Patrick Morrissey, SVP Marketing and Business Development

Gartner just released the newest Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites and I am proud to say that Savvion has once again been named a leader. This is both a tremendous honor for us as well as continued proof of our overall leadership in the market. We have been a leader since the first version of the BPM quad (before we got to suites) was published way back in 2002, and the trend continues.
The most recent MQ comments on how vendors with a pure play background have come to the BPMS market based on model driven process execution. This is a product strategy and approach that we pioneered, allowing the Savvion process modeler as a freely available download from our website for the past several years. As a result more than 100,000 people have downloaded the modeler as the first step to creating their own process solution. Among the strengths that Gartner calls out about Savvion:

- Savvion BusinessManager 7.0 is one of the most mature products in this analysis…proven ability to handle high volume workflows requiring tight coordination of people and systems has contributed to success
- Savvion’s tightly integrated J2EE suite aligns the right capabilities to various roles including process analyst, business process architect and process participants - all classes of users
- Savvion’s process modeler and process repository are easy for business people to use

- Our new process-monitoring and analysis component, Business Expert, analyzes in flight processes and dynamically suggests changes - this is both extremely powerful and differentiated in the market
As you might expect, we are very pleased by the report and our strong showing. This is testament to the strength of our team, our products, our continued execution in the marketplace and most importantly, our customers. Ultimately you are judged by the company you keep, and our customer base includes industry leaders across multiple segments and geographies - Morgan Stanley, GE, GM, Capital One, Sprint, Verizon, Level 3, Reliance Capital, Motorola, AT&T, Genpact, Southwest Airlines, ADP, Bank of America and more…we appreciate the trust they have placed in us and we are committed to helping them use process to enable competitive advantage.

Gartner notes that over the next 5 to 10 years as both process management and SOA evolve, business and IT users will use model driven approaches for managing work, resulting in applications in little or no coding. We believe this change is happening in real time right now and we are happy to be leading the charge as we move into 2008.

Congratulations to the entire team.

Posted by Angela Machtmes, Savvion Marketing

It all started a few weeks ago when I checked my mail and I had a renewal notice for my drivers license.  Lucky for me I only had to pay my $27, take a vision test, give a thumb print, and take a new picture.  That should be easy enough.  Until I remembered the nightmare lines that the DMV always had, never once, not once did I stroll into the DMV office, head right up to a clerk, take care of my business and leave.  Nope, not once.  It has always been a day long event.  Clear your calendar as you were going to spend the day at the DMV office.  Oh joy I thought and to top it off, it was the week before Christmas!!

When my husband got home, I shared the happiness of getting the renewal notice and also shared the displeasure of spending the day at the DMV office (mind you I haven’t been in a DMV office for 13 years, but the horrid memories are forever there).  He let me know that I can book an appointment online now and to be sure to do it that way.

Fast forward 3 weeks and 1 week away from my expired license, I go online and quickly and with no issues schedule an appointment for Monday at 9:40am.  Alrighty, I am well on my way.  On Monday, I head out of the house at 9:00am as traffic will delay me and I did not want to lose my appointment at 9:40am for being late!  I was amazed when I pulled into the lot at 9:22am.  I gather my form, confirmed appointment letter, and I head into the DMV.  The place is packed with people.  There were so many people there is was unbelievable.  There are signs EVERYWHERE.  20 windows total with EVERY ONE being used!!  There is a whole section for people taking their written test.  There is a line for those wanting to take their actual driving test.  There is a whole section of chairs with people sitting in them.  I think “oh geesh, I am going to be here forever”.  The only sign that I couldn’t find – amidst all the vision signs EVERYWHERE – was the “Check in here” or “Start here” sign.  Finally I watched as everyone else walked in the door and up to this one window.  She would give them a number and off they went to take care of their business.  Finally I went up and announced who I was and that I have a 9:40am appointment.  She took my form, looked on her sheet, crossed off my name, gave me a ticket (F017) and asked me to have a seat on the right and keep watch for my number on the monitor.  Great.  I head over and take a seat.  I was sitting there maybe 2 minutes, when a woman comes by with a clipboard and says she will do my vision test.  I can remain seated and just look over there and look at panel B – read line 1.  Then with one eye covered, read line 3.  Then with the other eye covered, read line 5.  All done, passed that.  She initialed it and told me to sign my form.  I signed it and then my number came up on the screen.  I head over to Window 14.  I give her my form, she wants my $27.00 – cash or check only.  She has me sign the form (a different one) and follow the blue lines.  She points to where the blue lines are.  (I did overhear another clerk telling someone to follow the white arrows.  I also noticed that there were green lines on the floor as well.)  I head over to the blue line and see that this is the picture and thumb print place.  When I get to the front, I notice a big mirror – great just what I need.  I freshen up, puff up my hair, adjust my scarf, and practice a quick smile.  I’m next.  I hand the lady my form.  She has me sign on one of the credit card type machines.  I then put my thumb on a red light.  Then I stand back and take a picture.  She hands me my temporary license, tells me it will be 2-3 weeks in the mail, and wishes me a Merry Christmas.  I’m done.  I am back in my car at 9:41m.  19 minutes at the DMV – that is pretty darn good.  I was quite pleased and except for that one big “Start here” sign that was missing at the beginning; the DMV has quite the process.  They get a bad rap.  I had been dreading going to the DMV as it would be an all day sit and wait game.  Nope, not anymore.  They have their process down and they should feel proud.

