The Insider's Guide to Next-Generation BPM
By Beth Gold-Bernstein , 08/30/2004
Print this article
Email this article
Talk Back!
Write to Editor
The benefits of business process monitoring and management are hardly a revelation. It has been known for over half of this century that optimizing business processes yields measurable results. In the 1950s, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, a mathematician and statistician, proved that improvements in managing business processes lead to improvements in overall business and significant competitive advantage. As a result of Deming’s work, Japanese manufacturing companies were able to produce higher quality products at a lower cost and gain competitive advantage. For his efforts, in May 1960, the Emperor of Japan decorated Deming with the Second Order Medal of the Sacred Treasure, and Japanese manufacturers created the annual Deming Prize in his honor.
Deming taught that variation is created at every step in a production process, and variations have the potential to cause defects. Therefore, the causes of variation need to be identified and reduced, and companies need to practice continuous product and process improvement to improve quality and productivity and decrease costs. Deming proposed a continuous feedback and measurement cycle to reduce defects and improve product quality. To achieve measurable results and business benefits, companies must practice continuous process improvement. Several management disciplines, including the Balanced Scorecard and Six Sigma, are based on Deming’s work.
Business process monitoring and management are prerequisites for continuous process improvement. Providing real-time visibility into business processes through process monitoring is a first step toward business process improvement. In order to improve processes, companies must first understand where the bottlenecks are. However, identifying the fact that there is a problem is just the first step. Continuous process improvement requires all levels of the organization to have visibility and control into the business processes, including IT management, business operations, and business management. Business process monitoring and management are becoming prerequisites for companies seeking to optimize business processes, reduce operational costs, gain real-time visibility into key performance indicators, and ultimately increase competitiveness.
The good news is that there are a large number of solutions on the market. The bad news is that the shake-out has not yet occurred, and there is also a great deal of confusion. For example, the BPM acronym stands for business process management (which usually includes monitoring and reporting on end-to-end business processes and may include process simulation for optimizing processes), business process monitoring (which refers to the real time visibility into business processes, also called business activity monitoring (BAM) to distinguish it from BPM), business process modeling (usually the first step in automating and monitoring business processes), as well as business performance management (which includes business KPIs, business intelligence, and business event correlation).-1-
Best Practices in Moving Processes to the Clouds
How Can the Cloud Fit Into Your Applications Strategy?
Cloud Data Integration Best Practices
The Economics of Cloud Computing
Data Services Insight: Successful implementation of Canonical Information Models
How to Empower Your Business Innovators to Make the Most of Business Process Management 
Automating a Purchase Requisition Process with BPM
Pegasystems Makes Rare Deal, Buys Chordiant for $161.5m
BPM VIEWPOINT: Are You Asking Yourself the Hard Questions about BPM in Today's Economy?
BPM VIEWPOINT: Does Oracle/Sun Mean It's a Horse Race for BPM?
ebizQ editorial highlights and updates, compiled by Site Editor Anne Stuart
March 10, 2011
The sixth annual BPM in Action 2011 Virtual Conference will explore cutting-edge market developments in BPM and describe how to leverage them for improved business operation and performance. More
Date:Apr 07, 2010
Time:13:00 PM
ET- (17:00 GMT)
Date:Apr 07, 2010
Time:12:00 PM
ET- (16:00 GMT)
In part two of Joe McKendrick's recent podcast with Miko Matsumura, chief strategist for Software AG, they talk about how SOA and IT systems need to change and grow and adapt with the organization around it.
Listen Now
Phil Wainewright interviews David Vap, VP of products at RightNow Technologies, and finds out how sharing best practices can help businesses understand how best to engage with online communities.
Listen Now
Scott Hebner, Vice President of Marketing and Strategy for IBM Rational, discusses a topic on the top of every company's mind today: getting the most from IT investments.
Listen Now
In BI, this tough economy and the increasing role of Web 2.0 and MDM are certainly topics on people's minds today. WiseAnalytics' Lyndsay Wise addresses each of them in this informative podcast.
Listen Now
Deepak Singh, President and CTO of Adeptia, joins ebizQ's Dennis Byron in a podcast that gets its hand around the trend of industry-specific BPM.
Listen NowSmart event processing can help your company run smarter and faster. This comprehensive guide helps you research the basics of complex event processing (CEP) and learn how to get started on the right foot with your CEP project using EDA, RFID, SOA, SCADA and other relevant technologies. Learn More
A lot of people are talking about Enterprise 2.0 as being the business application of Web 2.0 technology. However, there's still some debate on exactly what this technology entails, how it applies to today's business models, and which components bring true value. Some use the term Enterprise 2.0 exclusively to describe the use of social networking technologies in the enterprise, while others use it to describe a web economy platform, or the technological framework behind such a platform. Still others say that Enterprise 2.0 is all of these things. Learn More
|
|
This new publication from our sister site SearchSOA.com explores workflow, business activity monitoring (BAM) and complex event processing (CEP) issues. |
|
|
