SOA and BPM Training

Dedicating your business to the shift to a SOA or BPM architecture can be a very costly endeavor, especially for larger businesses. The biggest expense is often training your employees so that they are able to troubleshoot any of the problems and crisis that will crop up. Thousands of dollars can be spent – and often misspent – on preparing your employees for the change to a new business infrastructure. To limit these costs, several steps need to be followed to minimize wasteful spending on employee training.

Begin by Outsourcing

The first step in employee training is to show them how the business should be run by outsourcing the BPM or SOA processes to a professional group that specializes in restructuring businesses. This will show the employees how the business is supposed to run from the beginning and allow their training to be more driven in that they will know exactly where they are ultimately headed. By seeing the way the business is meant to operate employees can better institute their training, rather than going through a trial and error period in which employees are frustrated and the business suffers.

Learn by Doing

The best way to implement an SOA or BPM business model is to allow employees a hands on approach, rather than spending large sums on training in the theory and background of your chosen business model. In much the same way as education is only a portion of any career and there is no substitute for experience, it is often better to allow employees to experience and experiment while being guided by a knowledgeable professional.

Listen to the users

The best training comes by listening to the customers who ultimately see where the holes are in the company. The experience of the customers is the best (and least expensive) training tool. The idea that drives SOA and BPM infrastructure is to avoid the archaic concept of trying to implement business practices and strategies devised in the boardroom which may or may not have practical applications. SOA and BPM do not and should not exist in a vacuum. The new business structure is going to be different for every kind of business, so it is imperative to hear the voice of the people to learn what is effective and what needs to hit the cutting room floor.

Use Seminars and Conferences

Seminars and Conferences give the best perspective on what structure works “in the trenches” and is significantly cheaper than giving employees whole courses that may or may not have practical applications. The best teaching comes not from a classroom but rather conferring with those that have already taken steps – and missteps – in the field. Theory and analysis has little use in the field, but there is no teacher greater than the experience of those that have already made mistakes. Due to the emergent nature of BPM and SOA, finding what way works best is constantly in flux, meaning flexibility is imperative, as is learning from the mistakes of others before doing them yourself.

Learning the best way to deal with a transference to BPM or SOA is never cut and dried. Every business is going to face new and different challenges, but by starting with outsourcing and learning from professionals, staying engaged in the learning process, listening to clients and customers, and gleaning knowledge from others already in the business will save time and valuable resources while you move your business into a BPM or SOA style of functioning while also saving money.

The Advantages of Outsourcing Business Integration

Information technology can be a highly frustrating field. Much like doctors that spend years training for every possible eventuality, learning the complicated worlds of anatomy, physiology, disease, and antibiotics who are then forced to spend their days treating nothing more interesting than a series of runny noses the IT support professional often learns about software, hardware, networking, and programming. They are then forced to do little more than handle the same repetitious, banal problems.

This can become especially true in a BPM or SOA business, where minor breakdowns in the technological infrastructure are both common and important. The IT team becomes so consumed with putting out fires, they do not have time to address the fundamental causes or engage in revenue generating activities. This method decreases profits, wastes valuable resources, and creates a frustrating, expensive atmosphere where talented people are not weeding out the core of the problem but rather doing nothing more than cutting back the most problematic parts; only to have them sprout up again where they must be again trimmed back.

The solution: Business Integration Outsourcing.

Business Integration Outsourcing Increases Productivity

Integration solutions – like BPM and SOA – are expensive. The advantage to Business Integration Outsourcing for your BPM or SOA solution is that the support staff – namely the IT professionals – are no longer needed for every minor crisis within the process. Their time is not spent rushing from site to site fixing the same problem, barely keeping their heads above water and making no real headway in the grand scheme of the business as a whole. While the business continues to run, it is doing so only by keeping these highly trained and skilled individuals in a constant state of panic. Their time is spent on late-night calls that detract from their overall effectiveness.

When these calls no longer go to the core IT staff, those individuals are then able to spend their time on developing long-term projects, achieving broader goals, and finding improvements that streamline the efficacy of every person in the company through technological advancement. They no longer have to try to hold the system together with duct tape and willpower. The employees will be happier working in an area that challenges them and forces them to think creatively and integrate more fully into the business. Just as a doctor whose skills are finally tested after years of battling with the common cold, you will see an immense increase in the devotion of these employees and upswing in their output.

