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  May I take your order? BPM mashups through web services

  Amy 1:50 pm on May 30, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BPM (29), business process management (11), business process management software (18), CRM, DMS (3), ERP (4), SaaS BPM

  I’ve been blogging lately about web services, and how they relate to business process management software.  To make a long short, BPM software packages can leverage web services to expand the BPM software’s reach and broaden its ability to share information, not only with users and databases directly in the BPM system, but also with other IT systems related to the business process.

  Few business processes are self-contained; most require information from people and systems across departments and business areas.  Many business processes even require information to be shared with external partners, clients, and providers.  Web services can expand the functionality of the BPM system and connect it with other systems across the organization, and beyond.  The resulting integrated systems are sometimes known as “mashups”.

  Mashups are pre-configured, ready-to-go integrations between different business software packages that speed and streamline the sharing of information among those systems.  For example, a BPM system can leverage web services to share client data with customer relationship management (CRM) software during an inventory process.  Or, budget data from an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can be shared with the BPM, both in order to approve or deny an expense report filed using the BPM and subsequently to update the ERP once the expense report is complete.  Or, the BPM could be used to generate and retrieve documents stored in a document management system (DMS).

  Yes, web services can be used to share information with any other system that use web services.  Mashups make the sharing process that much easier, by preconfiguring the systems integration and streamlining the way that the two systems work together.

   

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  Using web services to expand the reach of BPM software

  Amy 12:13 pm on May 29, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bpm software (15), business process management (11), business processes, SaaS BPM

  In my previous post, I mentioned that many companies are using web services to share business process information among different systems.  So how do web services and business process management software relate to one another?

  In many ways, the goals of BPM software and web services are the same:  to facilitate the flow of business process information from one person or system to another.  As I mentioned in a previous post, many organizations suffer from communicati gaps among people and systems.  Web services provide a solution for people-system and system-system gaps by allowing systems to talk to each other utilizing a common, standard language for sharing information.

  Likewise, business process software allows information to flow freely across systems and departments, and be shared among business processes.  According to pre-defined process permissions, information from one business process can be visible to other departments, and used in other workflows.  Because the process data is not trapped by paper, Excel spreadsheets, or email, it is free to move among workflows, departments, users, and of course, other systems…

  So essentially, by using web services in conjunction with a business process management system, business processes can share information not only with one another, but also with other systems.  No process is an island, and often times a business process will involve data from one or many additional systems.  Leveraging web services is an efficient, hands-free way to connect those systems with the BPM, in order to push and pull information during the execution of a business process.

   
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  Bridging business process gaps with web services

  Amy 11:33 am on May 28, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BPM (29), business proces, SaaS BPM, web services

  I want to go into some more depth on issues involving the the third type of business communication gap I mentioned in my previous blog: system gaps.  System gaps occur when information from one IT system, program, software, or database must be shared with another system.  In an ideal world, the two systems would be able to talk to one another seamlessly, without the need for human intervention or custom programming.  However, in the real world that is not always the case. 

  When a system-system data transfer requires inputs or redundant data entry by employees, or custom programming by the IT department, the result is a system gap.  System gaps are inefficient, create opportunities for errors, and can cause business process delays.  So in order to ensure that business processes run smoothly, these system gaps should be corrected.  However, personalized IT solutions that transfer data from one system to another can be expensive to design and difficult to implement.  Even if a suitable solution is created, the resulting IT infrastructure can be inflexible once it is put into place.  In order to adapt quickly to changing business requirements, it is important to find a flexible solution to bridge system gaps.

  So what to do about system gaps?  One flexible solution to get distinct applications to interface with each other is through web services.  Web services basically rely on a standard “language” that allows applications to talk to each other in order to share business logic, data, and business process information across a network.  Not only do web services bridge gaps between systems, but they can also bridge those gaps across departments, programming languages, platforms, and even connect with systems external to a company such as partners or providers.  And since web services are standardized, they require no custom programming.  Many companies are choosing to move towards a web-services based IT infrastructure in order to minimize system gaps while still maintaining flexibility in IT infrastructure.

