The Future of BPM Moving Towards Intelligent Business Operations
Last updated
Last updated
Join Pieter van Schalkwyk, MD of XMPro Pty Ltd, for this strategic insight into the future of BPM and how XMPro aligns itself to accommodate Intelligent Business Operations.
Pieter will explain how BPM is moving towards Intelligent Business Operations in context of:
Unstructured processes and the benefit of an agile approach.
Dynamic processes and changing business rules in flight.
Social processes and the impact on traditional business workflows.
The role of being "context aware" with built in predictive analytics to make intelligent process decisions.
For more information please visit our website: www.xmpro.com or send us an email : info@xmpro.com.
hi and welcome to the XM Pro future of
BPM I just want to make sure that
everyone can hear me so if you can maybe
just um
confirm that you can hear
me thanks very much great work is
changing faster than ever and the way
that we work is also changing faster
than ever we're more interrupt driven we
have more information or should I say
data than ever and the world around us
has become a lot more unpredictable than
ever I'm Peter F scal I'm the MD of X
and pro and I'd like to thank you for
joining me when we have um when we have
a look at at how we move from business
Process Management
to what Gartner is now calling
intelligent business operations and why
we have to do this and what the benefits
is of
that making sure I'm on the right screen
here so if we look at the drivers of
this
change um one of the aspects I'd like to
cover today and then also what uh just
some three elements of this uh internal
um intelligent business operations or
IBO so I'll just be calling it IBO
intelligent business operations um
another new free freeletter acronym that
we have and lastly we'll also just have
a look of an example of what it could
like or what IBO could look like and
does look like inside XM
Pro so why are we now talking about
intelligent business operations what are
the drivers for that
well businesses and the organizations
that support them are now more than ever
a lot more complex a lot more chaotic
and a lot more
unpredictable at the recent Gardner it
Expo where we were this CIO Summit the
keynote cited that the following
disruptive Technologies um is or are
changing the
um the landscape for businesses and
specifically cios and CEOs CFOs and
those drivers are essentially cloud
cloud adoption is a lot faster than what
most people anticipated and that brings
about a whole new change of how we work
social in the Enterprise is there it has
found its way in and we actually have a
separate webinar that you may have seen
around social lising how we handle
social lisening so social uh and social
media is now has found its way into the
Enterprise and it's not going to go away
so that's also changing the way that
people behave and that they expect the
tools that support them also
change the other interesting thing is
that mobile search is set to overtake
desktop search in the next two years um
we had a conversation recently with a
CIO that said their whole it strategy
has changed overnight when a CEO walked
in with his iPad into a board meeting
so those drivers combined with the fact
that we have all these systems that now
Drive data those three components plus
the big data that a lot of this generate
are the key drivers or the key
disruptive drivers according to Gardner
why this is all happening the challenge
that we have is how to make this work
inside our businesses and
organizations
so actually have a great and once again
I'm going to refer to to to Gardner for
this um and it actually comes out of
Janelle Hill's presentation around
operational resilience and where BPM is
going and she's saying that newer
Technologies including social media
context to Weare Technologies cloud and
all these things that I've just
mentioned the intelligent phones and
devices can re revolutionize the way we
work together um the challenge is
Enterprises have not yet empowered
Frontline employes to dynamically adjust
the way they work in response to these
contextual OPP opportunities or threats
and I'll explain more of this as we go
the other thing that we find is that the
software that we use at the moment um
cannot be applied to this knowledge
Centric work style and decision making
risk assessment patent seeking and
matching um group collaboration most of
these are are supported at the moment
with Point solution so you have a
specific application for um for um
patent seeking something for decision-
making something for risk assessment but
all of these the way that we work all of
these are converging into a single
environment the biggest challenge is
that as leading economies are
increasingly dependent on service based
Industries um a lot of that turns into
the fact that they're heavily dependent
on knowledge work on on uh knowledge
workers and managers that understand
that and they're all overwhelmed with
data and choices now that that is um
from from Janelle Hill at Gard how do we
turn that into into or how does that
relate to what we know so what does that
mean for BPM and how did we go from
workflow which is Factory style or
automation of of of of work I'm just
trying to get it done faster to
something like BPM with business Process
Management which is knowledge style
where we trying to have more control of
process if you look at what the
definition
of Process Management it's all around
control
um and having a lot
more management capability rather than
just automation so that we have some
idea of where it's going business um
intelligent business operation to me so
when we start off with workflow it's
factory style BPM it's knowledge style
intelligent business operation is all
around a gold driven style where we
actually trying to support business
outcomes or business objectives it's not