Business Integration Outsourcing Reduces Cost

By handing off the BPM and SOA problems to an independent professional, the IT staff can then be reduced to a qualified core instead of employing a vast army that runs from calamity to calamity just trying to stay on top of the current problem sweeping through the company. This more specialized core group can be helping to generate revenue as well as cut costs throughout the operation. They will be doing what an IT department is intended to do, which is help the company achieve its goals rather than merely keeping it afloat.

In addition to a reducing the number of employees that are needed to handle the day to day operations, Business Integration Outsourcing for a BPM or SOA business helps maintain a flat rate of payment for handling the integration processes. Whereas an IT department might need to be paid overtime for their services at odd hours or whenever there is a breakdown, there is also the added benefit of a single fee to be paid to the third party contractor. That fee does not fluctuate no matter how heavy their workload or how many fires they have to put out. The cost is constant and predictable, which is always preferable to the unlimited overtime paid to company employees or outside contractors to fix simple problems.

Business Integration Outsourcing Creates Consistency

In addition to the flat fee for the integration specialists to assist with the BPM and SOA processes, there is the added functionality that comes with knowing the business is protected by experts. Often, if the IT department is solely responsible for handling the multitude of small problems that arise within the company, products and services suffer as the core business structure works at an unpredictable level of productivity. Having experts to supervise the small problems allows the business to work at a consistent rate, never dipping below the expectations of its customers and thereby losing business.

Not having to rely on the often overworked IT team also means that problems can be addressed more quickly by specialists. This not only prevents overuse of the IT department of a BPM or SOA, but allows all employees to have their problems addressed more quickly and more efficiently than can be accomplished by an in-house IT team. Therefore employees within the business are able to return to their jobs more quickly without their output dipping, overtime being needed, and productivity coming to a standstill due to a minor technical error.

Business integration can be an enormous burden on every employee, and while the benefits certainly outweigh the risks, a BPM or SOA structure can collapse from the death of a thousand cuts as the Information Technology department tries in vain to stop the bleeding of time and resources that occurs from trying to run everything from within the company. Business Integration Outsourcing to a highly specialized, highly developed Business Integration group keeps work consistent, productivity high, and costs at a minimum. It also allows your employees to do what they do best rather than having to spend time repairing every malfunction. When they are challenged to do their best, rather than fighting against a constant stream of banal little hiccups, they will display ingenuity, productivity, and revenue far above expectations.

BPM and SOA Failsafes

For any business, a good employee is worth their weight in gold. This is especially true for any business that uses SOA or BPM. This is because very often, the entire technological infrastructure relies very heavily on a dedicated technical support staff, the loss of any one of whom could spell disaster for the efficient running of the business. Even more dangerous is the thought that any one of these individuals could leave the business high and dry, but also be taking intimate secrets of their programming or BPM processes that the business has implemented. To help prevent this, there are a few simple steps that every BPM or SOA business should follow both before and after they lose a valuable employee to prevent these information leaks.

Don’t Keep Information in House

The first step that any business should seriously consider before they implement their BPM or SOA business plan is to contract their system resources to a third party, rather than keeping the power inside their businesses, where leaks are far more likely. These third party contractors don’t use the same hierarchy of power, meaning that no single person, or even single department knows the entirety of a particular BPM process or SOA technical system. Information is more closely guarded and partitioned among various employees. Unlike most businesses that have a small, specialized IT team, independent businesses have a team, any of which can take on the roles of the others, disseminating information among a larger group.

Diversify Your Team

Information in the IT world is often greater than the sum of its parts. Any company that doesn’t use a third party to assist with their BPM system could be playing with fire, but if an in-house IT team is used, no single individual should have full access to all of the data. Sometimes this can lead to a slightly less effectual system, but in the long run it would be far worse to lose a linchpin person in that team, as well as their information to a competitor. Highly partitioned tasks that are run through a group of supervisors will ensure that no department, even the IT, has total access.

The other advantage to this is to force employees out of their comfort zone, which can help increase feelings of trust and loyalty, which will further gird the company against the leakage of information. Additional personnel is not required if a few additional tasks of specialty are added to every employee. Even if they do not have full comprehension of what their new areas of expertise mean to the comprehensive plan, they’ll feel integral to the practices of the business, which also not able to share the information if they leave the company, and their loss will be less of a blow to overall operation.

