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Business Process Management Vendor Checklist (Part 3)

The following 10 areas of major BPM requirements, along with the associated details described in the sections that follow, can serve as a "jump start" set of criteria to help determine what's needed to address a particular process problem. However, these requirements only address the functional and technical starting points. Other areas — such as vendor viability, support channels and customer references — would be part of a comprehensive request for information (RFI).

Detailed Support of Business Process Flow for Human-to-Human-Related Tasks:
Workflow automation is a key factor that distinguishes better BPM tools. Although many application-integration-rich BPM tools handle system-to-system and human-to-system interactions, they haven't fulfilled the human-to-human requirements as effectively, and many may never support such efforts. Peer-to-peer (P2P) collaboration is a critical component of many business processes. Managing roles and tasks for routing, review and approval can be cumbersome in some systems. Exception handling and ad hoc changes by end users are standard checkbox items. Watch out for BPM offerings that perform system-to-system interactions poorly or do not have a partner to bolster this type of activity.

BPM Ease of Use in Operation/Development and Administration:
This is an area in which the capabilities of BPM vendors varies significantly; however, it is a critical component of workflow automation. An "Achilles' heel" of business process flow automation is moving to the delivery stage without a scrap of design. This has been a major component of process implementation failures. Even if more scientific means of process design are ignored or omitted, there's a lot to be said for BPM's graphical representation of process flows for humans, who can "eyeball" the processes to find flow execution issues.

Architectures, Standards and Complex Flows Supported:
The concept of "playing well with other systems" is a critical factor in a successful implementation. In the future, new applications integration and the architectural implications of Web services will play a key role in BPM development.

Performance and Scalability of BPM Software:
Typically, BPM software is put into production to solve a single business problem and then is extended to other uses. If the software can't manage multiple, complex processes or work well in a distributed environment, the problems will overwhelm the benefits.

Management:
Reducing reliance on IS personnel to manage a system that is intended to support multiple LOBs requires Web-browser-based end-user access to many administrative functions. As many of the management functions as possible should be addressed through a Web client, including ad hoc rule changes by end users.

Business Activity Monitoring Capabilities:
The ability to review system and human performance is a key factor in leveraging the technology. Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) is the provision of real-time access to critical business performance indicators. BAM systems deliver alerts and short-period summaries of business events and metrics in something close to real time. BAM offers enterprises the ability to do the following:

• Increase the efficiency of their processes and, in some cases, monitor shifts of priority between conflicting goals (such as minimum cost and maximum customer engagement) in real time
• Increase customer satisfaction by improving the continuity of service, as well as product and service quality, and providing timely status information

Agility Supported by Business Rules and Simulation:
After analysis and design, the results usually end up in a buttoned-down flow solution that represents a best practice and a balanced business process flow to optimally support business. Implementing and maintaining a best-practice business process flow can generate significant benefits and maintain the cost savings gleaned in the analysis and design steps. It's easy to lose the benefits of the design over time or for the balance points to change. This is why adjustable business rules, which do not require a development environment and are easy for business professionals and IS personnel to change, are important. These are found in advanced BPM tools or BREs and provide the agility needed in the current business environment.

Development Environment:
Beyond flow design, role and task assignments, and event and rule management, the system should be capable of becoming a centerpiece of the applications architecture. Service-oriented development of applications (SODA) requires designing for application integration while the applications are being built. This eases the burden of after-the-fact integration and has the potential to reduce integration costs by a factor of 30 percent or more. Through the combined use of SOA and SODA, enterprises can build a foundation for agility that catalyzes a movement from monolithic systems to flexible, easily integrated solutions.

Vertical/Horizontal Template Support:
Many BPM vendors and systems integrators (SIs) focus on specific verticals, such as financial services, healthcare or manufacturing, and have built a large catalog of process flows, which can be reused by new enterprise clients with similar needs. Such vertical experience is worth considering as part of the selection criteria.

Costing/Pricing Models of BPM Software:
Pricing is based on the capacity of the underlying system (typically the server tiers, rather than the users).

Bottom Line:
The 10 functional categories outlined in our BPM vendor checklist can help enterprises draft business process management requests for information. Determining the appropriate system selection criteria is only one part of a successful implementation. The most-critical components are strategy and process design, each of which will work well only if line-of-business leaders have a direct influence on the preliminary design and ongoing changes by teaming with IS personnel. A team effort among business leaders and IT architects to weight requirement categories for the RFI will help create a shortlist of BPM vendors to assess in detail.