Simplifying the complexities of enterprise collaboration with ECM and BPM

Handling content in a digital age & the impact of a robust enterprise content management has never been side-lined and with an agile business process management coupled in, the impact is for everyone to witness. Invensys Skelta as a part of the partner co-marketing initiative recently teamed with an OEM partner – Solgenia SPA to promote Solgenia Freedoc to a larger audience in the form of a web event.

Solgenia Freedoc is the answer to a collaborative environment where people can store, share and exchange structured and unstructured business information securely - in a single repository. Users are empowered to manage information, streamline workflows and maximize productivity extending social collaboration using file sync and sharing capabilities for a true real-time social collaboration also for the mobile workforce.

The partner driven webinar which will run for 40 minutes on the 10^th of December at 2 PM GMT will introduce Freedoc, components of Freedoc which includes special focus on using Social Space with or without Social Network, Integration with Microsoft Office, Freedoc Mobile and Freedoc in Cloud. You may register for the webinar here.

One of the core components of the Freedoc is the business workflow to design and implement business processes and internal workflows, enabling a systemic approach to improve business processes through the integration of IT and management methodologies.

A must attend session for enterprises before the start of the holiday season. For those, whose schedules are already blocked, do leave in a comment for this post and I shall ensure that the link to access the recording is made available to you.

Register today. 

BPM in manufacturing … what’s the enterprise level opportunity?

The generic and flexible nature of a BPM solution makes it a good fit for almost any sector. The current business climate and global pressure to improve safety, compliance, quality, productivity and cost are forcing companies to evaluate and improve their operations.

In this regard the Manufacturing sector is no different.

BPM and workflow software help support business critical outcomes providing a range of enablers for customers in the manufacturing space.  Pre-configured scenarios and solutions, built on a strong BPM platform allow workflow enabling of manufacturing solutions. Embedded workflows are a natural extension of application & technical integration allowing participation in and with enterprise and other collaborative workflow processes.

But is there a BPM opportunity specific to Manufacturing?

With rising energy costs, ageing infrastructure, obligation to shareholders and a highly competitive environment within the Manufacturing sector, enterprise integration and operational efficiency have taken on fresh relevance as the key factors to organizational success.  BPM can address, with measurable results, operational and business challenges at the Enterprise level in Manufacturing.

While at the plant level workflow software integrates with a range of plant systems and streamlines execution, automating manufacturing specific processes such as change management, SLA management, Design review processes & compliance management lend several business efficiencies at the enterprise level.  

For BPM to work end to end, it needs to be embedded into manufacturing systems, filling the gaps and completing the chain from enterprise to plant floor. BPM’s process modeling, managing, analyzing and optimization capabilities ensure continuous improvement for:

1. Corrective and preventive action (CAPA)
2. Driving lean manufacturing                                                            
3. Turning best practices into standard operating procedures      
4. Increased plant productivity                                                           
5. Accelerated project delivery                                                                                    
6. Real time interoperability between enterprise applications                  

In our next post, a detailed analysis of BPM as an enterprise application in manufacturing. 

Have a great week!

Process Uninterrupted

While Mobile Computing has been a feather in the cap for the IT industry for some time now, Mobile BPM as an application has only come into its own as recently as a year ago. This is a surprising fact for an industry dedicated to process improvement and operational efficiency in general. Key personnel on the field need to be connected to the business eco-system, centralized data and business processes for a truly agile business model and the lack of mobile BPM has been a glaring inconsistency.

In this excellent article from ebizq, the author examines why Mobile BPM has lagged behind other Enterprise applications. Differing Mobile standards, still maturing Mobile application platforms, technology barriers, legal barriers and a plethora of such reasons were instrumental in the arrested development of Mobile apps for business process management software.

The Mobile BPM scene today however has developed in leaps and bounds, with every BPM software worth its salt, ensuring a native mobile application as part of its service offering to bridge the business-field operator-end customer divide.

A robust Mobile BPM software application empowers users who are on the move to stay connected with their mission critical business processes while ensuring the security of their interactions. An easy-to-use mobile application that allows users to initiate processes on the move and also lets them perform process housekeeping tasks fulfills the first requirement of enterprise mobility - Anytime, Anywhere access to your business processes.

The changing face of the workforce means that a larger percentage of employees need to be integrated into the business – Mobile BPM means faster responses to workflow based processes and streamlined day-to-day operational activities.

So how much does the end user benefit from a mobile application for BPM software?