just around process control having
control and having order trials and
having
um and having decision trials but it's
also extending it to how can we better
support the outcomes of business best
way of looking at this is just to
looking at how the definition is changed
what what Gartner said a couple of years
ago we had a slide that says BPM is a it
enabled management discipline quite
simple they've now changed the
definition looking at this
operational excellence where there's
expectation for BPM to to support not
just the automation or it enablement of
managing processes um but there's
actually a bigger expectation around BPM
and that's moving us towards intelligent
business operation so according to them
BPM is a management discipline that
treats process as that asset a key part
you need a repository of processes that
you can access and you can treat treat
those as assets inside the business they
need to contribute directly to
Enterprise performance so and um a key
element of that which I like is the fact
that there's a clear line of sight for
metrics and outcomes so you need to
understand how this process that you
have as a process asset how that's how
that contributes to what your your
operational um Excellence is which is
the next step here by driving
operational uh ex excellence and Agility
I did a webinar not too long ago where I
was talking about um these things that
we do as supporting operational kpis in
the end of the at the end of the day uh
the operational kpis are what are are
what determines the success of a
business
so looking at BPM going forward it needs
to be a lot more around visibility
accountability and it also needs to
change as processes need to change once
again I just want to highlight some of
the facts Al some of the points that
they've made you around the the
attributes things like a clear line of
sight um for metrics and outcomes and
ability you must be able to change it
and the fact that
um uh uh these
um the business models uh that you
construct are not just around the flow
but it but it it needs to also show it
to all process participants so the when
you drive a process from an intelligent
business point of view that you actually
know what the process is going to do and
you understand the options so if we look
at intelligent business operations
itself
um the the reason why it's moving from
BPM to IBO is the fact that we want to
support this context ual knowledge work
what we mean by that is people now have
information around activities that they
do it's not just Factory style where I
just accept what comes from someone else
and I just do my little part of my
activity or process and pass it on that
is a factory style where it's almost
like machines in a
sequence the way that we work now is we
get information by from various sources
and as we take that contextual knowledge
our proc processors need to support that
processes are not that sequential
anymore processes um in actual fact they
can come from anywhere and they can go
anywhere we need to have better support
for decision- making that's a key part
of intelligent business operations how
do we how how do we make make better
decisions now that we've got all this
big data coming at us we've got more
dashboard tools than ever we've got more
metrics than ever how do we apply that
uh so that we can make better
decisions we don't work in isolation so
another objective of internal of
intelligent business um operations or
IBO is the fact that we need to take all
these conversations that we having all
the emails that we send around which are
currently not part of our processes or
workflows or or bpms and build that into
Bak that into our processes so that we
can incorporate some of the social rules
that come out of that and essentially
all it is um it it's all around getting
better at getting work done which is
what XM Pro is all about so if you look
at BPM going forward what does IB um IBO
really look like well in the first place
it needs to have support for
unstructured processes and also there's
a previous webinar where we discussed un
unstructured processes to some degree
but it really means that there's no
predefined flow so there's a a number of
activities or possibilities that we can
do and we can add to that so if we
discover new requirements that we have
we can add those what we mean by
unstructured process is you don't
necessarily have to draw the flow
diagram and I'll get into a little bit
more detail around that it also needs to
have support for what we call Dynamic
processes now unstructured doesn't mean
uncontrolled and dynamic processes are
different to unstructured processes a
dynamic process is where it can change
based on external events or external
influences or maybe some in some
instances internal rules that may
dictate and we'll look at some of the
examples of what a dynamic process is so
for an intelligent business process it
needs to be able to be agile it needs to
be unstructured and flexible it needs to
be able to adapt Itself by being a
dynamic and also it needs to incorporate
the social aspects
of um the way that we interact in work
we don't work in isolation and there's a
lot of conversation that goes around um
our activities and processes and all of
that combined gives us intelligent
business operations there are few more
elements to it but these are the three
main key things if you look at why we
looking at uh at at intelligent business
operations or what does it mean for you
it means that we can cater for a a
broader range of work we it's a lot more
intelligent in terms of how it can adapt
and we also incorporate conversations
from outside so if we look at those
three elements in a bit more detail so
if I look at unstructured um Dynamic and
and
social if we look at unstructured to
start off with now this is a typical
unstructured process and um this is exm
pro designer and this is just a very
simple example but for example if