Posted By — Rob Risany, Director of Product Marketing, Savvion  

2007 will go down in the record books as the year of product recalls.  Consider:

• Two weeks after a report found that the big three automakers had massive improvements in quality (Jan 6, 2007 — Detroit Free Press), GM issued a massive recall on Chevy Cobalts.  Toyota’s quality standards came under fire with the recall of more than half a million pick up trucks / SUVs in January.
• Maytag’s critical recall on high end dishwashers (that were blamed for at least 135 fires) received significant attention due to call center hold times.  A myriad of fire related recalls have been issued for microwaves, ovens and other consumer products
• Quality problems in kids toys have been covered extensively on this site.  The infamous “date rape drug” issue with Aqua Dots made everyone cringe.

Fundamentally, the web gives us increased visibility into the scope of quality recalls which impact us everyday.  Many lawyers in the toy industry have expressed concern that that companies don’t find the “teeth” in the Consumer Product Safety Commission to be strong enough to incent any change in behavior.

It’s probable that the impact of globalization is that traditional quality assurance measures aren’t up to the task at hand.  Processes were designed when products were manufactured solely in the US, and cost reduction efforts have led to corner cutting on people based oversight in most sectors.

It’s time for companies to really step back and re-build their quality processes.  Let’s make 2008 the year we do that.
R

Patrick Morrissey - SVP Marketing

Recently, Savvion customer Motorola was profiled as part of a great article in CIO Magazine titled Strategies For Dealing with IT Complexity. The article addresses the inherent issue of IT complexity and its impact on the business. It also calls to the fore the ability of business process modeling and process solutions to deal with how to design and maintain an IT architecture that deals with near term business unit requirements and longer term organization change with flexibility.

The CIO article suggests four key requirements to manage organizational complexity:

First, make process central to your IT organization’s approach to technology.

Second, you need superior governance of both the technology infrastructure and the business-IT relationship.

Third, everything you do must have simplicity as the default expectation.

Fourth, your efforts must be ongoing. Complexity is not something you get rid of once and for all. It’s a battle you wage every day.

Making process central to IT approach to technology is the critical first step and one of the main reasons why many organizations are embracing BPM from Savvion as they make the move to a process driven architecture in response to business realities. The CIO article addresses many of the common challenges: Existing architecture is not capable of meeting business requirements for agility, too much IT complexity impacts cost and ability to construct new solutions, simplicity is king. BPM is a solution to attack all these issues with rapid results. It also helps attack the people problem inherent in the second issue - governance and how to manage the business and IT relationship.

Motorola’s approach has been to develop a process-driven architecture. According to Patty Morrison, CIO of Motorola, “architecture must be aligned to business objectives…You very, very much need to have an end-state architecture in place—a description of where you’re headed.” Morrison notes that the move to a process driven architecture is very challenging for a variety of reasons both technical and cultural. She points the reality that business units must work together.