   
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  Cloud Computing aka SaaS for Business Process Management

  kurt 4:47 pm on March 4, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BPM (29), business process management (11), business process management software (18), Cloud Computing (2), SaaS BPM, Software as Service (2), Software-as-Service BPM (2)

  
  BPM in the Cloud with SaaS

  This post is my last in a series of posts examining past trends in the learning management software market to understand future trends in business process management.

  Over the last year or so, the buzz has been over cloud computing. The online training software industry embraced cloud computing when it was called Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Increasingly, companies began outsourcing the hosting of their leaning management systems, rather than installing and maintaining a licensed copy of software. Some companies, such as GeoLearning and Learn.com, were purely SaaS companies that only offered a hosted LMS. Other traditional LMS companies began offering an SaaS version of their software.

  One factor that drove this trend was a change in market dynamics. Many larger companies with deep pockets had already invested in an LMS and switching costs made them reluctant to switch vendors. Newcomers to the LMS market, as well as market leaders who wanted to maintain and grow market share, found small to medium sized businesses to be an attractive target. Cloud computing offered these companies, who often had little internal IT support, lower total cost of ownership and automatic software upgrades. Of course, cloud computing has its disadvantages. For example, SaaS offerings are often less customizable than licensed software.

  Does cloud computing in online training software foretell anything for the BPM industry? In 2007 Lombardi software introduced Blueprint™ as an on-demand business process management solution. Appian began funding its SaaS venture in 2008. (Learn.com, one of the leading SaaS LMS vendors began in 2001). The business process management industry’s adoption certainly seems as though it is headed in the direction of SaaS.

  However, BPM customers may not adopt SaaS as readily as LMS customers have. Ovum analyst, Surya Mukherjee, says that SaaS products tend to be strong in visualization and design but weak in workflow engine and execution (Barry). (Blueprint is a process discovery product.) Unlike online training software, business process management software in the cloud can expose more sensitive data to a security risk. For SaaS to become as ubiquitous in the BPM market, as it has in the LMS market, managers will need to feel more comfortable with the security of cloud computing.

   
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  BPM and SaaS - All the Hype

  brian 1:04 pm on July 24, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Derek Miers, Hosted BPM, SaaS BPM, Software as Service (2), Software-as-Service BPM (2)

  Is it just me or does it seem like everyone is talking about BPM and SaaS again. Late last year Derek Miers blogged about the work he did preparing a training video for the Appian hosted offering. I wonder how that is going for Appian? Do they really have any clients using their hosted offering? And what are they going to tell their existing corporate clients to keep them from migrating to their own cheaper hosted services?

  These were the same questions everyone had for companies like Oracle and Siebel when SalesForce.com came out with hosted CRM. The question became even tougher when SugarCRM began attacking wielding an Open Source + SaaS combo strategy - the two largest threats to traditional ISVs.

  Many of the smarter traditional ISVs seemed to realize this was a better time to acquire than to build. Look at Business Objects acquisition of Nsite. The consensus seemed to be that it is easier for a successful larger player to acquire rowdier upstarts that are experimenting with newer delivery models than it is for a traditional software company to risk cannibalizing its own businesses by trying to be everything to everybody. Today’s BPM players might want to review these case studies. Some seem to simply prefer to burry their new hosted offering deep inside the web page hinting at the fact that management either isn’t very committed to SaaS or just couldn’t make up its mind.

  ProcessMaker is probably the oldest living BPM SaaS company around today. This is an interesting footnote in an industry that seems to jump around trying to feed off of the hype of other industries. Afterall BPM has never been as cool as social networking, wikis, or blogs - it just hasn’t. So, in many ways the SaaS bandwagon is all about just that - jumping on a cool bandwagon.

  If you are jumping on a bandwagon, you aren’t much of a leader and if you aren’t leading, well…you’re following. ProcessMaker started offering BPM Software-as-Service in 2004, and we’ve been learning, growing, and modifying our software ever since. We’ve had completely clientless software since we started with BPM - something that many of our competitors are just now “trying” to do.

  Yes, SaaS is growing for BPM. However, it is not there yet. This means it is going to be a tough play for companies that want to straddle the divide so to speak. And, then when you have BPM double plays like ProcessMaker that are OPEN SOUCE + SaaS, the landscape becomes even more difficult to navigate for a traditional ISV that wants to sell expensive, encrypted BPM licenses. In five more years, that simply won’t be possible.