Taking BPM to the civil world

In recent years, the BPM (Business Process Management) market is gaining adoption. Due to high cost and complexity, the adoption of BPM technologies has been primarily limited to the Fortune 500; however, there are initiatives to broaden the target market of BPM. For example, Microsoft Business Process Alliance (BPA) extends the benefits of BPM to the SMB market and offers enhanced functionality to existing Microsoft customers. Which makes me wonder, why not take it one step further and use BPM technologies in our day-to-day civil life?

The main building blocks of a process - people, applications and information, exist in civil life as it exist in a business environment. For example, in a business environment, customer service representative would use CRM application to save customers information. Similarly in civil-life, one would use her bank web interface to check credits and debits.

Moreover, now it is more feasible than ever before. With Web2.0 technology, people involved in civil-life processes - our friends, family members and even our banker are accessible through social networks. WorkLight enables corporate (e.g. banks) to securely collaborate over social networks with customers (as well as partners and employees). Moreover, the increasing embracement of SOA technology, makes the applications we consume available. For having managed civil processes, all left to do is to connect the dots...

Now you probably say "Why would one bother managing his civil-life processes with dedicated technology?". Fair question. But think of it - few decades ago no one thought she would use a word processor to write a letter or a spreadsheet to calculate her debt. Now imagine your life today managing your personal information without it! The same will happen with your personal processes.

In a business environment, BPM technology benefits are reaped when used with repetitive processes. When you repeat a working procedure many times, you have an interest to automate it, execute it in a valid manner, monitor its progress and continually improve its performance to gain operational efficiency and eventually save money.

In civil life, as processes are usually not repetitive, the benefits and usages of BPM technology are yet to be discovered. Would it be worth the effort of the BPM define-develop-deploy-execute-monitor life-cycle? Intuitively, the answer is no. Furthermore, how people will handle technical aspects? It is clear that it would need much more easier methodology and simpler tools to use it for civil needs.

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Are BI tools a trusted advisor?

In order to take decisions people get advised with someone or something they trust and feel comfortable with, a 'trusted advisor'. BI tools are mainly deployed to support corporate end-users taking business decisions. Do end-users perceive BI tools as trusted advisor? according to recent Forrester research, most of them not.

This research is an example to the point I made in my last post, that vendors should build products customers want to use. According to the research, more than half of IT managers said their end-users reverted back to individual tools, such as desktop spreadsheets, to get data or reports they couldn't get through the BI applications. Two-thirds of respondents said their end-users felt the BI tools were somewhat or very difficult to learn.

In the quest for a good advise, you often need a middleman to connect you with the right trusted advisor or communicate with her for you. Corporate use middlemen to analyze needs, deploy and implement BI systems, generate reports, guide end-users and more. The research shows that we still far from self-service BI, as three-quarters of respondents said most reports and dashboards are not created by end-users.

Corporate may choose to use an internal (i.e. IT department) or an external (i.e. BI consultancy service) middleman. In general, the more your business environment is turbulent, the more likely you will need to adapt your BI implementation to new business decision needs. In that case, you may want an internal IT resource that give you the needed flexibility.

Whether you use internal or external middleman, it is clear that one is needed. Corporate leverage their BI investment by finding their end-users a trusted advisor.

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Build products customers want to use

Common knowledge is that companies should build products customers want to buy, products that solves their problem. However, making customer buy your product is not enough. The product must be built in a way that will make its users actually... want to use it.

Sound obvious and simple, right? However, many vendors believe that top-notch technology or cool features would make their product best-seller. Reality prove they wrong, especially when thinking of management software products that users should elaborate on a daily basis in order to drive business value.

For example, BPM suites may have best-of-breed processing engine technology, but without friendly process designer that make it simple to design processes, users will avoid implementing new processes. Another example are BI products; as BI implementation projects take weeks or even months, users don't have the flexibility to leverage it for short time-to-market needs.

If we already made the deal, why should we care if users actually use the product? Satisfied users are great reference for recurring revenue and new deals. In case of web-based products that generate their money out of advertisements, active users are your power in negotiation with advertisers. Moreover, active users - satisfied or not, serve as great source of product feedback.

But important of all – it is the great feeling that you changed the world a bit... or at least helped a user achieve her goal easier, faster, or better than she did without you. Many times users have the frustrating feeling that they are for working for their product ('I must enter yesterday data into the system'). Why not give the user a feeling the product is working for her?

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