The Future of BPM Moving Towards Intelligent Business Operations

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 : [e-mail].

Transcript

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