Getting people to work together is not easy on the best days for many organizations. One of the reasons Motorola has adopted Savvion is that we offer our process modeling tool as a stand alone product (available as a free download here) so that people across business lines and roles can model their own processes on their own terms. This is critical for definition and to get everyone on the same page regarding the actual process in question so that they can make changes, simulate and refine a solution that is both custom to their requirements and potentially reusable across business lines. This shrinks requirements as well as addresses the common problem of throwing requirements over the wall to IT to deal with. Morrison comments on this issue directly in the article.

This approach also ensures that business-IT conversations don’t devolve into throwing requirements over the wall, an approach that usually adds complexity in two ways. One is that IT fulfills the business’s requirements outside the overall architecture, often leading to multiple ways of doing the same thing. These processes must then be reconciled, which frequently requires custom interfaces for other systems that no one (certainly not the business) realized would be affected. The other complexity add comes from IT’s interpretation of those over-the-wall requirements. It usually misses something, leading to multiple rounds of rework and patches that make the final system ever more complex. By contrast, the architecture-based approach at Motorola “creates a rich, interactive, high-quality conversation around real solutions, not abstracted requirements,” says Morrison.

The ability of Motorola to have this quality conversation that crosses business and IT boundaries means their success in developing and expanding solutions is much higher than that of many organizations, while maintaining the hands on flexibility and management to change those solutions and conditions require across business lines. The result is real process solutions for real people, consistent with the business requirements. As Morrison notes in the article, the impact is reduced complexity with both immediate and longer term cost savings.

Posted by Maria Ross, Director of Corporate Marketing, Savvion

It’s easy to point out all the times process goes wrong. Many of you may have experienced this in trying to either get to your family during the crazy holiday travel time, or merely the time and precision planning it takes to get a full Thanksgiving meal on the table for 17 people. In any event, sometimes it all just goes as planned.

Case in point: the recent opening of a Peet’s Coffee up the hill from my house. Amusingly, the store joins a corner already occupied by a Starbucks, Tully’s, and Caffe Lladro. I can’t wait for the Caffeine Rumble when they all come dancing out of their shops a la “West Side Story”, aprons flying, mugs drawn. Who will protect their coffee turf? But I digress….

It seems like only weeks ago the corner store stood vacant with buckets of plaster and numerous sheets of drywall haphazardly strewn about, with a “We’re Coming Soon!” sign taped to the window. Then, miraculously, tables and chairs showed up and last Monday, they were open for business - barista bar in place, art on the walls, Christmas merchandise for sale neatly on the racks. I was awestruck at how fast they assembled themselves.

And then I thought about it. Peet’s, like its competitors, probably opens new stores weekly. They literally must have a Store-in-a-Box process for getting new locations up and running. Furniture ordered: check. Display shelving assembled: check check. Heck, they probably even order the wall art in bulk and have it at the ready in a warehouse somewhere.

So somewhere along the line, someone thought about repeatable process. it’s probably someone’s job and profitability hangs in the balance for how well they can execute on opening the new location in time. They can probably open a store in their sleep at this point. I’m sure they learn new time-saving tricks with each new construction as they continually optimize this process that is the lifeblood of their business. Impressive.

What they did less well, was the process of new customer acquisition. As I’ve stated, this is a competitive coffee corner and most people have their routines. How then, to convince people to change it up and go to Peet’s? I thought they would do something special their first week: Free coffee or Peet’s merchandise (people walking on this busy sidewalk holding Peet’s travel mugs would be some good advertising); a Frequent Coffee Card in celebration of the new store; a Coffee Contest or Trade-in (we’ll take your old Starbucks travel mug for a shiny new Peet’s one) - anything to inspire new loyalty and create a sticky new customer base.

Wrong.

My husband went on the first day to see what they had to offer. Nothing. And that arrogance in such a competitive spot put him off so much, we are back at Starbucks (notwithstanding that Peet’s is yummy bit a bit too strong for us, if they had done something to set themselves apart, we might find a new hangout).

So while they got the logistics process of opening the new store down pat, they need some work on new customer acquisition. Sometimes people think of “process-centric” only in terms of physical things like construction. But process and how you repeatably do things to great success extends to softer processes as well. And in the end, it’s the dollars in the cash register that count more than a gloating person in Location Development or some such department who opened his new store in time.