Communication is Key

It is too often a common practice for IT departments to avoid completing detailed work orders. Just as a business requires documentation of every other implementation, somehow IT falls below the radar, often due to the vast array of information they are forced to deal with and the difficulty in documentation. Even more problematic can be the communication breakdown between IT and business stakeholders when it comes to systems and processes, usually with business stakeholders failing to be properly on-boarded into business processes that are supposed to streamline and simplify poorly-optimized functions.

In both of these cases, communication is the key factor to the success of implementing new business integration efforts, particularly when dealing with large-sized companies and organizations.  Ensuring that all stakeholders both in the business side and in IT are aware of the new architecture and how the building blocks achieve the business objectives of new systems.

Clearly-composed documentation, of course, is one aspect of this communication effort, and often favours optimal short-term IT-to-IT communication as well as long-term IT-to-business communication in clarifying new systems’ objectives and operations. That being said, IT should indeed have extensive documentation that describes exact problems as well as steps taken to resolution. These should then be used by the CIO in training exercises that challenge other employees to expand their knowledge and be able to resolve problems in the long run.

The benefits here are twofold. First, this ultimately will give the IT department more time to streamline as other employees are given a greater degree of knowledge. While the short term might be difficult, after a period of time, basic repairs that would ordinarily chew up large portions of the IT departments time can now be handled by lower level employees.

Secondly, this knowledge adds in to the distribution of information of the whole structure, making the loss of a keystone figure less harmful. SOA and BPM are ultimately about the redistribution of the business’ entire infrastructure, so moving against the desire for specialization will ultimately make the process work more efficiently, once the initial difficulties are addressed.

Due to the relative novelty of SOA and BPM systems, often the adjustment to the new system creates typhoons of panic which end up being held at bay by the IT department, which later enable them disproportionately when it comes to the overall function of the business. An effective BPM or SOA business moves away from bureaucracy and uneven distributions of power. An outside specialist is the most preferable solution. For those business that fear the expenditure, creating checks and balances to avoid any single person or department from possessing too much power or information can create solidarity among workers, further their skills and value, and circulation of data so even a difficult loss is not fatal.

The Do’s and Don’ts of BPM, Part Two: The Don’ts

Previously, we looked at the main practices of successful BPM. In addition to using those suggestions, here is a list of common mistakes to avoid whenever implementing a new BPM process.

The Don’ts of BPM

No I in Team (and be careful of the one in IT):

Planning takes everyone. No input or concern is too small. What might seem a tiny issue on the grand scheme of things on day one, could be the stone that brings down the giant on day 1,283. This is especially true for many of the IT professionals, not because of their flaws, but because often their input can be the most valuable. Many BPM processes fail on a technical level, and if the technology aspect of a modern business doesn’t work, the business itself is usually doomed.

Many companies undervalue the immense impact of their IT department, and IT professionals can often feel like disenfranchised parts of a company that operate outside of the normal strictures of the corporation. It is vital to make sure the IT department and the CIO of the company are just as integral to the testing process as everyone else. They need to be ready to flex and bend, because much of the technical success will be resting on their shoulders. They need to be prepared and the other members of the company need to be willing to shoulder some of the IT responsibility as well.

In addition, customers must be consulted. The front end of a business is where the faults that can’t be seen from within the business are. The greatest resource in BPM development is the people that are going to reap the benefits of it. While customers are going to give conflicting results, contradictory statements, and will never agree on anything, their view must be taken into account. That is the beating heart of BPM, and the greatest nightmare. Even if they cannot truly be fixed, knowing ahead of time the complaints that will arise at least gives preparation for the flood.

No one is to be excluded. Do not ever think an issue is trivial or insignificant just because it seems that way. Do not prejudge where the weight of the shift to BPM is going to fall.

Don’t Sweat Too many Details:

It seems contradictory to the idea that the BPM process should be beat to death before it is ready to go to say that the small stuff shouldn’t be sweated too much. It actually isn’t. The reason for this is to remember the first rule: Be flexible. In the planning stages, everything should be addressed, that is true. However, even with the best planning team on the planet, given unlimited amounts of time and resources will still not be able to predict the dozen things that are going to go wrong on the first day that the BPM system goes into effect. That is the nature of the beast.

The planning stage is important to prepare everyone for the devils they know. The company is forewarned and forearmed against those mistakes, holes, and pitfalls, but not against the ones that are yet to happen. In the machining industry there is a saying: There are those that have crashed, and those that will crash. It isn’t a matter of will something go wrong, but only a question of when.