there's a opportunity management where
we're going to capture um opportunities
we might decide to have bid committees
we can create quotes we can send it for
technical adjudication there's credit
checks and all sorts of things that can
be done you don't have to draw the flow
diagram because this can happen in any
sequence this we refer to as a process
container so there's a container and I
can add new process elements to this in
order to cater for my requirements so as
you can see there's no predefined flow
set up you can include some rules to
make sure that there are certain flows
that are enforced in certain conditions
and that is an aspect which uh which is
driven by the dynamic side so even a a
controlled process is a specific case of
a dynamic process where certain rules
are applied so unstructured process
means from intelligent business
operations point of view it means we've
moved on from workflow where we have
workflow based tools that have a
predefined routing because because of my
my contextual knowledge I know that I
may want to send it to a bid Committee
in certain instances it will force me to
send it to bid committee and I'll touch
on some of those rules the benefits of
this is it's actually less costly and
more adaptive to build this so as soon
as you discover new
requirements it's quite easy to adapt
you don't have to get it's it's not so
when you've got a pre-built and a
complex workflow um set up in order to
change it is actually quite costly with
this uh approach that we have around
constructed processes it's actually
quite easy we can drag another or drop
another activity into the process
container and very quickly expose that
to the business users at a very low cost
the other thing is you spend less time
designing and more time doing we find we
find there's a big resistance in trying
to get to the 100% process people don't
get to that point um you can spend a lot
of time what we call analysis paralysis
so you can spend a lot of time trying to
get the 100% model and by the time that
you that you actually get to run it and
automate it that it's actually um uh out
of um out of date so with this approach
the benefit is that you can spend less
time designing and more time doing so
it's a lot more of an agile approach
we'll take what we have and we can start
we don't have to wait to get the perfect
uh the perfect process because we will
never get there and it also takes away
that that fear of analysis paralysis we
can experiment we can we it gives us a
lot more from a business perspective a
lot more agility and a lot less um
effort required to actually get started
because we don't have to think about
what the process is exactly going to
look like what we can do once we've got
it working is we can actually analyze
the data and look at how many times
didn't did it follow us certain path now
that is something that I'll touch on a
bit later in the presentation when I
show you some examples but this we can
now use um to come up with what we think
the next best action would be for
example so the reason why um one of the
key um other benefits of of um knowledge
style of this um unstructured processes
in a knowledge style work is
traditionally when you do knowledge
style work what we mean by knowledge
Style is I don't I don't want to follow
the workflow because I know it's not
going to work so that's how I always
typify what a what a knowledge style
worker will say when they look at a
process we now give them the option to
Route it any which way they want the
advantage is that we still have a audit
trial in in place so we can still see
that process as part of a audit trial we
can still see what decisions were made
even though we didn't force the route
that they needed to go down a critical
element which is missing from from um
most processes right now if you have
unstructured processes in your business
um that happen via email it happens via
um um Word documents spreadsheets and
all sorts of things that that um that go
around because structured workflow
doesn't cater for the requirement the
flexibility the problem is that you have
no order Trails a part of that great
examples are things like customer
service a case style where you've got um
where you've got a audit traal of of of
a customer service um request the thing
is it can go to to a number of people be
handle in in a number of ways and it's
critically important that you have a
order tral of that knowledge style work
that goes with it if you've got adoc
data entry in a complex environment and
I'll show you example of of that uh in
the next screen where there's you don't
have um you can't determine what data
you're going to get next you once again
it's a customer
environment and there's just a lot of
data that needs to go into into um into
the initial part of a process and it can
come from anytime any place
anywhere the other the other um example
of where information can come from and
what you need to do with it is for
example social listening and once again
if you look at our social listening um
webinar you'll see this in action where
you can actually listen for tweets for
example for Twitter that's all around um
examples in your business and now you
can route the response to that whether
you retweet whether it goes off to
customer service whether it goes off to
marketing whether it goes off to uh
public relations or uh and if we have to
add more people we can actually we can
actually handle that um on a Case by
case basis so unstructured processes
have a very strong case um approach to
them as well so you almost handle it on
a Case by case basis the rules change
Case by case and social listening is is
is one of those now I I mention the the
data entry example this for example is a
a complex data entry environment
where um the process to capture the
information in in from a funeral
Arrangement um or arrangers point of
