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Resolution 1: I will have BPM roadmap & architecture established for the enterprise.

So far, we have implemented BPM in our new business area. We will roll it out in policy administration and claims management areas in future. However, there are tremendous opportunities to exploit BPM System further to deliver business value in our current implementation. We can alter our business model to process new business applications; we can change our integrations to deliver policies at much faster TAT; we can integrate our new business process with our partners. Such changes would have radical impact on our people, and infrastructure; which are extremely critical for the successful implementation of the project.

I no longer can afford to have an ad-hoc implementation approach to roll-out BPM system across the enterprise. I need to establish a clear roadmap for implementation. Such a roadmap would include:
- identifying business process areas for BPM system implementation and defining BPM projects
- prioritising the projects with business sponsor
- designing BPM systems architecture
- formulating integration strategy
- formulating hardware and netwrok requirements
- formulating broad project implementation timelines

For those who have not yet identified BPM or process autromation software such as BPM system, content management, scanning, and integration software, it is essential to identify enteprise process automation infrastructure as part of the roadmap. This infrastructure would host and automate mission critical (if not all) business processes of the organization.

I saw his interview today on one of the Indian channels – CNN-IBN. When the interviewer asked him about his amazing turnaround in the performance, Jeev replied, “The main change I have made is that I was very result-oriented in the last six years. But I told myself after I won the Volvo China Open, ‘You just go out there and try to follow your process and routine and see what happens.’ Then I won the Volvo China that week and after that I have just been focusing on the process and routine, and that’s given me immense amount of confidence and I have gone ahead and got a lot of top-tens and a lot more wins.”

Interesting isn’t it? Being process oriented helped Jeev achieve the results. So whats the takeaway? Focus on your process. Perfect your process. Results will follow. Results will be more consistent.

TIBCO: http://www.tibco.com/devnet/business_studio/default.jsp
Savvion: http://www.savvion.com/forms1/process_modeler.php
Intalio: http://bpms.intalio.com/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1

Would be very interesting to compare the three product offerings!

According to Mr Zachman, the “System” is the “Enterprise”.  But is system really the enterprise? And although the scope decides the span of horizon for the architecture, the illustrations he cited especially of benefits, were about single system rather than enterprise information systems architecture. To me his framework seemed more like System architecture rather than enterprise architecture.

I am more confused about enterprise architecture than ever before. I went to the seminar with an understanding of enterprise architecture being enterprise information systems architecture. I always thought enterprise architect addresses issues about information exchange / touch points / integration points between multiple systems. Enterprise architect makes decisions about information systems building blocks and information integration between these building blocks. Mr Zachman managed to obliterate my perception. I am confused.

Have any of you used Zachman’s framework? In that case, I would like to hear from you about your experience.

Recently, we had a presentation from one of the Big 5 of the Indian IT services firms. The topic of the presentation was Outsourcing – integrated IT as well as process outsourcing. The speaker was an enterprising and enthusiastic chap who clearly oversold the service offerings from his company. At one point in time he claimed that his firm could also carry out some of the core value chain activities such as medical underwriting for us. I couldn’t help but wonder if now these outsourcing service providers are going to forward integrate and set-up banking and insurance businesses as well.

On a more serious note, there seems to be a lot of value in offering and opting for integrated IT and process outsourcing services. In such a scenario, the outsourcing service provider takes care of execution of back-office processes as well as development and maintenance of IT applications and infrastructure. In a more matured model, the outsourcer or outsourcing service consumer will be transparent to (or least concerned about) what IT systems are being used by the outsourcee or the outsourcing service provider. And obviously, the service provider will charge the consumer based on transactions.

What is the merit for service consumers to go for such a business model? Outsourcing service consumers will then have to just deal with 1 or 2 strategic vendors so that they could focus on core activities such as marketing, product design & pricing, and branding.

Is this model conceptually new and never tried and tested before? I wouldn’t say so. Electronics industry in Japan and US has already undergone this revolution. Today giants in this industry are just focusing upon marketing, new product development and branding, while manufacturing is completely outsourced to their vendors in Taiwan.

What to expect in future? Consolidation will continue in IT Services, SaaS, Shared Services and BPO space. Some of the IT services firms such as TCS, EDS, CSC, Mastek, Infosys already have a packaged solution for insurance &/or banking industry. Most of them also have a strong footprint in BPO space. These firms are well positioned to offer  integrated IT(SaaS, Application Development & Maintenance) and process outsourcing services.  