The planning stage was to combat the true catastrophes; to guard the Achilles Heels. That was the training phase. Once the marathon begins, every stumble and misstep cannot become all-consuming. It should be handled with as much care and grace as possible. This is part of the gradual growth. These snags will happen, but when they do, patiently untie them. Do not panic, do not flail, do not gnash teeth or tear out hair. Fix it just like every issue before.

Don’t Duck and Cover

Under no circumstances can a business afford to bury its head in the sand. This is the culmination of everything else. Nothing else matters if any part of the company decides that something can remain broken. For far too long, far too many businesses did nothing about their gaps and rifts but apologize, shrug, and say “That’s just the way it is” or “That’s just how it is done.” The mantra of any business with a BPM process installed should be to grow, change, adapt, plan, develop.

A BPM business should be like the Hydra. It should proudly present its head to be cut off time and again only to rebound twice as strong and twice as adept. Hiding from problems is contrary to everything BPM stands for. Many BPM systems have fallen away because the company refused to remove the infected burr that rotted it away from the inside out; something that could have been fixed but was shuffled off by employees and administrators.

A business that uses a BPM process should be rewarding the individuals that come forward with the most questions, complaints, problems, issues, and headaches for the company instead of the person that is performing within the parameters of their job, following orders. Those that see and address the real day-to-day nightmares, those that have solutions or see potentials for streamlining should be celebrated in a BPM business, rather than those that can follow company charter and archaic, anachronistic, outmoded methodology.

Wrap-Up:

BPM can potentially be the prodigal advent that begins to drive business into something far more holistic than it has been in the past, but it is not an easy road. It requires adaptability. It requires time and patience. It requires planning to the point of psychosis. It requires listening to everyone and excluding none. It requires being able to realize the problems without allowing them to disrupt the path of the company. Above all it requires being able to face the ugly truth so that those fears can be dispelled and wayward components brought back into the fold.

The Dos & Don’ts of BPM, Part One: The Dos

Over the years, Business Process Management (BPM) has often gotten a bad reputation as being too difficult, too costly, or too ineffective.  Many times this is due to improperly named processes being labeled as true BPM, or existing products that claim to be capable of BPM. The truth is that the success or failure of a BPM process rests more on the approach used when implementing the BPM system than on the system itself. To truly use a quality BPM much rests on the attitude of the company to align themselves fully with their customers. The following practices, when used properly can often avoid catastrophe as well as avoid wasting resources chasing BPM rainbows.

ABC: Always Be Changing

Many businesses operate from a top-down mentality, meaning that those that make the decisions in boardrooms expect their concepts to trickle down and translate into sales. The truth is that businesses work from the bottom-up with the end user being the only person in the chain of events that could tell a business where it is failing. This is because they are the ones that ultimately know the chinks in the armor. The first thing a business needs to be aware of when they start a BPM process is that they have to be ready to discard their ideas at a moment’s notice. While something might be a brilliant strategy from a corporate standpoint, if it isn’t in the best interests of the end user, it needs to hit the cutting room floor.

Many BPM processes fail at this level, partly because not everyone is on board with a total business redesign. Human beings are prideful animals, but that can make them too willing to hold on to outdated or hindering ideas. Like any growth process, instituting a BPM system is painful. Every person in the company has to be willing to keep their eyes open and to be critical of themselves. The possible rewards that can be reaped are great, but expecting a failed concept to somehow work in the future can leave a company stagnant if the business can’t adapt. Businesses have to evolve just like anything else, and if they can’t adapt, they become extinct.

Anticipate fluctuation. Like the saying goes: If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got. The natural temptation is to try to force something to work. Fight that instinct and learn to bend with the winds of change. Then, once the change has been made, be ready to change again. The tides of business are fickle and require new discoveries every day.

Gradual Implementation:

In addition to growth being a painful process, it is also a long one. BPM is a marathon, not a sprint. Too many times a BPM process is thrown into a company as if it has been handed down from on high. The change needs to occur organically. Trying to force it too rapidly will lead to a total breakdown. It could come from within the worker ranks. It could come from customer disturbance, or it could come from an underdeveloped technological implementation. Whatever it is, any BPM plan that has an “end-all, be-all” release date will also have a “dead-by” date not too long afterwards.

