Do all of your processes automatically fulfill compliance specifications? Remember: Today’s efficient optimization brings tomorrow’s competitive advantages!

Crisis: 危机 (weiji)
Opportunity: 机会 (jihui)

Wise business owners look beyond the current economic crisis and towards the next economic upswing, because every crisis contains opportunities. There is a reason the Chinese words for crisis and for opportunity share a character. Companies should take advantage of current weak economic conditions and prepare themselves as best they can for a turning point in the current economic cycle. Above all, it is imperative to cut costs and use existing or even reduced resources as wisely as possible. To that end, it is critical to focus on optimizing business processes. Moreover, each and every employee must be fully aware of such efforts. This means that business owners need to develop a sound strategic plan and not just indiscriminately slash all expenditures. The best possible support comes in the form of intelligent business process management (BPM) that complies with applicable rules. Here, "intelligent" means that all employees, i.e. process participants, are integrated into the required process of change. Don't forget that employees tend to know best where there is potential for improvement. Subject-oriented methodology provides a solid foundation. Subject orientation means the focus is on the "subjects", the people who are actively engaged in the process. Why is this beneficial?

Communication and choreography are major aspects of BPM as all of the process participants, i.e. the "subjects", communicate by sending and receiving messages. In some cases, this communication flows across international borders or corporate boundaries. Synchronization of this parallel communication depends on the principle of choreography. Thanks to the subject-oriented approach, different departments can perform their own modeling and orchestrate the services they need. They use a simple set of symbols to precisely characterize with whom they must communicate, when to communicate and the services they require in order to efficiently handle a task. Stated otherwise: Cooperation between individual subjects is defined based on the choreography.

Better communication

Companies need to respond to changes quickly, and this requires dependable planning. Here is where another benefit of this methodology comes into play: employees can examine and test their processes without any coding costs before they are implemented. This helps to promote a creative environment where all of the participants eagerly propose possible optimizations on an ongoing basis. Based on the process models, the software needed to handle the processes is created immediately and automatically - for immediate access by the employees via a process portal. Any IT platform or web application server can be used.

This allows the business side of the company, rather than the IT department, to control how processes are managed. Close cooperation with the IT department is still being maintained. The communication gap that previously existed between the two areas is eliminated.

Service oriented business

Once the process models have been created and validated, they need to be linked to the available applications so they can be executed in a real-world IT environment. This involves extracting the required IT services and data from the existing IT environment. Form technologies and web robots are used to minimize the programming expense. Data modified by the user on his screen are also modified using the same mechanisms in the underlying systems and then compiled on a screen for editing by the user in the process. This process can be linked with the integration of web services. Thus, a convenient service oriented architecture (SOA) is created that links the existing applications and new service repositories with the processes. This allows the employees to model the processes and simultaneously define services from a business perspective. As a result, a link to IT can be established, and the implementation into IT achieved. The term "Service Oriented Business" (SOB) rather than SOA is used in this case.

How good is your service?

Improving the quality of service processes is a clear way to boost corporate performance. They ensure that you can manage service interruptions and changes effectively and efficiently. With its BPM SUITE, jCOM1 also tackles this area in a consistent way so as to provide dependable, optimized support for business processes through service management or SOA. Using the subject-oriented methodology, service quality can be planned, monitored and managed cost-effectively and with a focus on the customer. This approach delivers a significant boost in productivity combined with improved quality of service. Furthermore, all of the processes are documented down to the level of individual operations, providing a transparent perspective of the services along with an optimal basis for governance.

Rules for success

Processes tend to change nearly as fast as we think! Regulations, reference models, standards, sector-specific requirements and internal company guidelines also influence everyday life within companies. Many employees are leaning towards using "ad hoc" processes which involve Excel tables or e-mails to manage their work. Since a "shadow IT" system of this sort is not reliable and is definitely not audit-compliant, it represents a major risk for companies. Accordingly, jCOM1 particularly pushes compliance issues within processes into the foreground. From the very start, governance - a compliant type of management - is taken into account in process modeling and brought to life by the employees! Thus, all process participants must comply with company specifications and guidelines. This serves as a basis for the following:

§  gauging the consequences of changes in subprocesses for the overall process

§  ongoing integration of best-practice models into processes

The lesson is clear: Simple, compliant and fast

Clearly, the challenge is to provide a sustained boost to corporate agility. This requires structures that make it possible to optimize the process and application landscape. Errors must be recognized promptly, and all process participants must comply with the stated rules and regulations while going about their duties. Here, some intense effort is required on the part of the essential resource: The "human" one.

All in all, this is a way of implementing marketplace-dictated changes in business processes in a fast, carefully planned and coordinated manner. Each time an improvement is introduced, employees regain immediate access to them, so they are available for their everyday work. This procedure greatly simplifies the required effort, shortens throughput times for individual processes and leads overall to a fast ROI.

Let's assume you save 10 hours per process and pay an hourly rate of € 100. If you have 1,000 process changes or new process implementations per year, you will save a total of € 1,000,000!

Core benefits of using jCOM1 BPM SUITE

§  A single methodology is used for process modeling and implementation

§  Process description is simple and intuitive using only a few symbols

§  Employees enjoy significant creative freedom

§  Employee insights flow into the processes

§  Processes are transparent and are improved on a continuous basis

§  Similar business transactions are handled similarly

§  Each employee immediately recognizes his or her duties and the relevant communications procedure with other colleagues

§  Each subject defines his or her own control flow

§  Process documentation is always up-to-date and accessible

§  Integral components of BPM include topnotch reliability and customer orientation