Here are some interesting developments, which confirm this theory:
- Infosys renames Progeon as Infosys BPO 
- IBM Acquires Daksh To Bolster Offshore BPO Skills
- Wipro acquires Spectramind and later renames it as Wipro BPO
- TCS signs $848 Million plus deal with Pearl 
- TCS acquires BPO firm in Chile

I won’t be surprised if one of the big IT services firms goes ahead and acquires SaaS firms such as Salesforce.com. Will they also acquire product companies? Well, for that we’ll have to wait and watch how the industry evolves.

I thought if we managed these challenges well; we were home. Till about a fortnight back we were on schedule to go-live in the last week of September. And then Murphy’s law hit us. First the adapters which had worked fine in UT environment failed to run as expected in our Model Office Testing (MOT) environment and then the MOT environment crashed forcing us to postpone our go-live date by almost a month.

Pondering over this sudden development, I wondered whether could we have avoided this delay. Well, may be yes. Certailnly, we could have done something to prevent this.

The BPM system that we are implementing is the 3rd or 4th implementation globally after the software has been migrated to comply with J2EE & BPM standards such as BPELby the software vendor. The implementation partner although has had a long relationship with the software provider, is implementing the new version of the software for the 1st time.

The lesson: In case you are dealing with new and cutting edge technologies involve very tightly the provider of the software in the project. We now have an experienced consultant from the software vendor working on-site. We are also getting our software architecture, design and implementation configuration vetted by the software vendor.

 Hopefully, now we will be able to:

- minimize disputes between our erstwhile IT systems group and PMO
- give complete freedom & control to our PMs over the use of resources
- enforce focus and accountability on PMs, and their team members, and
- provide career path to our team members

Certainly having BAs with business functions or as independent functions had their pros and cons. However, we now believe this is the best structure.

Earlier blog entries on the same topic:
Sidewalk: Who owns Business Analysts?
Sidewalk: Who owns Business Analysts, the debate continues…

However, I think that SaaS, on its own, is yet to prove itself as a credible alternative to packaged / custom-built software applications. SaaS is in a very primitive form to convince IT as well as business organizations to opt for itself for mission critical applications such as Core Insurance system or ERP. There are a number of parameters that need to be given consideration before a decision in favour of SaaS can be taken. Few days back I had written a blog entry "Software as a Service – A reality check!" detailing parameters that can govern decision of organizations against or in favour of SaaS.

Are shared service and BPO two sides of the same coin?

In shared servies, you seek to pool resources offering similar services to various departments / divisions / SBUs within the organization. The objective is to achieve economies of scale, and maintaining optimum level of resources so as to reduce costs as well as offer SLA based services to consumer departments / divsions / SBUs. Examples of shared services are call centers, payroll, analytics, leagal and complicance services.

Is BPO greatly different from Shared Services? The only difference is that BPOs typically tend to be independent organizations which offer the same services as that of Shared Service organization but primarily to "external" customers. Sandy Kemsley argues that an enterprise is usually captive to its shared services, whereas they have a choice with an external SaaS (BPOs). Well that may not be completely true. I know many instances where there have been captive BPOs set-up by MNC organizations at on-shore as well as off-shore locations. Also, many a time organizations are forced to opt for BPO companies within the same corporate group when there are credible and better options available outside of the group.

I feel that shared services and BPOs are two sides of the same coin. They bring about the similar benefits to the organizations. There are merits and demerits in either models. BPOs especially if they are external organization, may offer superior services considering the customer – service provider relationship especially if the exit barriers are very low. On the other hand, Shared Services, being internal to the organizations can draw comfort from the fact that the sensitivity of data or records are still managed within the four walls of the organization.

I expect SaaS to mature over a period of time and then convergence of SaaS and BPOs is simply inevitable. Already organizations such as IBM, and Infosys have both package applications as well as process outsourcing services to offer to the market. What would really stop Infosys to offer loan processing service deployed on their core banking solution – Finalce as SaaS. In India I know at least one bank, which have outsourced their complete IT set-up to Wipro. What would stop this bank from using software applications developed on Wipro's Flow-brix as SaaS in combination with credit card payment collection services from Wipro's outsourcing unit. Just think about it. 

Having said so, we have made progress. We managed to install the software within a week and I could create a simple page detailing the purpose of our TWIKI implementation. Encouraged by our recent success, we have set ourselves very stiff target and we hope to be ready with one or two applications by the end of this month.

Any advice or help is always welcome.