view now there's a lot of information
that they need to get around funeral
options um obviously they sell
uh
um inventory items to to the family they
need to do uh specific Arrangements
around cars viewing there's there's a
whole lot of things that need to be done
with that the challenge that you have is
you don't get the information in a nice
sequential uh um sequence uh it really
comes to you over a two or three day
period in a very spec in a very erratic
and and adog manner you need to have the
ability to to capture that at some point
in time you need to run a rule and say
do I have everything that I need um to
to uh uh to move this on in in terms of
the process or is there still some
information outstanding so some of the
fields are required in order for this
process to actually uh move forward but
it gives as you can see there's a whole
number of options here now these are all
independent activities that that uh um
that we can choose at any point in time
to actually route the work to so we call
we the way that we can add those so if
we just add a new container if we need a
new step in here we can add it in here
with what we call our Dynamic allocation
logic a very simple and easy way to uh
add processes to XM Pro um dynamically
example of the Twitter feed I'm not
going to go through the the whole
example again but in this instance we
were listening for Quantas um when they
had some issues and there's certain
things that you can do it can be PR
ction can be bookings now the nice thing
is once again we have a full order trial
of um so we pick up the tweet and then
we have a response to that there can be
multiple outcomes to that so that is a
typically a typical unstructured process
because it still relies on a knowledge
worker to read the message and decide
what to do there's no there's no in
there's no automatic routing or
artificial intelligence built into this
um intelligent business operations are
really there to support knowledge
workers to actually get better at um at
doing this and that was the example of
of
Twitter so if we look at Dynamic
processes as I said structured
unstructured processes and dynamic
processes actually differ to some degree
um dynamically uh Dynamic processes
imply that that they that they
dynamically change based on um certain
events that occur and I'll address some
of those events
uh in a minute or so these these Dynamic
processes are also context aware so they
know what goes on around them and I'll
show you some or explain some examples
of what context aware means and then
lastly they've got built-in Predictive
Analytics and what that means is it'll
actually show you information that will
help you make better decisions and
sometimes based on that analytics it
will actually dynamically change some of
the routing options and steps that are
available so if we look
at um processes that change dynamically
based on events example of that is
um there's and I'm going to put all
three of them just so that we have all
of them so when we say they can change
on events there are a couple events that
can impact
um these changes one of them are data
rules
events so we can check how close are we
to to our our um budget and as soon as
we get to within a certain percentage of
our budget so we've spent 80% of budget
on a general ledger code then we can
introduce an additional approval step
automatically so it'll Auto it will
dynamically change Based on data rules
there's certain business rules um that
we may have as well so if you've got a
complex um approval Matrix it can
dynamically change
processes are context aware what we mean
by that is what happens if exchange rate
changes well if the exchange rate
changes by more than 10% we will want uh
we need to we need to introduce an
additional approval step on all all
purchase orders um from overse or we
need to automatically introduce a a
activity that will always make sure that
we buy a forward cover um context to we
so for example if there was a storm a
massive storm in a certain area um
geographical area we may want to say we
need to change because we're going to
have a huge influx of calls into the
insurance call center we actually want
to take a 10-step process and turn it
into three just to get the volumes
through quicker and you can have and you
can change the the approval rules based
on something like that so processes are
a lot more context aware for example and
then lastly what happens um for example
also what happens if the oil price
changes it may have uh a certain impact
now you can you can listen for those
they are web services and as soon as I
need to do a step I can actually go and
look at what the web patterns are and
these are just examples of things the
context can also be who's doing the
transaction so for example if it's the
the CEO of organization there's one step
in the approval or um yes it always gets
approved or whatever the case might be
um so it can also it's also aware around
who's doing the transaction and based on
that um it can it can change the routing
the logic the rules the appr approval uh
limits and everything that goes with it
or even what is displayed on the screen
so Dynamic process is a lot more context
way and then lastly they've got built-in
Predictive Analytics so you can have a
graph in the approval form and I'm going
to show you example of that you can add
additional steps to that approval based
on a threshold so for example if I find
that I'm within 80% of my budget um it
can automatically add another step to
that it can also advise me on what we
call what is the next best action so the
Predictive Analytics because we don't
have a predefined routing we just have
this container with five or six
activities sitting in there we may want
to know well what did the guys before me
do that how or what is the what is the
happy path what is the 80% rule um
around what the next step um should
be for me Predictive Analytics the the
