Yesterday Lombardi announced availability of Blueprint, its on-line process modeling tool designed for business people, and offered on a SaaS basis. Lombardi also announced process definition packages to accelerate the development and deployment of processes.

I decided to hold off on this blog post this until I actually had a chance to check this out. Lombardi is claiming it’s one of the easiest modeling tools on the market. I’ve used the SaaS modeling tools from TIBCO, and Intalio, and I’ve looked at some Visio based tools. I wanted to check into this one. So here’s my first impression.

My initial question when I logged in was “where is the BPMN pallet?” I was expecting to see all the BPMN shapes up there to drag and drop. Instead, Blueprint offers two views. One is the business level discovery view which essentially has milestones and activities (business level ideas). To add decision points and loop backs, etc, you right click on a line to choose a shape. I wondered if Lombardi had read the Israeli pilots manual. There was a story (I admit I don’t know if it’s actually urban legend because I have not verified it) that a panel tried to determine best practices by the best Israeli fighter pilots. What made them so successful? The pilots only agreed to talk after they were promised there would be no recriminations. But the answer was that when they got into a combat scenario, they shut down most of the control panel to only focus on what was relevant to finding and shooting the enemy. This is the approach that Lombardi has taken. Not a lot on the pallet to get confused by, but you can go deeper by right clicking.

In the discovery view you add things like business owners, process experts, inputs and outputs, any problems (which can also be color codes), and documentation. In other words it’s the initial business view. From there, you can simply change views to the Process Diagram and get the full BPMN diagram with swim lanes. There is also a documentation view. It is fairly easy to link to sub processes and go back and forth between linked processes. I found this to be a major differentiator from other tools I’ve tried.

Lombardi also announced packages, which are built around things you would do with Blueprint. These are service offerings that include Lombardi’s BPM methodology. They announced a Process Inventory Package, a three week service offering where they will inventory all the processes in a certain area of the business to increase productivity. There is also a Process Assessment package, a 3 day service which focuses on a certain area of the business with the goal of understanding which of the detailed processes impact key KPIs and SLAs. There is also a two-week Process Analysis to detail a BPM process. These are all fixed priced service offerings.

You can go online and check Blueprint out for free, which allows you to model a few processes. The full version will allow you to import Visio diagrams, of course model more processes, export diagrams to PowerPoint, print them, provide a shared repository, and integrate with Teamworks to automate the processes.

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I recently spoke with Matt Calkins, President and CEO of Appian. Matt (or his PR agency) come up with a BPM Hippocratic Oath. I was intrigued so I took the call and did a podcast.

Listen to or download the 9:32 min. podcast below:

Download file

Now I understand the need for PR (no such thing as bad press, right?), but I'm really not sure about this one. Do no harm is not what I would advise companies when they embark upon BPM. I asked Matt what the inspiration for this oath was and he said he thinks BPM should be growing as fast as ERP was growing in the 1990's, and we need to overcome the obstacles that are impeding its growth. He equates BPM with ERP because they both automate business processes. However, ERP systems are business applications. Back in the 90's the Y2K issue was driving a lot of ERP adoption, as companies were taking the opportunity to replace aging systems rather than investing big bucks in Y2K remediation, which could be dangerous with old brittle systems.

BPM is not a business application itself although it can be used to implement business solutions. It's about orchestrating SOA solutions, optimizing business processes, while reusing existing assets. I really don't see BPM as being the same as ERP nor do I see it replacing ERP.

Matt says one of the ways BPM does harm is not involving all the people. He says BPM should not be used to redesign processes. Processes should be implemented AS IS and then evolve, and no on should be left out. I think he even says that if you change a process it can't evolve. I actually found this position rather unique. Many organizations are using BPM to improve business processes. Probably all organizations have redundancies in their business processes - people rekeying information, redoing work that's already be done elsewhere. Why would you want to duplicate that? Many BPM tools have simulation engines so you can change the process and see if that changes the time or cost equation. Most companies I have spoken with use BPM for the express purpose of changing their processes to make them more efficient. That's the value proposition of BPM.

I think Matt's real point was that it needs to be easy for people to interact with a process and if it's not easy they won't use it. Now that I can buy. But the Hippocratic Oath for BPM? I was not convinced. Were you? Are the issue Matt speaks about the issues you are facing in your BPM implementations?

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The last sound clip from the Gartner PBM conference is of Keith Sharp, Director Solutions Marketing, Ascentn. What is interesting about Ascentn is that it is uniquely architected to managed less predictable and ad hoc processes. I asked Keith why that is so. Please note that in this recording I mispronounced the company name (which I only learned about afterwards). Many apologies. The correct pronunciation should be ah-sen-tin.