Everyone in the company needs to acclimate to the new face of the business. Old customers need to be introduced slowly into it. While the new customer might love the system as soon as they see it, the individuals – both in and out of the company – that have been doing the same thing for years need time to adjust. As long as the first aspect – the willingness to change – is there, then slowly the kinks will be worked out, the fat trimmed off, and the business machine will run faster and smoother than ever.  BPM doesn’t hit like a hurricane. It erodes like the tide.

Measure Twice, Cut Once:

Along with being gradual is the need to plan, plan, and then re-plan the plan. Goals need to be assessed and reevaluated ad nauseam before they should be put into action. The ability to discard a bad plan is just as important to flexibility as being able to adjust after the process is in motion. Once a business decides to implement a BPM system, the excitement can often lead to premature implementation. It’s a fantastic new idea that the business wants to see succeed, but then the lack of planning leaves it anemic and unable to hold up to the fiery promises.

The way to avoid this is to almost beat it to death. Every outlook must be considered. Everyone must be consulted. BPM is comprehensive, which means that every hole that every different department can find needs to be addressed ahead of time. It goes contrary to human nature, but when everyone at the corporation, from the CEO to the lowest customer service rep is sick and tired of talking about BPM, that is most often exactly when it is ready. When every avenue for failure has been exploited, exhausted, and bled of all joy, then the system is truly a pragmatic choice rather than shiny, useless bauble. Remember that the underbelly of business is not sexy.

The institution of BPM requires a very difficult mentality. An effective institution is about the attitude of the company and a willingness to challenge old ideas. This is naturally easiest for newer companies that don’t have the same rigors as well-established companies, and as such they do not have as many doctrines to break down or reevaluate. Any business that is willing to wholly and honestly look at itself and make drastic changes from the inside out can have a very successful BPM program. Those that allow the status quo to remain can expect little change, no matter how much money is put into a good BPM process.

Thanks for reading our article! Be sure to stay tuned for our second part of this series — the don’t of doing BPM!

TIBCO Rides the Forrester Wave

TIBCO continues to lead the industry as a top performer in business integration technologies, according to The Forrester Wave. Read about how TIBCO is empowering businesses to refine their business processes for better efficiency and lower costs.

Much like Gartner’s ubquitous hype cycle, the Forrester wave has come to be recognized as a key leading indicator of new and established technologies that the IT world can trust and count on. Given the ever-popular rise of SOA, BPM, and other business integration-related disciplines, more and more businesses are looking to the horizon for while technologies in these disciplines can give them the best value and performance needed to improve business processes. While more and more new technologies are appearing in the marketplace, it seems that TIBCO continues to deliver the results that businesses are looking for in a comprehensive business solution, according to a recent Forrester Wave report.

The Forrester Wave is more than just an audit of what’s hot and what’s not in IT. In fact, the findings are based on a 109-point criteria that takes into account a wide range specific variables, in order to provide a level playing for all viable, mainstream technologies out there n the market today. Ken Vollmer, who spearheaded the report, has this to say:

“In Forrester’s 109-criteria evaluation of both commercial and open source enterprise service bus (ESB) vendors, we found that Software AG, Tibco Software (Tibco), Oracle, and Progress Software are Leaders because of their broad functionality across the architecture, orchestration, mediation, connection, and change and control areas of this evaluation.”

The report goes on to illustrate that Forrester considers an ESB’s ability to provide maximum Integration Capability in a small package to be a critical feature in what makes a suite of services like TIBCO so viable for a wide range of different businesses.

In an e-mail to their partners and potential clients, TIBCO recently highlighted being chosen as part of Forrester’s ESB Wave, adding that: “With TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus as your foundation, you can easily extend your SOA investment to include Composite Applications, SOA Governance, Process Orchestration, and BPM as your needs grow.” TIBCO’s marketing pitch also illuminates how ActiveMatrix Service Bus not only gives companies a lot of power and functionality in one complete package, but also has the scalability to grow with the business over time, thus extending the life cycle of the tools and the overall value of the investment from an SOA perspective.

Did you know that Integrella is a leading TIBCO service provider? If you’re interested in investing in TIBCO for your business, visit our TIBCO page here and contact us for more details.

Three Crucial Best Practices for the CIO’s BPM Pitch

Managing and improving a business’ operations and management has traditionally been the domain of a COO in conjunction with departmental Directors and Managers. However, with the advent of IT, the CIO has become a critical component of business operations, since so much of operations is hinged on technology and the functionality of business solutions.