best way that was described is that um
dashboards are rear viiew mirrors you
can see what happened in the past with
Predictive Analytics we actually want to
see what is coming and what
is uh ahead of us so the nice thing is
they can give us inflight analytics so
instead of having dashboard where we
look back we can see where are we right
now so I'm sitting at my it's like a GPS
the analogy that Janelle Hill um at
Gartner used was it's like sitting with
the GPS I can see around me I can see
and I can and I can determine um the
context of where I am so I've got
inflight analytics uh and it gives me
and the nice the you can also do
real-time process Discovery so we can
say once again where are we um uh or we
can analyze when I'm in the activity I
can analyze all the previous instances
of that activity and I can say well what
was the what was the next best action
that most people took out of that so
process Discovery is just is just mining
the existing process data and we'll
we'll publish some some documents and
white papers around these Concepts so
lastly before I just quickly go into the
software to show you is that um at
Gartner they were also saying where will
B BPM be in 2020 they will have
unstructured processes they will support
Dynamic BPM they there will be um social
BP uh it will support social BPM there
will be context tow it will support
organizational liquidity which is just a
fancy name for change management but in
the end it's all around intelligent
business operations so let me give you
example of what you can get right now in
2011 um you don't have to wait till 2020
to see some of the stuff in action me
just so I'm just going and I'm just
going quickly going to log into
XM oh come
on great so I'm Tim Clark I'm the second
person someone else put in a requisition
I'm not going to take you through the
whole workflow in terms of how you how
you put in requisitions but essentially
someone started a a new task to to have
a process and in my to-do list under my
cases you will see that I have um under
procurement under my under my task list
there's a purchase requisition from
Keith that I need to approve when I look
at Keith and this is a simplified
example of of um typically what this can
do but as you can see we've got a case
File uh where we store all the documents
as they come through as part of the
process
um these are the dynamic activities so I
can add more activities right now uh
there's I can either just approve it or
decline it or I can send it for
technical approval it might be that
we're buying it um I'm not sure why
they're buying um new bikes for two the
France in it but that doesn't matter um
so I might just send it for technical
adjudication um
and the great thing that you can see
here is that we've actually embedded
analytics or inflight analytics so I
don't have to go off to my Erp I can see
what budget do I have
available how much has actually been
spent how much have we previously
committed to this process and how much
has Keith previously requested so you
can build these graphs any which way
that you want out of external data So
based on this I can now make a decision
on what I want to do looking at this um
I'm still not sure what I want to do so
I can say well please advise me on the
next best action so I can see that of
the last almost 200 processes that went
through this activities 145 of them were
actually just approved from here so this
gives me an analysis of what everyone
else before we did and it gives me
indication if I didn't know what the
next best action is now obviously this
is a very simplif example of this you
can also take these dashboards and go
and build right at the top here and
we'll publish some some some examples of
that um on our website where you can
build your your process goal dashboard
so I can have three
um graphs up there showing me my process
goals in terms of where are what is my
what is my monthly budget um what are
the actual
um actual expenditure and everything to
date now now this looks like it's a it's
quite complex to do it it really isn't
so this is the back end where we design
processes I'm not going to show you how
to design processes what I'm going to
show you is how easy it is to set up a
chart so I can choose um in that
instance just this this is the one for
the budget so I'm just going to open
that and I can choose the layout the
look feel colors and everything that I
need for my chart all the in terms of
properties and whatever it explains on
the screen so the budget goal the
wording everything that you want to make
it easy for people to understand how
processes work so in this instance you
can have your
Dynamic sorry you can have your
unstructured
processes um it's got the built-in
Dynamic and if you look at our social um
our social listening uh webinar you'll
see that we've got extensive support for
the social processes so in terms of what
intelligent business operations mean
right now X and pro can give you the
structured processes um that makes it
quick to deploy you don't have to um
that's highly adaptive um it can the the
processes can adapt based on the rules
so if for example I am now at 80% of my
budget I I can have another button
appear here or I can change that button
to to become executive approval um so I
can so I can change dynamically change
the process based on some of these rules
here that is a really powerful concept
for something like um expense control
where you would want the closer you get
to this budget line that the rules
change and then lastly we can we can
also introduce um discussions and and
the social aspect of U BPM thank you for
watching this I really appreciate that
um I'm trying to keep it as short as
possible and show you as much as we can
um around the future and one We Believe
business Process Management moving to
intelligent business operations can be
achieved right now thank you very
much