Updates from March, 2010

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  SMBs with under 30 employees - How do you know if your business is a candidate for bpm software?

  brian 4:45 pm on September 23, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BPM (20), business process management software (7), smb software, workflow automation (2), workflow software (3)

  I had a very interesting and lengthy discussion this evening with an SMB that had been reading about our company’s BPM software and was pretty certain that Business Process Management Software in general could be used to improve the way he did businesses.  He prefaced the call by saying he had only a handful of people in his company and that he understood based on my previous blog post that this meant that he probably wouldn’t be a candidate for BPM Software.  However, he had also read that there were exceptions (as I noted) and that he believed his business was an exception because his business was based on a very sophisticated, high value add workflow thereby justifying the utility of a good bpm software.  He ran through the process with me verbally over the phone, and ….eureka!  Together we struck BPM Gold.  His business was indeed based on one of those beautiful, niche based workflows that could easily be automated with a simple to use workflow software solution eventhough he was part of a very small SMB.

  So, I thought it would be worth digging a little deeper (without talking specifically about this man’s particular business) in order to help other SMB owners and managers out there reading this blog to understand whether or not BPM software can help improve your business.  To make things a little more interesting, for the purpose of this post, we are going to narrow our focus and talk about SMBs that have less than 30 employees.  As I said previously, if you have 100 employees or more, and they are using computers (i.e. office workers instead of picking oranges) than BPM is definitely for you.  So if that is the case, you should skip this blog post and start finding a good BPM Vendor and start trialing their software.

  Assuming you are a business with less than 30 employees, or a consultant (BPM consultants, Business Process Improvement Consultants, business re-engineering consultants, etc) trying to figure out if BPM software is the software you need for a client then try taking the test below.

  Now, bare in mind what I have developed is a HIGHLY experimental framework.  I’d love to get feedback on whether or not this worked for you or not.  If you score below 5 then you definitely do not need workflow software.  For each question below if you answer positively then give yourself 1 point.   If you score between 5 and 7 then you are an average candidate for workflow software, and if you score a 7 or higher than you are an excellent candidate for BPM software.  So here we go (REMEMBER, only take this test if you have less than 30 employees!).

  1) Are you a services business or a product business?    If you have less than 25 employees and you are a product based business than you are less likely to need BPM software (remember your ERP software will handle most of the basic manufacturing and accounting processes).

  3) Do you have 2 or more 3rd parties that you subcontract part of your service to?

  4) Do the companies you interact with require you to pass structured data in order for them to provide their service to you?

  5) Have any of the companies you interact with mentioned that you can use their service through a web services API?

  6) Do you have 5 or more forms that require you or a customer or supplier to input structured data (names, numbers, addresses, yes/no)?

  7) Are your revenues above $4 million annually?

  Do you produce 1 or more documents (contracts, invoices, letters) for each transaction in your business?

  9) Do you already have a document management system, wiki, or collaboration portal set up?

  10) Do you wish you had access to reports which told you how long your core process was taking and where it is getting stuck?

  So, how did you score?  Do you need a BPM system?  Of course this test is far from perfect, but give it a shot and give me some feedback!

   

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  5 Simple Questions to see if your Business Process can be modeled and Automated using Workflow Software

  brian 9:54 pm on September 13, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bpm software (3), business process management (5), business process management software (7), workflow automation (2), workflow software (3)

  I receive questions literally every day from companies that are looking for workflow software and/or business process management software to automate workflows and automate web-form processing.   Most of my team tell me that I am the worst sales person they have ever seen.  You see, after 10 minutes on a phone call I will often tell a potential customer that his/her process cannot be modeled in workflow software and cannot be automated using business process management software and bpm technology.   And then I will often recommend another type of software and another software company.

  Most companies can’t afford to turn away leads.  But the fact is that as a successful open source company, we cannot afford not to turn them away.  Open Source is a brutally honest profession - we don’t hide anything.  All of our internal technical discussions are online, all of our manuals and screencasts are online, and yes - all of our code is open source.  So, it only comes to follow that we should be just as brutally honest in helping our potential users figure out if business process management software is the right solution for them.  So, here are a couple of questions that I like to ask to quickly figure out if the person/company on the other end of a phone call should bother looking at BPM software as a solution to his company’s problem.