Listen to the Ascention Podcast

Please let me know if you like these sound clips. It's a surprisingly large amount of work for our podcast production team, so I'd appreciate some feedback as to whether you think it's worth the effort.

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I caught up with Jim Sinur, Chief Strategy Officer at Global 360. Before joining Global 360 Jim was the leading BPM analyst at Gartner. He tells us he is having a lot of fun at Global 360 helping to shape the future of BPM. One area Jim is focusing on is Process Intelligence. I asked Jim exactly what that is. Frankly, I think he's on to something here. Right after the BPM conference Gartner held it's first Event Processing Summit. Providing business managers with real-time feedback and predictive capabilities on their business processes will provide the next level of business agility and intelligence. Listen to how Jim Sinur defines process intelligence and what it will do for organizations.

Listen to the Global360 Podcast

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At the Gartner BPM conference I spoke with Samir Gulati, VP marketing, Appian. who coincidentally is an alum of Pegasystems. Samir is pretty bullish on Appian. He cited the fact that a privately held company can be more innovative and forward looking when they don't need to perform to market expectations each quarter. Samir's examples of Appian's innovation were its content management capabilities and portal. It's always fun to talk to someone who is very excited about what they're doing, so I turned the mike on Samir as well.

Listen to or download the 3:22 min. podcast below:

Download file

Hope you enjoy the podcasts. Got to run to my next meeting. Will be back soon with more news from the conference.

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As you know from my previous post, I started recording snippets of my discussions at the Gartner conference. My idea was to bring you a more direct experience of what some of the leading BPM thinkers are saying these days.
One of these people is certainly Phil Gilbert, Executive Vice President and CTO of Lombardi Software. If you caught the panel discussion at our BPM in Action conference moderated by Sandy Kemsley. you know what a passionate and articulate speaker Phil Gilbert is. I caught up with Phil at the Lombardi party. Now, if anyone has ever been to a Gartner conference, you know that alcohol is served (rather liberally) at these parties, and I must admit to imbibing in a couple of glasses of wine. But Phil is just as articulate and passionate as ever so this clip is definitely worth a listen.

Listen to the Lombardi Podcast

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Greetings from not-so-sunny Orlando. Not that it matters. I can see the pool from my hotel window, but haven't made it out of the hotel yet. Too busy catching up with the BPM vendors down here.

Yesterday I spoke with Alan Trefler, CEO and founder of Pegasystems. Alan is ALWAYS very bullish about anything he speaks about. In the beginning Pegasystems had to explain why you should do BPM with rules. Now every BPM vendor has built, bought or OEMed a rules engine. But Alan says it's not the same. There are advantages in both performance and agility with it's a unified platform. When I asked him about Pegasystems and SOA, another hot topic at this conference. Alan told me that Pegasystems was built in a service oriented architecture. p>Listen to or download the 5:17 min. podcast below:

Download file

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If you missing the live broadcast of BI in Action you can still view the archive recordings. It was a great look at the growing importance of BI to the organization.

Bill Gassman, Research Director, Gartner, talked about how BI is being used to Drive Business Performance . Bill talked about BI as "an umbrella term for applications, infrastructure, platforms, tools, and best practices," and gave examples of how organizations that make the best use of business intelligence have significant competitive advantage. In fact, he showed how the BusinessWeek top 50 Performers all used BI extensively for better decision making. He also talked about how BI is changing, and discussed a framework that includes:
- Alignment: with strategic business objectives and sponsors
- Metrics: Agreed upon Performance Management Framework
- Skills: Process managers and developers
- Integration: Reduction of analytic application silos
- Cost: Efficiency/scalability of analysis & delivery capabilities
- Information: Availability, agility, transparency and data quality

Bill also talked about the trends and the technologies to watch over the next 5 years, especially the combination of BAM, BI and BPM for enabling rapid business response. In fact, Bill indicated that companies that fail to keep up with these trends do so at their own peril. So be sure to tune into this webinar.

For those of you looking for a BI primer, look no further than Boris Evelson's presentation on the Current State of the BI Market. . Boris defines Business Intelligence (BI) as "a set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information". He had one slide that outlined all of the different capabilities of BI and all the different technologies and features required to deliver a set of functionality.

Boris then gives a refreshingly candid overview of all the vendor offerings in the market based on this categorization of capabilities. I highly recommend Boris' presentation to anyone interested understanding BI, and the different technology options. Boris' presentation ran a bit long so we didn't have much time for questions (but it was worth it). However, he was kind enough to answer some questions offline so check them out. Boris also suggests checking out Forrester's Information and Knowledge Management blog.

