Business Process Management
Business Process Management (BPM) has become one of the most important enterprise software market segments as evidenced by recent industry analyst reports, as well as a growing number of companies claiming to offer BPM software. Like the rush by a broad range of software vendors to re-brand their products as ‘CRM solutions’ when the acronym first came on the scene, the same has quickly occurred with BPM and, as was the case with CRM, the products offered by the vendors vary dramatically in capability and functionality. For this reason we have prepared this overview to describe what Savvion defines to be BPM and to show how Savvion’s product offerings are superior to other vendors’ overlapping product offerings.
What is a Business Process Management platform?
First let’s define the core element, a business process. A business process is an aggregation of operations performed by people and software systems containing the information used in the process, along with the applicable business rules.
Execution of Business Processes
The execution of a business process achieves a business objective. The people and systems may be inside the boundaries of a company, but often times are in multiple enterprises needing to collaborate to achieve their business objectives. These processes also include business rules that may be documented policies and procedures, as well as the undocumented ‘how we really do things’ rules that exist in most enterprises.
A comprehensive Business Process Management platform provides an organization with the ability to collectively define their business processes, deploy those processes as applications accessible via the Web that are integrated with their existing software systems, and then provide managers with the visibility to monitor, analyze, control and improve the execution of those processes in real time. To be a comprehensive BPM platform a system must not only automate processes, it must:
- Integrate with existing operational systems such as ERP and databases
- Integrate business processes with those of a company’s suppliers and partners
- Incorporate the business rules that guide a business
- Provide managers with the visibility into those automated processes to monitor operations in real time
- Offer managers the ability to deal with exceptions when they occur by changing business rules or entire processes to respond to business conditions in real time
BPM Versus EAI
Many products on the market today purporting to be Business Process Management systems provide only basic process automation or workflow capabilities that route tasks between systems or people. There is a great deal more involved in critical business processes. And there is a significant gap in the capabilities of a basic EAI or workflow system and a comprehensive BPM system like Savvion BusinessManager.
If you were to consider an enterprise as an interconnected set of layers with the very top being the business strategy layer and the bottom the IT infrastructure layer you would begin to see how very different BPM is from EAI, Application Server and Workflow systems. The terms that make up the acronyms BPM, Business, Process and Management and EAI Enterprise Application Integration give a good indication for where they fit into the enterprise ‘stack’. BPM provides an organization with the ability to define at a business strategy level its processes, then automate those processes in a controlled application to execute on that strategy and finally to provide business managers with the visibility to monitor and analyze the operation of those processes to improve their operation and to resolve business problems when they occur. EAI, on the other hand is a ‘middleware’ technology that provides the ‘plumbing’ to route data between applications (application integration). EAI operates at the technology layer of a business and is a set of programming tools used by an IT organization to reduce the amount of custom software that would otherwise need to be written. BPM addresses business issues and EAI addresses IT issues. As the top layer in the stack, BPM serves as the critical business productivity layer linked to the software systems, applications, middleware, databases, messaging technologies and the IT resources of large scaled business enterprises to execute those processes. Some applications such as ERP systems incorporate the middleware and databases in one layer. Others, like new Supply Chain Management (SCM) products, exist at the application layer and run on top of application servers and EAI/B2Bi services.
It is very important for a BPM platform to allow processes that span multiple enterprises and use multiple existing software systems, to be defined quickly and to be deployed rapidly. Otherwise, a BPM platform provides little value to no value as a business automation and management platform. Business is in a constant state of change, driven by internal and external activities and a business process management system must be able to respond to these changes. What of Overlapping Systems?
When looking at product offerings claiming to offer BPM capabilities, it is important to recognize that these products were developed to address specific problems, such as routing documents and tasks between office workers, in the case of Workflow, and coordinating the flow of information between legacy systems, in the case of EAI technology. While both of these capabilities are important to the operation of a thriving business and are core features of Savvion BusinessManager, they are only elements of a BPM system, and not a true BPM system, given their limited capabilities.