By Rob Risany, Director Product Marketing, Savvion.

I just got back from the Shared Insights BPM conference in San Diego.  Besides my impression that the weather is beautiful in San Diego, I also came away with a consistent message from every business attendee I met at the show.  Across the board industry wise, and regardless of stage of adoption of BPM (both the technologies and methodologies), people are running headlong into the realities of moving their organizations from unwieldy behemoths to agile and dynamic entities.  The feedback is consistent — wait for it….

BPM is hard because BPM is scary.

• It’s hard to get executive sponsorship for projects, because executives are scared to back something that’s never been done.
• It’s hard to convince people that change is a good thing, because people are scared that if things change they’ll lose their jobs.
• It’s hard to talk cross functionally about process because managers are scared of the political implications if they shake the boat, even if they know things are broken the way they are.

Fear.  Fear.  Fear.

On the way home I had to catch the commuter flight from San Diego up to Los Angeles for my flight back to Chicago.  While standing in line to go through security, United Airlines paged me to come to the gate.  I told the TSA person I had been paged and asked if I could be moved up in line.  She replied that only the airline had the ability to do that. 

After futilely looking for a United employee at the ticket counter, I just succumbed and waited along with 4 other people who had been called.   We that travel are afraid that if we make to much noise we’ll get dragged off for the proverbial “security check in the back room.

 Finally one of us got the attention of a United employee at a desk and she said “I can’t do anything for you – it’s a TSA problem, and if I try to intervene, they’ll just yell at me.”

At the 2 minute warning for the flight, the TSA person grabbed the 5 of us and pushed us to the front of the line.  She said “This is not my job; it’s the airlines responsibility to tell us who to bring forward in the line.” We dashed through security and ran for the gate.

The door was, 10 minutes before departure time, unsurprisingly closed.  The gate agent told us we were paged and it was our fault.  We explained that TSA said it was the airlines’ responsibility.  She said, “Well, technically yes — why didn’t you tell the ticket agent?”

After explaining that we had tried and that the response was, “it’s a TSA problem” she shook her head and said, “well, I can’t do anything – if this flight goes out late I’ll be in big trouble…”

Here we have a well known broken process.  The customers know it doesn’t work.  The airline employees know it doesn’t work.  The government agency even knows it doesn’t work!

But only one person of all the people stepped out and did something: the TSA security person.  She technically broke the rules, violated the status quo all because she knew that some people wanted to get home.  She was brave enough to do it.  Kudos and BRAVO!

BPM adoption is hard because it’s scary.  We’re all scared to do something new or buck the system because we’re afraid we’ll get yelled at, pay-docked, or even fired. 

But the reality is that it’s amazing what happens when brave people do the right thing.  Sometimes people get home earlier, sometimes the customer is happier, sometimes people even get promoted. 

Fear is the mind killer – don’t succumb.

-R

Patrick Morrissey, SVP Marketing and Business Development

We have spent a lot of time in this blog tracking product recalls and the impact of lack of process with quality management and supplier on-boarding on the front end of product manufacturing process and returns and warranty management on the back end of the process.  Just when you thought it could not get worse, along comes the recall of Aqua Dots.  As of today, more than 4.2 million units of the product were recalled from store shelves after it was discovered that when the toys are ingested, they release the drug GHB, gamma-hydroxy butyrate, known commonly in the states as the “date rape” drug.

Unfortunately, this is just the latest in a long line of recalls this year ranging from computer batteries to pet food to tens of millions of children’s toys.  The Aqua Dots recall is notable for the popularity of the toy, rated #1 in Australia this year, and listed by Wal-Mart as one of their top 12 best sellers this year.  Of interest also is a comment by Michael Brown, former consumer product safety commission general council, who commented in USA Today this week that this type of problem happens, “when manufacturers are trying to meet deadlines and run out of materials or try to cut costs”.

While this recent recall also happens to come from a Chinese manufacturing company and has also been confirmed by Chinese authorities based on this article from CNN, the problem is by no means limited to China.  Timelines and cost will continue to be issues for manufacturing companies of all sizes and all categories.  Only by employing process management as a discipline and institutionalizing a BPMS product from Savvion or other leading vendors can improvements in quality and supplier on-boarding be expected to be improved.