In this way, Business Process Management (BPM) has very much become the domain of the CIO, with his or her BPM approach being carried out and implemented primarily by the IT department.

This shift in leadership for how to streamline and improve business processes for businesses requires a careful consideration of BPM best practices, so that new changes to systems can be implemented in a timely, cost-effective manner that follow realistic milestones, yield measurable results, and bring non-IT business personnel onboard with the new changes.

The following article outlines some basic BPM best practices that all CIOs should endeavour follow, and that all business executives should be aware of.

Use Limited IT Budgets To Implement BPM-level Changes

There’s no doubt that flat economic conditions worldwide are leading businesses to cut spending in various departments, including IT. However, while the overall budgets for IT expenditures may be down, analysts indicate that businesses are indeed willing to continue to spend on approaches such as BPM. Mark McDonald, a group vice president at Gartner and author of a recent study, commented that businesses “ . . . are using IT to change the way the company works, to make it more effective and efficient.” Because of this, “CIOs are essentially going to have the same resources as last year to address a whole new range of problems.”

As a result, a CIO can offer the most measurable results in improving his or her businesses’ bottom line this year by finding creative ways to spend less in other aspects of IT and pour as many resources into fine-tuning operations vis a vis BPM. Chances are, if you are able to demonstrate cost-cutting and improved efficiency from your BPM planning, the money will be made available to do in the budget to make it a reality.

However, if you still find your BPM endeavours underfunded, it may require a more creative approach to using resources that are already have available, rather than investing in new tools and technology. If you can pair a compelling BPM plan together with a lean approach using in-house assets, it will no doubt be a winning pitch to the other executives.

Measuring BPM in “bite-sized” ROI Milestones

Because approaches such as BPM and SOA are seen as somewhat revolutionary compared to traditional approaches, often times BPM is seen as a “silver bullet” to solve enormous challenges over long-term time periods. For a CIO, having an executive staff with these kinds of expectations for long-term BPM efforts is a recipe for disaster and disappointment.

Planning your BPM strategy should begin with the realisation that each step along the way should be comprised with a short- to medium- term timeframe and goal in a limited setting or department. Derek Miers, founder of BPM Focus, says, “People start off doing BPM to solve some big problem — don’t start there. Find something that is going to self contain, some small-scope project. If you can succeed at a small project [with which] you can deliver value and do quickly – like in six to 10 weeks –  the  business will go, ‘Wow, can we have some more of that?’”

This sentiment is exactly what you want to foment among the influencers and decision makers on the executive team.

Think of the first aspects of your BPM plan as labs that will prove your thesis. And most importantly: don’t seek to implement any new BPM projects that you are not fundamentally sure will yield close to the ROI that you project. In the early stages of BPM implementation, an assured “quick win” is critical.

Bring SOA and BPM Together from the Start

As a CIO, development is your domain. As a result, you have the opportunity to wield not only the BPM approach to improving operations, but also the SOA component as well. BPM is a concept that even non-IT professionals can grasp (we outline the differences between BPM and SOA in another article), but SOA allows you to set up the blueprint for a new BPM vision.

Even if the SOA schematic is somewhat convoluted and cryptic for the business professionals in your organisation, it is essential that you have the SOA framework worked out in tandem with the BPM principles. Otherwise, you run the risk of presenting a BPM approach that will be too esoteric; business stakeholders need to have assurances that the theory can truly be put into practice.

It may be, then, that your IT team might need help in conceiving of the SOA blueprint that complements your BPM approach. If this is the case, an SOA consultant may be the best approach for having the right team in place for building the needed SOA framework.

It can be a hard sell to convince an executive staff of a brave, new approach to business processes. But if you follow these three key principles to pitching your project, you will have the best chance of success at gaining the go-ahead as well as the intended results.

Interested in learning more about how you can bring to bear BPM and SOA approaches toward improving you own business’s processes? Visit us at integrella.com for more information!

5 SOA Best Practices for the Business Professional

Service Oriented Architecture can be a minefield for the typical business professional. There is no doubt that the importance of SOA is now well-established in the business world and, while Business Process Management is a related discipline and one that business professionals often find more tangible, SOA can be a more esoteric and inaccessible concept for businesspeople, since it is primary an IT design concept.

(Read our other article, What Are the Differences Between BPM and SOA?, for more information.)