• Improved enterprise wide collaboration
• Anytime, anywhere access to business processes
• Uninterrupted processes
• Accessibility from wide range of iOS, Blackberry and Android platforms
• Secure process interactions with electronic signatures?

Mobile apps for BPM software are finally moving way ahead of the ‘Approve, Decline’ mode with features such as:

• Process initiation on the move
• Act on workflow tasks on the go
• Option to View and act on work items from mobile devices
• Comprehensive Search features for specific work items
• View of work items based on categories
• Flagging of work items based on importance 

This definitely speaks heightened connectivity to any organization's central nervous system for uninterrupted efficiency.

Tap into SharePoint potential with BPM software

With more than 3 million users worldwide, SharePoint is Microsoft’s fastest growing technology of all time.  With very little learning curve, flexibility in organizing information, easy search and retrieval of valuable information and several other benefits, more and more enterprises now prefer to invest in suites that combine portals, content management and collaboration solutions. Many CIOs will tell you that SharePoint is a critical component of their technology portfolio.

But SharePoint’s somewhat unplanned growth in the last 2 years has led to problems such as insufficient workflow processes, disorganized content and lack of cohesive site creation strategy. Although the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 stack includes sites, communities, content, search, insights and composites, one of its established uses is undoubtedly for improving process management functionality.

Almost every good BPM Software Suite in the market today integrates with Microsoft SharePoint.  If you are already utilizing Microsoft SharePoint for document management and enterprise content management, then BPM is something you will eventually want to consider to add advanced workflow capabilities. 

Of the myriad business benefits of extending BPM to SharePoint, these are key:

• Business user empowerment: enhanced collaboration, allowing business managers to build enterprise wide workflows for processing documents, custom lists and content types in SharePoint.
• Stronger processes: Centralized process management and analysis. Highly visible processes and promotes consistent practice of standards thus making processes reliable, repeatable and manageable.
• Improved productivity: Manage enterprise wide content and automate and streamline business processes for agile decision making
• Rapid ROI: Efficient processes with reduced processing costs and reduced IT investments

A product like Invensys Skelta’s SharePoint Accelerator extends advanced BPM & workflow software advantage to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for maximum utilization and broader adoption of native SharePoint capabilities. It makes sense for Enterprises to leverage existing SharePoint investments with the added BPM and workflow functionality – code free workflow design, extensibility of all BPM functionality such as queues, KPIs, dashboards, custom reports, built in SharePoint activities and wizards within workflows et al … to bring in the entire goodie bag – Process optimization, Quicker time to market, Operational efficiency across the board and of course better bottom lines.

Perhaps the best value addition BPM software brings to SharePoint is generating workflows from within SharePoint using built in SharePoint wizards and activities. Adds meaning to ‘Collaboration’ - both with dispersed knowledge workers and existing systems that integrate with SharePoint.

As an integrated platform, BPM software with SharePoint also lends itself to business application development for key areas of business.

By extending security and access rights management to documents in SharePoint, transparent, traceable processes and enhanced accountability can be enabled across the Enterprise.

In our next post, we discuss how Collaboration can be leveraged across the Enterprise value chain using BPM and workflow software with SharePoint.

Wrapping up at Microsoft World Partner Conference (WPC), Toronto.

We’re just back from attending the World Partner Conference at Toronto (8^th-12^th of July). With 16,000 attendees and more than 100 exhibitors the event was a high voltage platform for showcasing Microsoft technology based products and new business models.

Key announcements included confirmation of Windows 8 RTM/GA dates confirmation (early August for manufacturers and Enterprise customers). There was of course all the excitement generated by the Windows Phone 8 integrated with Windows 8. Loaded with new business apps such as Words with Friends, Draw Something, Audible, Chase and PayPal, Windows Phone 8 could well emerge as the number one competitor for Android.

In the BPM software space, Skelta BPM software stood head and shoulders above in the BPM and Advanced Workflow area with a clear forward thinking roadmap including our SaaS based BPM offering delivered on Microsoft Azure. We made the most of the WPC platform to showcase Invensys Skelta’s BPM offering for diverse user groups – Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Value Added Resellers (VARs), System Integrators, CIOs and Enterprise customers.

Wrapping up, we were thrilled to be a part of WPC this year. Invensys Skelta is committed to help partner organizations align their product / service offerings in line with the Microsoft technologies roadmap. We aim to align our own embeddable BPM software offering with future Microsoft technologies so that our users may leverage their existing Microsoft investments for maximum ROI.

See you all in Houston next year.