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BPM for a Flattened World
Thomas Friedman in his work, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, describes globalization as follows:
Written in 2005, this seminal work has become a "classic," reflecting the irrevocable trends in global collaboration through connectivity. Globalization goes hand in hand with an increasingly flattened world. By "flattening," Friedman implies the "playing field" is being leveled, allowing more and more of the world's population to be involved in innovation, production, and distribution of products and services. The creative spirit that was (and is) the hallmark of the US information technology revolution is increasingly emanating from young entrepreneurial ventures, especially in the emerging economies of China, India and other developing countries. The "outsourcing" for cheap labor is being augmented with creative startups in communication and information/internet technology and innovative offshore manufacturing in almost every sector. This brings us to business process management (BPM). What does globalization and flattening the world have to do with BPM? Just about everything! BPM leverages and enables flattening the world. It's a core component of emerging service-oriented enterprises, enabling increased automation, continuous process improvement and global connectivity. Globalization entails end-to-end global business processes that execute service choreographies potentially spanning continents. Behind the exchanges in these choreographies are internal orchestrations of services in the context of business rules and business processes with human participants. The underlying BPM components should allow the service oriented enterprise to customize its policies, processes and overall interface to target specific communities at a global scale. The customization can take the form of policies and processes that pertain to specific countries or cultures. It can also take the form of agile localized interfaces for specific languages. The enterprise can respond to the flattening world forces and provide a dynamic infrastructure that responds to constantly changing requirements, emerging innovations and market pressures. What makes the world flat? Friedman identifies 10 forces that are flattening the world. Each is either enabled or expanded by BPM. In this article I describe how each force either leverages or empowers BPM. 1. The Fall of CommunismNovember 9, 1989 marks the day that the Berlin Wall fell, heralding the opening of free markets and entrepreneurial ventures in the former Soviet empire. It allowed and supported openness and brought down "walls" or barriers between East and West. This unified the world. The democratic, open and free-market opportunities mean successful enterprises or ventures need to innovate. Enter BPM. If used and deployed methodically, BPM allows you to gain efficiencies in your processes, improve quality, and free up valuable resources to innovate. In other words, those who adopt BPM will streamline their production and internal and customer-facing processes – with tangible return on investment both in profits and cutting expenses. 2. Connectivity through the World Wide WebAround the time when Netscape went public, August 9, 1995, we began to see the emergence of standard protocols for browsing the Internet. HTTP and HTML (the standard used by browsers) were critical in the emergence of the World Wide Web. BPM is not only leveraging the Web but also providing new and innovative operational functionality that is making the Internet the platform for building, deploying and monitoring business processes. A browser-based interface for users and managers allows anyone in the organization to participate and collaborate in automated processes. Browser-based development narrows and flattens the gap between business and IT. The Web "platform" has become second nature for both business and IT. This common comfort can be applied when bringing IT and business together to build a new BPM solution. Browser-based development is, in fact, highly conducive to continuous improvement and dynamic lifecycles. 3. Workflow SoftwareSoon after the emergence of Web-based connectivity, the Web became a conduit of business. We also witnessed the emergence of connectivity standards, and especially SOAP over HTTP as well as other Web Services standards. Thus, the automation of the processes, where machines talk to machines, is essential in the overall milieu of global connectivity and straight-through processing with sometime-outsourced processes. BPM is the only category of tools and practices that can achieve this with automation of business processes and business rules. Processes involve human, system and trading partner participants. Business rules drive processes. 4. Open SourcingOpen source has advantages; it can promote innovation as well as flexibility in trying new scientific ideas. When it comes to BPM, on the one hand, business process management tools have benefited tremendously from open source initiatives such as Apache. There are also open source BPM initiatives. More importantly, as global enterprise solutions become BPM applications, you have the opportunity to exchange components in collaborative communities. These BPM applications are not just flows. They include business rules, information models, integration and user interface components. They're intended to be customized. In other words, one of the most significant trends in open source is innovation and exchange of BPM solutions that are deployed on an underlying BPM platform. 5. OutsourcingIndia, with its focus and excellence in education, is creating horizontal value to Western enterprises, especially in the United States. But India is not alone. Other Asian countries such as Pakistan and Malaysia, as well as a number of European, African, and South American countries, are also providing value to Western companies through outsourcing. There are three essential opportunities in using outsourcing with BPM: First, the outsourcing resources can be used to implement the BPM solution, while the management and design is kept local. Second, the IT organization can implement the BPM solution while outsourcing lower level (Java, C#, C++) implementations. Third, BPM itself can be used to create an implementation value chain among local IT teams and outsourced organizations. These options aren't exclusive, and you can have hybrids using a combination of all three. 