BPM in Action

Dennis Byron

How BPM Helps You Around the House

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Last month I promised some detail on real-life business process management (BPM) case studies. I heard this one recently at PegaWorld. I admit it interested me because I am a customer of the company, American Home Shield (AHS). In the U.S. (and I think Canada) you might know AHS better as MerryMaids, ServiceMaster, Terminex, TruGreen and similar brands.

AHS is using Pegasystems' BPM software to support service call scheduling, customer follow-up and other customer-facing processes by tying CRM systems together with the backoffice. I was amused because the presenters--Lynda Schirck of AHS and Jeff Akin of Pega--said cancelling a service request is one of the most frequent processes the BPM system has to handle. Guilty as charged; I do it to my AHS technician at least twice a year (out of four possible calls!!)

The presenters' major pieces of advice for those thinking of choosing a BPM-based implementation over ERP or CRM:


  • Get the business group to own the project, not IT

  • Get partners and even customers involved in changing business processes

  • Upgrade the business activity from worklfow to true business processing (I don't agree with their terminology but I talk about making human-centric workflows more straight-through; get the person out of the equation as much as possible in order to--in AHS's case--let the human give better customer service where it is truly needed)

If you are a user of BPM software with an experience you would like to share (or provider of BPM software that would like to suggest a user I could talk to for more blog posts like this), drop me an email at dennis@ebizq.net.

-- Dennis Byron

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Business process management and optimization -- philosophies, policies, practices, and punditry.

Dennis Byron

Dennis Byron is an analyst with ebizQ, focusing on Open Source Software as well as Business Process Management technologies.


His popular columns and blog entries on the enterprise open source space give ebizQ an edge as the only publication currently covered Open Source from a market perspective. Visit Dennis’ blog,"Open Source Up the Stack," here. Dennis is a speaker and moderator on all ebizQ programming relating to Open Source concepts.

Dennis Byron is also the principal of IT Investment Research.


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