It seems the panel discussions are always the most popular sessions and this conference was no exception.
Rob Risany, Director, Product Marketing, Savvion, Michael Corcoran, Chief Marketing Officer, Information Builders, Guy Weismantel, Senior Director of Corporate Marketing, Business Objects and Joe McKendrick, BI in Action Blogger all participated in a discussion on the Role of BI in BPM and SOA. This was a very interesting discussion that really highlights in growing importance of BI services within the overall architecture, and the role it plays in making business perform better. Definitely worth a hour of your time.

Let us know what you think.

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We have another great line-up of presentations for the 2nd day of BPM in Action. The day starts with Janelle Hill’s keynote on BPM technology. She called it From Best- of-Breed Tools to BPM Suites to Business Process Platforms. I call it a primer on BPM technology. This was the first time I’ve had the pleasure of working with Janelle. For those of you who don’t know her, she is extremely knowledgeable and great to work with. This one is a must see. Please feel free to pass along the link to others in your organization. The session will be available for archive viewing after the live event is over.

At noon, we have a case study on how the Babcock and Wilcox company uses BPM to Improve Sales Performance and Productivity. This is a good session to attend if you’re looking for some proof points on how BPM technology can help you improve business performance. There’s also some very valuable information on their experience on deepening the partnership between business and IT and the benefits they received. This case study is an opportunity to pick up some best practices for your next BPM initiative.

At 1:00 ETJoshua Greenbaum, Principal, Enterprise Applications Consulting will interview Richard Sides, SVP Information Technology, Preferred Meal Systems Incorporated. They will talk about Richard's experience in creating a business process platform strategy. Josh is a long time IT expert and a former Hurwitz Group colleague. Josh and Richard are sure to have some good tips and advice for you so take the opportunity to ask some questions.

The last session of the conference is the live panel session that I will be moderating and I’m psyched about this one. I have Dr. Bruce Silver, who is a noted expert on BPM and also the author of a BPMN course which recently launched. You can find out more about it by checking out the Resource Center in the show. I also have Dr. Jeffrey Sterllings – a fictional character with real world expertise. Stephanie Wilkinson and Steve McDonald will also be on the panel to talk about how companies are using BPM technologies to solve different types of process problems.

All sessions include live Q&A so you will have the opportunity to interact with the experts and get your questions answered. You also have the opportunity to talk to reps and other visitors in the show and the virtual booths. A few visitors today said the show was "cool". Check it out! . And while you're there, stop by the ebizQ booth and say hello.

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Our second virtual conference and trade show launches today. We’ve been VERY busy putting this all together. As chair of the conference I’ve had the opportunity to hear all the sessions. Our keynotes are great. Over time I think we’ll get more archive viewers than live. Ken Vollmer will give a great business oriented primer on BPM. After hearing it you’ll want to pass the link along to your boss or business manager.

At noon ET you’ll hear how Johnson & Johnson used BAM as a starting point for optimizing their business processes. First measure then optimize.

Then at 1:00 ET Sandy Kemsley is leading a panel. I recently met Sandy in person for the first time at the Gartner show in San Diego. While I was in vendor briefings 10 hours a day, Sandy actually got to go to sessions. At the parties, she was greeted enthusiastically by her readers, one of whom described her style as “bare naked blogging”. Well, that pretty much describes Sandy. Tune in to hear her bare naked panel which is likely to be a lively discussion on Enterprise 2.0. Come as you are. Clothes optional.

Be sure to visit the virtual booths. It's not quite like Second Life where you can spend a whole lot of time bumping into walls and other people, but you can interact with visitors and vendors.

There's also a Resource Center with a lot of links for different kinds of BPM training. Definitely work a look see. Stop by the ebizQ booth and be sure to say hi!

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On Mar 7th at 2:00 we're going to have a lively panel discussion on how to support different business requirements for human, automated and collaborative processes. Dr. Bruce Silver, an expert in BPM and BPMN will be participating and sharing his research on tools requirements. Also, due to the unique capabilities of a virtual tradeshow, we will actually have a fictional character on the panel, Dr. Jeffrey Sterllings, a mildly eccentric IT and management guru, and main character of The Power of Process: Unleashing the Source of Competitive Advantage.

I must admit, when Kiran Giramella told me he was writing a BPM novel was skeptical. But after reading the book I would highly recommend it to anyone who either wants to understand BPM and how it can be used in the business, or needs to help their boss or business manager the benefits of BPM. It’s actually a good read, and as an added bonus, has some good soup recipes. 6 lucky attendees will also get the opportunity to win a copy of the book.

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