  1) How many employees do you have?  If the answer is ” under 25 employees,”  then I can be 90% certain that you don’t need BPM Software, Workflow Automation Software, or anything similar.  Smaller companies value flexibility and agility much more than they value control, stability, and repeatability.  After all, if you are a small company, you are still trying to figure out your recipe for success, right?  If you already had the recipe, you’d be much bigger.  And as is the case with most recipes, there is no sense writing it down and passing it on, unless you are darn sure it is the right one.  Nobody follows grandma’s spaghetti sauce recipe unless it is good! With that said, you will notice that I don’t say 100% certain but rather 90% certain that you don’t need Business Process Management Software.  The 10% of small firms that do need it usually offer/sell very high value add, very specialized, and very highly paid niche services which unite several disparate parties in a very industry specific workflow.  In other words - not a local bakery.   Finance boutiques, specialty insurance, risk analysis, etc. - these may be small teams but they are run using very specific and formal processes, hence they are an ideal candidate for BPM.

  2) Can you send me a diagram of your workflow in any format (PPT, word, PDF, excel, etc.)?  If the answer is no, then the company has not yet reached process maturity.  Again, this is highly related to #1.  Your process needs to be mature and successful enough to warrant being written down.  I know of almost no exceptions to the following rule - A company must have first written down its process before attempting to model it in Workflow Software.

  3) What is unique about your process?  If the person on the other end of the phone describes the need for a CRM software to manage their sales process, and they are selling widgets just like the rest of the world, then I am not going to tell them to start trying to build a CRM package inside their BPM.  They could - but WHY?!?  CRM is a particular process, i.e. a subset of what is covered in BPM Software.  However, it is an extremely popular and well used process.  As a result, there are a lot of vendors that have fully built this process into a software exclusively dedicated to the process of CRM.  So - USE IT!  No need to re-invent the wheel.  The same goes for ERP.  About 15-20% of the customers I speak to really need an off-the-shelf CRM or ERP software, and I can usually figure this out in about 10 minutes.

  4) Are you looking for Project Management Software?  - This is the other question I am asking in the back of my mind as I am talking to a potential customer.  I haven’t quite figured it out yet, but there is another high percentage of people out there that think they are looking for business process management software or workflow automation software but they are really looking for project or team management software.  And, truth be told, most of the project management options around are total garbage (especially MS Project) so it is probably no surprise that everyone is looking for a better option (hint hint -big opportunity).   So, again, you could build this in your BPM - but there are some tricky issues to deal with here that most BPMs don’t do well.  The reason here is that Project Management is often more about communication and collaboration than process flow.

  5) Do you say “process management,” “order,” “control” but mean “collaboration,” “”messaging,” and “negotiation”?  Lots of small business owners think they have a process.  But in reality, they have a loose collaboration or conversation and without that conversation there is no way that they can get the customer what he/she needs. Again, this tends to be true with small companies, primarily because only small companies have the liberty of selling something so unique that it can only be resolved with lots of collaboration and conversation.  Larger firms don’t have this luxury and smaller firms that want to scale also don’t have this luxury.  It all goes back to the idea of the recipe - all businesses when they start out are looking for a recipe for success.  Once they have it, they will tend to institutionalize it, and then hire people to repeat the process over and over.  This is called “growth.”  BPM Software or Workflow Software or whatever you want to call it is ideal for mid-sized growing companies or larger companies.  There is really no secret as to why.  BPM Software is all about favoring convention over freedom and repeatability over flexibility.

  By the way, I love my local bakery and am very happy they don’t use BPM Software!

   
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  Social Media + Business Process Management - Irreconcilable Opposites or the Killer Combo?

  brian 1:23 pm on September 7, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  

  There is a lot of chatter these days about how the Social Media Frenzy affects Business Process Management and BPM Software Tools in general.  The topic comes up at every BPM Software meeting or conference I go to.  At these conferences, pundits tend to produce lots of white papers filled with plenty of confusing acronyms.  So, where does Social Media fit into the big BPM picture?