Workflow Systems
Basic Workflow products overlap with BPM systems as they address one element of BPM, providing for the definition and flow of operations performed by people. Workflow systems: - Are designed for groupware and human collaboration applications.
- Do not integrate operations to be performed by software systems.
- Typically are based on client-server architectures (rather than Web-based thin client architectures)
- Limit operations to those performed inside the enterprise.
- Do not allow business rules to be aggregated with business operations.
As Workflow companies move to extend their systems to address the above deficiencies, it invariably means grafting new technologies on old architectures or entirely redeveloping their products, both expensive and problematic processes.
Existing workflow products, in addition to having client-server architectures, rather than Web architecture, have been implemented in C or at best in C++ languages rather than in Java. They represent processes in proprietary notations rather than in XML. They do not have rule and integration engines, which are essential components of a top down business productivity BPM platform. EAI/B2Bi Systems
Existing EAI/B2Bi products overlap with BPM systems as they provide for the flow of operations performed by systems to be defined and executed. This is in effect facilitating the flow of information between integrated applications. EAI/B2Bi systems:
- Have been designed to integrate applications that execute related business transactions
- Typically do not allow operations to be performed by people
- Are technical, low-level systems requiring extensive IT expertise to deploy
- Are tied to an integration server and cannot be used without it
- Provide no business management capability, as their purpose is automation.
As with workflow systems, EAI/B2Bi companies are also looking to extend their systems to address the above deficiencies with the same negative impact. Adding Workflow to an EAI/B2Bi system facilitates information routing process, but does nothing to address the underlying business process and business management problems enterprises face. It is important to recognize that a process to an EAI system is typically measured in sub-seconds and their architectures are designed to meet that goal. Business processes when viewed from the business level, often take days if not months to complete (product life cycle) involving hundreds of different steps and exceptions, necessitating a systems architecture designed to manage the workload.
Two examples of EAI/B2Bi systems, which have tried to extend their products to incorporate BPM to meet growing customer demand and have failed, are webMethods and Mercator. Both tried initially to extend their systems with internally developed process functionality. After this approach failed in achieving the desired result, webMethods purchased IntelliFrame and Mercator announced an OEM relationship with Versata. Although the webMethods/IntelliFrame deal is now about one year old, webMethods still does not have a product to deliver to its customers and Mercator has yet to release BPM functionality. The basic notion of BPM in these existing EAI/B2Bi products is very different than Savvion’s. They do not have rule and integration engines, which are essential components of a top down business productivity platform.
Customers who have evaluated Savvion's BPM platform against the BPM functionality provided by EAI/B2Bi and middleware companies have said: "Savvion is at a much higher level than those other systems." What they mean is that:
- Savvion BusinessManager is a business platform, not an IT tool.
- It is much faster and easier to automate and manage business processes with Savvion, than with those other systems.
- Having all BPM functionality in one comprehensive “business” system is best
What Sets Savvion Apart?
As described above, it is very difficult for new and existing software companies to develop a product that can successfully compete with Savvion BusinessManager. This is because BusinessManager:
- Is a top down BPM platform
- Is the most comprehensive and feature-rich BPM platform
- Has been designed to manage large scale extended enterprise processes
- Is multi-platform, multilingual and middleware agnostic
- Is scalable, fully recoverable and high performance
- Enables very quick automation and deployment of business processes as extended enterprise applications
A Top Down BPM Platform
Savvion’s top down approach to developing its BPM platform is very different than the bottom up approach BPM-enabled middleware companies have taken. The top down approach led Savvion to a fundamentally different mind set in determining the requirements, architecture, implementation and functionality of its BPM solution.
A Comprehensive BPM Platform
BusinessManager consists of a comprehensive set of server and portal components, each of which embody a unique set of innovative algorithms.
