If you’re looking for an alternative to traditional BPM approaches, there’s always iGrafx. Rather than providing a BPM suite geared toward a certain process type, iGrafx provides a solution of separate tools designed to handle a variety of process types. The solution, based on the idea of process independence, enables a top-down approach to business process management, and lets companies adapt to specific requirements depending on the task at hand—all while providing a single process improvement environment. The iGrafx solution enables companies to avoid getting tied to a specific execution environment, being too IT-centric in its Business Process Analysis and modeling, and relying on a monolithic solution for part of the BPM effort. At least one organization, the Department of Defense, is buying into iGrafx approach. The world’s largest purchasing agreement signed a blanket purchase agreement with iGrafx. First up is the Department of the Navy, which is deploying iGrafx software. The Air Naval Systems Command AIRSpeed (NAVAIR) initiatiative, an integral part of the Navy’s overall rollout, is designed to drive process efficiencies and embed a culture of continuous process improvement through the enterprise of over 37,000 military, civilian, and contractor support personnel.

TIBCO recent announcement that it has joined the ranks of those BPM companies offering free downloads to users is worth noting. In TIBCO’s case, the full-featured download is the company’s Business Studio modeling environment, which offers three key BPM activities: modeling, management, and simulation, in one package.

Business Studio has a lot to offer, if you are not familiar with it. One of its biggest advantages, if not it’s biggest, is that it lets users model and simulate process execution via real-world data. This ensures that the model represents an accurate reflection of the business process before deployment, so it reduces trial and error by optimizing processes before they’re deployed.

Business Studio isn’t a complete enterprise modeling tool, like Aris or CaseWise, but it’s a lot more than a simple drawing program, like Microsoft Visio. Built on an Eclipse platform, it offers BPMN modeling, lifecycle management, and multiple import/export options (Aris, BPEL, XPDL). It provides guided modeling, advanced simulation, a multi-designer environment, with a tiered organization, SLA agreements, and automatic generation of HTML process documentation. It also integrates with revision control systems and lets users associate non-process business assets with processes. Someone looking for a modeling envrionment could do worse.

Bloor Research, a firm that improves business performance by guiding organizations on the effective development and use of information technology, has a new BPM research report out. Written by Terry Schurter, CIO of the firm, the report provides an in-depth review of business drivers behind BPM, market directions, and future trends. (http://www.bloor-research.com)

"Business Process Management -- The Next Generation" was published this month. The report focuses on a sub-segment of the BPM market where products fulfill a minimum set of requirements to qualify them as "next generation business enablers" -- making them capable of addressing key enterprise goals and issues such as:

• improving the efficiency of their organizations
• adapting how their products are offered and presented to customers
• delivering quality across many customer interaction mediums: in person, web, phone, email, text, etc.
• enhancing the control, management, and visibility of the processes that support these activities.

The BPM report evaluates vendors in six key product areas: Process Modeling, Human Interaction Support, Proactive/Reactive capabilities, Process Improvement, Management Support, and System Integration. To be included in the report, vendors had to meet the minimum required score in all areas. The report handed out one Platinum Award, their top honor, which went to TIBCO’s iProcess Suite. Other vendors included in the report were IBM, Oracle, BEA, and Fujitsu.

Some follow up on the Retail Banking Call Center solution blog a few days ago, following an exchange of e-mails with key people at both IBM and Pegasystems…The new call center solution is not an OEM arrangement or a monolithic CRM application. Rather, it’s a composite-based solution—a set of best-practice components coupled with a composite application. In other words, IBM is selling consulting and enabling technologies that work together with Pegasystem’s solutions. The solution combines IBM’s component based architecture, portal framework and Pegasystems’ Customer Process Management framework and SmartBPM technology. The benefits to the customer service rep at the contact center include— Dramatic reduction in training time— No more sticky notes on the side of the screen— No more "ALT TABBING" to other applications and re-keying data— No more complicated decision making that can be inconsistent or incorrect— Reduce or eliminate call wrap up timesThe ultimate goal, according to my contacts, is to bring the right service and the right offer to the right customer at the right time – all rendered automatically by the solution. .

Look for TIBCO to make two major announcements on Tuesday—the introduction of a new version of TIBCO iProcess Suite and the debut of the latest generation of TIBCO Business Process Studio, version 1.1, which will be available free.TIBCO iProcess Suite, version 10.5, includes real-time Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) capabilities. They enable customers to avert process problems and take advantage of business opportunities.

TIBCO iProcess Insight, a wizard-based product, lets businesses define key metrics and examine the status of inflight processes. Other additions to the BPM suite are enhanced usability features, new graphic audit trail functionality, and advanced-form building capabilities. It will be available starting on Tuesday.

TIBCO Business Process Studio, version 1.1, a unified business-oriented modeling environment based on Eclipse, is being offered for free to the public. It will be the first fully functional, standards-based process-modeling studio being offered at no cost to BPM users. It will be available starting on Tuesday as well. The modeling environment eliminates barriers to entry for users.

In related activity, TIBCO will launch a community to help users and analysts with BPM implementations. Forums monitored by TIBCO engineers and video tutorials to help with common problems and guide users through implementations will also be part of the community. It is designed to help non-technical users get the most out of the BPM Implementations.