If the tenets of SOA seem too grounded in the IT niche for you to grasp, the best approach is to become familiar with a set of SOA best practices that are re-interpreted for the business user. SOA best practices will allow you to better understand how service oriented architecture becomes the integral design framework for BPM projects, and that in order for BPM to be a success, SOA standards have to optimally followed throughout the entire process.

The following are five business-friendly SOA best practices that should lead the way.

1) Let the SOA Maturity Model Guide Your Progress – And Your Spending

With the promise of improved integration, data sharing, reduction in loss and waste, and improved customer service and revenue levels, it isn’t hard for the IT portion of your organisation to start spending copious amounts of money and resources. That being said, it has been shown time and time again that SOA projects fail most often when the SOA maturity Model has not been followed properly.

Instead of spending wildly on new SOA platforms and technologies from the onset, take the “stage one – opportunistic” approach to implementing SOA, seeking out measurable, short-term SOA projects and goals that can function as a safe and reasonable test study for further implementation.

(To read more about the SOA Maturity Model, click here.)

2) For Starters, Find a Business Process That is SOA-Friendly

In the grand scheme of business, there will be aspects of our business processes and operations that will be naturally more receptive to SOA than others. As a best practice, try to first identify in-place processes that have support staff around them that are used to having applications built around. If the service has been opened up before, and the people who support that process are already comfortable having other applications built around it, it will make for a much smoother first project for your SOA campaign.

3) Encourage Your SOA Gurus To Talk In Business Terms

Implementing SOA is too far-reaching and expensive to ever feel as though you’re in the dark about what’s going to happen and what the reasonable goals are. For as much as SOA may seem to be the domain of IT, a good litmus test for whether or not your SOA service provider’s knowledge and understanding of SOA transcends the technical aspects.

SOA, after all, is a business endeavour. Therefore, demand that it be explained to you in business terms.

(To learn about Integrella’s approach to SOA, click here.)

4) Be a Stickler for Documentation

As a business professional, it’s easy to lose sight of the importance of proper documentation for new SOA systems, especially since most if not all of that documentation may seem like another language to you. That being said, having proper documentation in place for new SOA systems is even more important that more traditional systems, since many of the new processes and functioned contained within SOA best practices are just now becoming mainstreamed in IT.

Typically, a best practice is to appropriate 75% of effort to planning, documentation and testing, and 25% to development. Often times, IT may dream of inverting these resources, but in the long run, solid planning and documentation will lead to leaner development and smoother sailing down the line.

5) Include Customer Onboarding As Part of Your SOA Game Plan

There is an endgame to SOA projects – and it has to end with making sure that you’ve taken the necessary steps to get your customers and clients on board with any new procedures, technologies, and functions that are part of your new SOA framework. For as much as it may seem like an obvious sort of best practice, in fact, customer onboarding is often left out of the SOA plan, which can lead to unintended consequences, such as customers becoming frustrated with new systems that do not understand.

Whenever you are undertaking an SOA project, always be sure to keep the customer in mind if they are going to have to interact with the new architecture, and be sure to keep that question front and center as you move forward.

(To read more about customer onboarding, click here.)

Interested in learning more about how you can bring to bear BPM and SOA approaches toward improving you own business’s processes? Visit us at integrella.com for more information!

What are the Differences Between BPM and SOA?

The differences between SOA and BPM are not always obvious to the average business user. This article explains the differences between these two concepts – and how they work together to help streamline business processes.

Do a search of service oriented architecture or business process management, and you’re bound to see the other referenced in the search results. Further research and reading will reveal even more confusion: improving business processes is often referenced in articles explaining service-oriented architecture. Conversely, BPM often talks about SOA. How is one supposed to make sense of these two terms, how they work together, and how they differ?

The best place to begin in differentiating between BPM and SOA is to first understand what they have in common. Simply put, both of these disciples work toward improving integration of business processes. Much like the industrial revolution ushered in new methods of mass production and quality control, thus turning the page on handmade, “cottage industry” production, so too have SOA and BPM led businesses to better understand how disparate technology systems with their organisations lead to waste and inefficiency.

As a result, both BPM and SOA seek to integrate all of the systems within an organisation so that they can share data more easily and provide fresh, accurate means for servicing customers and clients.

BPM

Considering that both BPM and SOA seek to deliver streamlined integration to business processes, then one might wonder “what is BPM?” BPM is a holistic management process that seeks to align business processes so that they are optimised for the needs of an organisation’s clients and industry challenges.