BusinessManager’s Process Engine and Process Designer allow business managers and business analysts to collaborate in defining their business processes very quickly. Anyone who can use tools such as flowcharts, MS Excel and PowerPoint can use Savvion’s Business Process Designer to map out a business process. When there are needs to integrate applications for which no out-of-the-box adapter exists, business analysts can comment the process and then hand over to IT personnel to implement the adapter using Savvion’s Adapter Development Kit and add it to libraries of reusable adapters. The Designer has full expressive power for business managers to define their process flow and for IT staff to provide the necessary integration and database linkages. Once the process is defined it can be deployed very quickly as an extended enterprise application through BusinessManager’s Admin portal. All the necessary interfaces are generated automatically and can be easily customized. And, unlike other systems, when a step in the process requires a complex multi-step, multi-form interface, it can easily be defined using the same designer. There is no need to use an additional Web application development tool. Web Services
Processes that are defined with BusinessManager can be registered as Web Services automatically. Moreover, existing Web Services can be dynamically integrated as the performers of steps in business processes. Examples are credit verification in an on-line order process or automatic carrier quotations as part of an automated shipping logistics process. A Business Process Monitoring, Analysis and Control Platform
The ability to define business processes and business rules, to integrate existing applications into them and to deploy them as applications is necessary for improving business productivity, but by itself is not sufficient. The ability to monitor the execution of business processes in real time, to analyze the impact of their execution, and to then control their execution in response to changes in business conditions is equally critical.
Savvion was the first company to recognize and deliver on this need. BusinessManager has provided comprehensive management functionality from the beginning and has expanded with each successive version, based on customer feedback. Top level real-time monitoring based on balanced scorecard and process level key performance indicators, coupled with the ability to make changes while the processes are in execution, a comprehensive management dashboard and dynamic activation of rules and policies are examples of management functionality available to BusinessManager users through Savvion’s Management Portal. A Multi-platform Middleware Agnostic BPM Platform
Enterprises have various software products consisting of DBMS, ERP, Application Servers, EAI systems and point solutions, which are bought and built over time. These software systems execute the business processes of the enterprises. It is essential that the BPM platform interoperates with all these systems equally well in order for these enterprises to leverage their IT investments. This requirement is even more important for e-businesses, because e-business processes span multiple enterprises and need to interoperate with a larger set of heterogeneous IT systems. A Scalable, Fully Recoverable and High Performance Platform
Savvion BusinessManager is highly scalable enterprise software. BusinessManager’s scalability is achieved by careful use of computing resources, intelligent algorithms that swap memory information, and a multi-server distributed back-end (BusinessManager Servers) and front-end (BusinessManager Servlets) architecture.
BusinessManager is fully recoverable. Recovery is achieved by strict transactional behavior. Changes to every process state generate events that are logged in persistent data stores before they are processed. In the presence of any system failure, the latest process state is fully recovered and the latest consistent state of the system is restored. Archiving tools allow backup and storage of the persistent information, which can be restored in case of disk failures or catastrophic events.
A Rapid Business Automation and Deployment Platform
Customers have developed and successfully deployed complete extended enterprise solutions consisting of multiple processes and hundreds of steps using BusinessManager in as little as a few person-weeks. Customers such as CISCO, 3COM and Morgan Stanley have developed and deployed sophisticated and mission critical business solutions with a fraction of the resources in a fraction of the time that would have otherwise been required had they used conventional programming solutions.
The ability to define sophisticated business processes and deploy them as executable applications is critically important. Unless a BPM platform meets these requirements, it cannot be a practical business platform. This is because large enterprises often have hundreds if not thousands of business processes. A BPM system that requires extensive IT resources is not a practical solution for today’s large enterprises.
In Summary
None of the new BPM platforms have the breadth and depth of BusinessManager. Savvion has a customer base consisting of leading enterprise companies, a top-down solutions approach, ease of process automation, extensive process management, technology depth and breadth, rich functionality, scalability, recoverability and high performance, setting it apart from all overlapping products.
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