I don’t think we are done with the issues of returns this year.  Expect more of the same.

Posted By Rob Risany, Director Product Marketing, Savvion 

I just got back from New York where I spoke on a panel regarding “Bridging the Gap Between BPM and SOA.”  It was a packed room and obviously was top of mind for many attendees.

What was interesting regarding the questions, almost exclusively posed by attendees, was how many people are grappling with the same basic issue; what types of people participate in BPM?

My favorite spin to this question was someone asking “should the responsibility of business architecture live in the business or in IT?”

The gentlemen from Deutche Banke and Bear Stearns appropriately answered the question by pointing at the value of cosponsored Centers of Excellence where both IT and the Business own process improvement as a charter.  However, I was intrigued by something else, so my response was simply:

“Does anybody else think that the terms “business” and “architecture” would ever be used in a sentence by anyone from the business?”  I got a room full of chuckles on that.  I went on to emphasize that while it’s great to have big picture business architecture plans, most people in the business just want to focus on making whatever it is they manage work better – architecture, best practices, reuse be damned!

The challenge an organization has when trying to spread the doctrines of SOA throughout a company culture is making it mean something to the business.  BPM is that “something” that makes the business care.

R

By Rob Risany, Director of Product Marketing, Savvion. 

The software giant SAP has increased its enterprise software scope by acquiring a Business Intelligence company.  The financial community reacted very negatively, carving close to 10% off of SAP’s market cap on the NYSE.  It’s interesting how the market has interpreted this as a 180 degree shift in SAP’s strategy, and merely a reaction to it’s largest rival Oracle’s acquisition of Hyperion.

But really, when you think about it, the move by SAP to further assimilate an important business facing component of the modern IT infrastructure is right in line with the historic stance of SAP:  if you are having problems with your IT systems, you obviously need more SAP. 

From the early days of ERP – as it moved out of the manufacturing world (morphing from MRP to ERP), ERP vendors have looked to lock customers into a grip whereby their only possible solution is MORE ERP. 

I see an increasing tendency by companies pursuing SOA to look at this trend and “that’s what we need – just one big vendor who will do it all for us.”  What’s ironic is that the whole push in the late 90s to internet enabled technologies – in fact the whole reason for web services in the first place – was to enable a best of breed infrastructure. Many seem to be forgetting the 24-36 month never ending consulting projects, which literally blew up some companies’ operations altogether. 

SAP like Oracle has eaten a BI company.  The question is, will the IT organization be lulled into a sense that since the corporate stationary for all of these pieces says SAP (or Oracle), that all the technology works together seamlessly?  Will IT be assimilated quietly?

Where’s Captain Picard when you need him?

Posted by Ajay Khanna, Director, Product Management, Savvion

I read the statement by some BPMN vendor as mentioned in a previous blog by Mr. Risany:

“Simulation is nice eye candy – but you’ll get more out of just deploying a process solution than spending months looking for the ‘perfect solution’ “

I am not sure I agree or disagree with the statement. This may be due to the fact that author has used the “process solution” and meant “process model.” Of course, if there was one perfect process design or model, we would not need BPM. Isn’t one of the key reasons that we adopt BPM as a management principle that business environment changes and processes need to change with it? Simulation helps you in analyzing the processes model and provides valuable insight into the process throughout the life-cycle of the process but process solution is much more than a good model. It is also about business management and work management; it is about integrating BPM, BI and BAM.

The focus should be on “elegant” BPM solution than “perfect process design.” The elegant solution would be aware of the business goals, the business environment and changes in the environment. It would have the ability, agility, scalability, flexibility and other “–ities” to keep morphing and evolving according to PEST (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological) trends. The process design is very valuable and the importance of simulation tools cannot be undermined. But if the BPM solution is good and process design not very optimal, the solution itself would change the process model to that optimum design; only thing is that it may take a few more cycles. On the contrary if you have the best process design but bad BPM solution, your process would become out-of-date and very soon sub-optimal as there were no catalysts to facilitate the process evolution with changing environment. Darwin wins again!