White Papers

Written by Derek Miers, CEO of BPM Focus, this white paper explores the disruptive capability delivered by the combination of BPM and Software as a Service. It discusses the strategic and organizational challenges associated with traditional ways of doing things, contrasted with how the “on-demand” Appian Anywhere platform enables dynamic collaboration between participants both within the organization, as well as its customers and trading partners.

Case Management is critical to the work of many organizations but is often intensely manual, paper-driven and plagued by delay and poor visibility. Primarily this is because Case Management requires supporting knowledge work, where many of the important steps take place in people’s heads or through collaboration with colleagues, making knowledge intensive processes difficult to analyze and structure. Also, because cases are primarily driven by human participants reacting to changing context, cases do not follow a predetermined path defined in advance – they lack predictability, making them difficult to automate. In this white paper we define case management in more detail, relate it to the broader subject of how knowledge workers do their jobs, and identify the characteristics that have made knowledge intensive processes difficult to automate in the past. We show how a Business Process Management approach with specific support for knowledge intensive processes provides the most appropriate solution to Case Management. Finally we describe the specific features that make the Singularity Process Platform the leading solution for case management in the market.

Organizations often try to implement Enterprise Case Management by extending the capabilities of technology platforms not designed for the purpose. Some buy commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions that meet a departmental need today but which cannot extend effectively beyond that initial need. Many more look to utilize Microsoft SharePoint and/ or Dynamics CRM for Enterprise Case Management. However, this requires considerable custom software development and the result is inadequate for today’s case management needs, lacks the flexibility to adapt as needs change, and lumbers the organization with inflexibility and an unacceptably high total cost of ownership (TCO).

Microsoft technologies provide powerful and valued support for much organizational work today. Yet complementary technology is required to meet the demanding requirements of case management work. Singularity delivers solutions which leverage the strengths of SharePoint, Dynamics CRM and other Microsoft technologies while complementing them with Singularity’s Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) to meet the key challenges of case management. The result is an Enterprise Case Management Platform built on Microsoft-based technologies which delivers on today’s challenges, allows cost effective adaptation to future needs as they arise, and reduces TCO.

While the benefits of BPMS for a wide range of processes are well established, an important class of unstructured, or case-based, processes have not benefited because of the limitations of conventional BPM Suites. This report, written by Bruce Silver, an independent industry analyst covering BPMS and founder of BPMessentials.com, describes the differences between Case Management and conventional BPM, including what to look for in a BPM solution to truly support case-based initiatives. BPM tends to focus on repeatable, structured processes, such as resource utilization, standardization, compliance, and end-to-end performance visibility. Case management; however, is applied to more dynamic, unstructured and ad-hoc processes that are dependent on human judgment to information contained in documents, such as customer complaints, claims exception processing, underwriting and so forth.

Archstone is a leading provider of apartment-style dwellings, with real-estate holdings in 13 states, including 180 communities and 2,600 associates spread across the United States. Stuck using manual processes, associates relied on mountains of paper forms to handle a vast majority of the company’s on-site real-estate operations. Business managers recognized that the 1,300-plus paper forms their leasing associates used every day were artifacts of an inefficient process and launched a business process improvement initiative to drive waste out. This project opened the door for a business process management (BPM) solution from Appian that eliminated the inefficiencies of working in paper and unclogged communication channels. Key lessons learned: 1) Communicate, communicate, communicate to get user buy-in, 2) the business can successfully drive BPM with minimal IT involvement, and 3) forms shouldn’t drive the process design — think process first.

This case study details the competitive advantage Real Capital has realized through BPM. A rapidly growing financial services company, Real Capital LLC offers debt and equity capital placement services to customers seeking assistance with real estate financing. One of Real Capital's competitive advantages is the comprehensive portfolio on information that it provides for each one of its clients.  This is made possible through its leverage of BPM.

The business process management (BPM) value proposition goes far beyond simple process automation,but unfortunately, that is where many organizations end their efforts. And while automation certainly provides tremendous efficiency, productivity, and reduced cycle time benefits, automation alone cannot unlock the more significant benefits that advanced BPM deployments offer. Enterprises with greater BPM maturity (often derived from establishing centers of excellence) can take advantage of many more features — including integrated process modeling, model-driven development, monitoring, collaboration, and optimization features — that leading BPM suite (BPMS) tools provide. To capitalize on the transformational power of BPM, develop and implement a plan that advances your BPM capabilities. Specifically, move from process automation to address (in increasing order of value) IT agility, process compliance and consistency, process insight, and, ultimately, business transformation. Information and knowledge managers who use BPM software should follow Forrester’s maturity model to help advance their thinking about BPM benefits and deployment goals.

While a business process management system (BPMS) can save time and cut costs by governing process, it can’t decide what to do, given a particular circumstance. Today, many business decisions must be made amid change and uncertainty. How do you, for example, track and detect evolving fraud schemes? Price according to economic trends and risk levels? Keep up compliance with new regulations? Market to changing demographics?

The answer lies with business rules. A business rules management system (BRMS) enables the right decisions to be made quickly, giving businesses the agility to react to changing regulations or fluctuating markets, or to modify or launch a program, such as new pricing strategies for a loan product or insurance policy.

Software AG and FICO provide a single, seamless platform for maximizing the power and value their clients derive from their business process automation systems.  Choose the world’s top BRMS and BPM solutions combined in a single enterprise platform for greater quality, power and agility.

This white paper explores:

• The differences between rules and process management
• The importance of making changes independently to rules and process
• What to look for in a BRMS to gain the most value
• How to get started with rules management
• Case studies illustrating the value of adding rules to BPM
• The partnership between FICO and Software AG to provide a single, seamless enterprise platform for greater quality, power and agility.

Delve into the critical success factors for a BPM project and learn how companies have demonstrated ROI from such initiatives.

Andrew Spanyi  and John Lojek

Justifying cost - whether for daily business operations or for the technology used to support them - is a constant requirements for competitive industries. Business Process Management (BPM) technology has reached a point maturity to clearly show an impressive rate of return.