Pipeline | Review: Business Process Management Suites: "This scenario let us evaluate a variety of feature sets and functionality across what appeared to be disparate technologies (see 'How We Tested,' for more details).

During our evaluation, we acted as both IT staffer and business analyst: For you IT pros, we evaluated features such as platform support, architecture, administrative capabilities, and integration with application infrastructure and identity-management systems. For you business analysts, we examined reporting and analysis features and the ease with which process owners might model and simulate processes. We collaborated with our sister publication Intelligent Enterprise on each product tested. For a more business-analyst focus on the BPM offerings, watch for the review of these products in Intelligent Enterprise's August issue (see www.intelligententerprise.com)."

Compliance Pipeline | Feature: Market Analysis: Understanding Business Process Management

2005-07-01T22:23:00.000-07:00

Compliance Pipeline | Feature: Market Analysis: Understanding Business Process Management: "Most BPM suites are process-oriented, sharing information among modeling tools, fat clients, portals and the process engine through Web services. The advantages to this model are reuse, interoperability and faster time to deploy."

The Don't-Fix-It-If-It's-Not-Broken School of BPM

2005-06-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

Plenty of business process management (BPM) buzz phrases focus on "changing processes on the fly" and "continuous process improvement," but most BPM practitioners I've spoken to don't take process change lightly. They've typically gained huge advantages just by integrating disparate systems, eliminating paperwork and creating a consistent documents process with an audit trail. They're not going back to modeling (and the modeling team, if there was one) to consider incremental changes.
Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: In Focus: The Don't-Fix-It-If-It's-Not-Broken School of BPM

CIO Today - Infrastructure - Are You Ready for BPM?

2005-06-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

"But if their process is broken, BPM won't fix it; it'll just make it faster."
CIO Today - Infrastructure - Are You Ready for BPM?

Standards groups BPMI.org and WfMC consider merger - Computer Business Review

2005-05-17T07:53:00.000-07:00

Standards groups BPMI.org and WfMC consider merger - Computer Business Review

IT-Analysis.com - Business Process Management on demand

2005-05-14T13:52:00.000-07:00

IT-Analysis.com - Business Process Management on demand

Prime Time for Real Time - BPM and the Real Time Enterprise

2005-05-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

By Peter Fingar

Executives are buzzing about the notion of the real-time enterprise. It's not the latest "killer application," but a management strategy that calls for squeezing time and associated costs out of processes, transforming how companies operate and even the very businesses they're in.

General Electric, JetBlue, Virgin Group, Progressive Insurance and others are harnessing the universal, real-time connectivity of the Internet for business process innovation. While the concept of time-based competition isn't new, the ability to execute on this management ideal with computer-assisted process support is.

Some enterprises look to new technology architectures and composite applications as the route to the real-time enterprise, but this article explains why time-based competition demands a business process management approach. By giving business analysts software to build and manipulate end-to-end processes, companies are dramatically improving response times to routine customer transactions and emerging market demands by bypassing lengthy software development cycles.

Business Process Management - The Third Wave or BPR Recycled?

IBM to acquire Lombardi

New stimulus bill contains complete health IT act

Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS)

Another one bites the dust...

The Case For Online Document Management

Season's Greetings and Happy New Year!

Six Sigma: So Yesterday?

The Role of Business Process Management in SOA

ECM Vendors - and then there was one less left standing

Defining Document Management - Dec 2006

DMS: the Indian angle - Express Computer

More on defining Business Process Management (BPM)

Defining BPM (Business Process Management)

Less coding, less outsourcing?

Less coding, less outsourcing?

Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 1:15 pmhttp://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/index.php?p=764

ECM consolidation - afterthought to my earlier post

Another one bites the dust - ECM Consolidation Juggernaut continues

Sarb-Ox Compliance: Five Lessons to Reduce Cost and Effort

ECM Acquisitions: What's Going On? -- CMS Watch

David Ogren's BPM Blog - ebizQ

Innovation through Co-Creation

ECM - and then there were fewer left

Agile Outsourcing

IT Redux - The 10 Flatteners

Words of wisdom from Peter Drucker that BPM practitioners might want to pay heed to

Gartner BPM Summit

BEA's acquisition of Fuego - and its impact on valuation of other BPM vendors

Compliance and the CIO - Express Computer

BEA Buys Fuego for $87.5M

IT|Redux � The World is Flat

Active Journal of Business Process Management

HIM - Human Interaction Management

Technorati: Favorite Buttons

Get $5 for signing up for this free service

Five Reasons to Invest in Process Management

CIOs strive to improve business processes | InfoWorld | News | 2006-01-23 | By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service

Business Standard - Serious Developer - Profile of Mr. Diwakar Nigam

Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs

Newgen Software helps SEC, Philippines improve access to company information

NASSCOM Product summit to honor Newgen Software and others for championing software product development

Wikis in Business

Russell Beattie Notebook ? RealNames Next

Compliance, SOXA and BPM

NewsFactor Network - Tech Trends - Open Source Steps Into ECM Shoes

Adobe still trying to solve the BPM puzzle

IBM, SAP acknowledge limtations of BPEL in processes involving human interaction

Process For The People - What is a Process?

BPM and the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2005

Next generation workflow - Vendor Voice - Network Magazine India

The ASP reincarnation - Computerworld

New definition of Business Process Management - by Gartner

How organizations approach BPM

InformationWeek > India > India's Next Step > August 8, 2005

What is Business Process Management?

Agility in deploying processes - the missing piece

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Business Process Management is Under Construction

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: IT Detours On the Road to BPM

TIBCO Faces Shareholder Suits - over faulty integration of Staffware

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: In Focus: What's Hot and Not-So-Hot in ECM

Forbes.com: Overprocessed World

IT-Director.com: What is a Business Process?

SOA Pipeline | Review: Business Process Management Suites

Compliance Pipeline | Feature: Market Analysis: Understanding Business Process Management

The Don't-Fix-It-If-It's-Not-Broken School of BPM

CIO Today - Infrastructure - Are You Ready for BPM?

Standards groups BPMI.org and WfMC consider merger - Computer Business Review

IT-Analysis.com - Business Process Management on demand

Prime Time for Real Time - BPM and the Real Time Enterprise

Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 1:15 pm
http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/index.php?p=764