  Let me be blunt -

  It Doesn’t

  Ok, so as we will see the answer isn’t quite so cut and dry.  But don’t be fooled, social media and BPM tend to be on opposite sides of the spectrum in just about every sense.  Anyone writing a white paper to say differently is either teaching at an obscure university somewhere or writing about how their kids are using Facebook and Twitter instead of using these themselves.

  So, let’s examine the differences.  First, let’s look at business process management.  Here is a classic BPMN diagram when drawn out by BPMN Software:

  

  And the process designers and process optimizers that are using the business process management software tend to look something like these two guys:

  

  On the other hand, a social media “conversation” (that’s right - there are no “diagrams”) would look something like this if drawn out as a diagram:

  

  Oh, and let’s not forget what the Social Media user looks like compared to the BPM Software user:

  

  Are you getting the picture here?  Can I be any clearer?

  Business Process Management Software and it’s users/followers tend to be a boring, greying, tie wearing crowd.  BPM Software is all about following rules, improving efficiency, and getting large, bureaucratic organizations to operate the same way every time for a given process.  There is a word for that - CONFORMITY.

  Now, before the BPMers in the crowd start throwing stones at me - remember I am one of you!  Granted, we at ProcessMaker tend are a much hipper (and hippier) variety thanks to our Open Source Software roots.

  Social Media on the other hand is cool.  There is no other way to put it.  It isn’t worried about being efficient.  It is led by leftist leaning, che guevarra t-shirt wearing, flip-flop using, 20 somethings that are out to change the world.  While Business Process Management and Business Process Management Software is about modeling business processes and simulating them until we can make them more efficient, Social Media is about changing the very rules of business and social interaction.  Ironically some of the vocabulary crosses over - both will tell you they are eliminating silos.  But look a little more closely and BPM is moving structured data and Social Media is getting touchy feely so that everyone can share more information.

  This is not to say that Social Media has no place in the enterprise.  On the contrary, a little touchy feely goes a long way.  How do you think Casual Friday came about anyway?  Sharing is good and good creates good karma, and good karma is good business without a doubt.

  One of the coolest approaches to social collaboration in the enterprise on the market today is being done by a company called Mindtouch.  MindTouch is the open source leader in enterprise Collaborative Networks and powers next generation intranets, extranets and knowledge bases.  They are are two steps ahead of the curve of how social collaboration can, should, and will happen in the enterprise.

  So, now that I’ve just explained why Social Media and Social Media Software is incompatible with BPM - let me tell you how despite the differences the two can and should co-exist intimately.  Everything I’ve written about above is true - the two are on opposite sides of the spectrum.  But what ties the two together is that business needs both.  And when we talk about software residing in an enterprise, then we’ve got to talk about how they can and should interact.  The great thing about being the leading open source workflow and bpm company is that we don’t have to figure it all out ourselves - our fanatical bpm community usually beats us to the punch.  And speaking about Mindtouch - we are getting some clues from their users as well.  Have a look at this post in the Mindtouch Forums - not the first user to call for a mashup between ProcessMaker and Mindtouch - BPM + Social Enterprise.

  BPM Software is all about enforcing structure.  And large enterprises crave structure so that they can insure that their processes are performed in a consistent manner across divisions or at least from one employee to the next and one iteration to the next.  All of of this translates into producing a repeatable product or service.  Social media is all about an informal transmission of knowledge and methods.  So imagine a healthy organization having an ongoing conversation across systems and media and topics, but knowing when and how those informal conversations trigger a) the start of formal processes and b) the updating of information about the running of those processes and c) an  interactive way for group think to improve those processes over time.  Sound interesting?

  For ProcessMaker we are imagining our BPM Software running inside software like Mindtouch where users can collaborate and share but also execute, improve, and repeat.  In other words, imagine a collaborative internet where you can see your process tasks, get real-time information about best practices contributed by your colleagues and customers, and allow real-time social networked feedback to influence the way the process adapts and learns over time.  We are calling this the birth of the “socially aware process” and it is a process paradigm shift that we believe touches the very unique juncture between BPM and Social Media.

  So stay tuned or better yet join the PM forums and help us figure it out.  And in the process, we are definitely going to make BPM just a bit cooler