While the IT perspective of BPM is concerned mainly with the technological considerations behind the middleware of a company’s business solution, BPM actually transcends even this restrictive view of what a business process means to a business. Bound up in BPM is not just the technological implementation of new middleware systems, but also a managerial roadmap that integrates human-driven processes in which human interaction takes place in series or parallel with the use of technology.

This isn’t to say that BPM is an intangible approach to integration; it is commonly implemented by a series of design tools, as well as detailed, time-proven methodologies, such as Lean Six Sigma. But all in all, BPM ushers in a complete management of how all operational processes are structured and implemented, all toward the one goal of efficiency and implementation.

SOA

Unlike BPM, which provides organisations with a specific management approach to implementing and maintaining efficient, integrated business processes, SOA instead provides a flexible set of design principles for developers, which are used during the systems development and integration phases of BPM projects. In this way, SOA helps to forge the blueprint and technological means for implementing the goals defined by BPM.

As stated earlier, at the heart of SOA is the integration of disparate systems within a company’s business solution. This is achieved by orchestrating software functionalities in a highly flexible, non-hierarchical arrangement. This is usually accomplished by using effective SOA software tools that allow existing software systems to communicate and interact. In this way, SOA gives developers the means of restructuring existing technological assets of companies so that they work more efficiently.

SOA and BPM Work Together

Because SOA and BPM overlap each other in terms of what they seek to accomplish, both concepts are in many ways inseparable. While one could imagine BPM as a more philosophical design approach, its principles are firmly rooted in optimising business technologies – there is little need for business process management outside the realm of technology these days. Because this is the case, SOA functions as a key component of achieving the objectives that BPM seeks to accomplish.

Interested in learning more about how you can bring to bear BPM and SOA approaches toward improving you own business’s processes? Visit us at integrella.com for more information!

Customer Onboarding Optimisation: The Final Piece of the Puzzle To Completing SOA & BPM

Many businesses have used SOA and BPM to streamline their processes. But without effective optimisation of the customer onboarding process, even effective systems can fail to produce profitable results.

Although SOA and BPM continue to become more mainstream in the business world, there is still a learning curve associated with these disciplines that can intimidate business stakeholders from quickly embracing it. For this reason, competent SOA consultancies now work hard to effectively educate and indoctrinate both business and IT professionals at organisations ramping up their business processes so that the executive and managerial teams are all fully invested in the new approach. We’ve written about this in our article on the SOA Maturity Model.

However, there is more to implementing new SOA- and BPM-inspired practices than simply getting the executive team on board: an organisation also needs to have the knowledge and vision to effectively optimise their processes and the customer onboarding process is a great place to start.

How Customer Onboarding Gets Lost in the Shuffle

A new service oriented architecture and business processes not only affect the organisational and operational aspects of a business – the changes can also be felt at the customer level as well. For established clients and customers, a change in the system can be jarring enough to even consider looking elsewhere for products and services. And for new customers, if the onboarding process is too cumbersome and slow, prospective customers might be lost in the process.

The reason for this is that, while many businesses have worked hard to streamline their processes, the customer onboarding process still remains dominated by many manual steps, such as credit scoring and entry into a plethora of IT systems that can be confusing and intimidating to the customer. Here at Integrella, some businesses we have consulted with in the wealth management area have complained that they often have to turn away business because of the associated risk of bringing on more staff to manually process transactions.   An efficient onboarding process allows organisations to scale their business units according to demand.

Just in the same way that business processes can be automated to streamline data sharing and other critical operational considerations, so too can the customer onboarding process be automated in a simple, user-friendly way that not only maintains customer relations, but also makes believers out of both new and returning customers who will need to interact with new systems.

Bringing Prospects & Customers Into the Loop

Typically, the process of onboarding involves a comprehensive set of tools and tutorials to educate and indoctrinate users of a new system. This can include formal meetings, lectures, videos, printed materials, or computer-based orientations to introduce newcomers. For the purposes of onboarding customers to a new business solution, however, an SOA consultancy will naturally look towards automation.

As part of its approach to helping organisations retool their business processes using SOA and BPM, Integrella works with businesses to help identify and automate the customer onboarding process. The end result not only streamlines the process for customers, but also allows businesses to cut processing costs and increase efficiency, since manual manpower and intensive hands-on customer relations is no longer necessary to educate customers.

There’s no doubt that automation is the next generation of business processes. But in order for automation to be effective, it needs to be implemented into the onboarding process as well as operational processes.