6. OffshoringEntire factories are offshored to emerging markets such as China. The merchandise that is built offshore is then sold in Western countries. BPM can be used to help the offshoring companies achieve efficiencies in their manufacturing as well as in their supporting processes. For the consumer, this means change requests and customizations can be handled much more efficiently by the offshored organization. Furthermore, BPM can be used to implement Six Sigma practices that are customer-focused and continually improve the quality of the manufactured goods and services. (For example, read my chapter, "Business Process Management for Six Sigma Projects," in the Workflow Handbook 2006.) Critical-to-quality measures can be readily linked to automating and executing processes. Business rules can be used to make sure processes are in control. 7. Supply ChainingYou already know success stories related to efficient supply chain implementations. Perhaps you've been involved in one. For instance, Wal-Mart has created one of the world's largest supply-chains, from manufacturing outlets in China, to distribution, to its retail outlets. BPM is ideal for automating, managing and continuously improving supply chains. With BPM, you can capture and implement the supply chain as a collection of collaborating processes. Each participant in the supply chain can have its own internal process orchestrations supporting the end-to-end choreography. With BPM, the processes of the supply chain can be continuously monitored and improved. Any potential service level violation or exception can be exposed and handled in real-time. 8. InsourcingThe core concept behind insourcing is to add value and broaden the service or responsibilities of a department or organization horizontally. To explain the concept and potential of insourcing, Friedman uses UPS as a textbook example. UPS is not only moving goods, it's providing value. More specifically, Friedman shows how Toshiba, for example, uses UPS stores to have its customers drop off broken computers as well as have them fixed – by UPS! BPM can be used to streamline the value-added insourcing policies and procedures. The "happy path" of the value-added process can be automated with provisions to invoke the client's exception handling processes. Through choreographies, you can link the insourcing organization's processes to the client's internal processes. 9. In-formingThe focus of "in-forming" is unprecedented access to information, especially over the Internet via search engines. Throughout the ages, it was the rich and the privileged that had access to information, which, in turn, empowered and "elevated" them from the less privileged masses. No longer. This informing, especially via the Web, can also include the knowledge and intelligence that could be gathered from executing processes. As more procedures and policies get automated, they become the source of information, both for real-time as well as historical analysis. This information can then be used by decision-makers to continually identify innovation opportunities and improve the BPM solutions. Informing can also be effective for the operators and agents who are the clients of BPM solutions. 10. The "Steroids"Friedman calls the 10th flattener "steroids" because they strengthen and accelerate the other flatteners to achieve... well, more flattening. The steroids include broadband Internet, voice over IP, wifi, blogs, mySpace, discussion groups and overall technologies that support digital communities over the Internet. It includes dissipation of digital representation within the context of real-time interactions with multi-functional mobile devices. And what about BPM? It becomes the platform that provides collaboration within the context of dynamic processes. BPM leverages rich Internet applications as well as mobile devices and integrates various multimedia digital content types in the context of automated flows and rules. The steroids are powerful enablers, allowing whenever and wherever access to task lists and status of executing processes. Although each trend is a force that is flattening the world, they're also forces that drive service oriented enterprises – enabled or leveraged by BPM. Both developed and emerging economies can benefit from BPM. For the former, BPM is the main component that aligns business and IT. BPM also liberates IT to focus on innovative solutions with enhanced productivity emanating from model-driven development. The programming bottlenecks and archaic inefficiencies are avoided and replaced with iterative solutions that are quickly built and deployed via a BPM platform. For the emerging economies, it provides unparalleled potentials in streamlining strategic, operational and support processes. BPM helps implement quality improvement practices and continuously improves critical-to-quality measures. Globalization entails end-to-end business processes that execute in choreographies spanning companies and continents. Behind the exchanges in these choreographies are internal orchestrations involving human, system and trading partner participants. The underlying BPM components allow the service oriented enterprise to customize its policies, processes and overall interface to target specific communities. With BPM at its core, the service-oriented enterprise can provide a dynamic infrastructure that responds to constantly changing requirements with innovative solutions on a global scale. In other words, BPM leverages and enables flattening the world. Useful LinksPegasystems Buy Thomas L. Friedman's The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century: You can read more about service oriented enterprises in Dr. Khoshafian's recent book, Service Oriented Enterprises: Dr. Khoshafian's "Business Process Management for Six Sigma Projects," appears in the Workflow Handbook 2006: About the Author: Setrag Khoshafian is a pioneer and recognized expert in business process management. Currently, he is Vice President of BPM Technology at Pegasystems, Inc. in charge of technology direction and thought leadership. He designed and led the implementation of the earliest Web-centric distributed BPM system. In addition to BPM he has done extensive research and implementation in advanced database management systems. He led the architecture, design and implementation of one of the earliest distributed object-oriented database implementations. He is the lead author of nine books and has numerous publications in business as well as technical periodicals. He has taught courses in several universities around the world. Setrag holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Contact Setrag Khoshafian by visiting http://www.pegasystems.com.Reproduction Without Permission Is Strictly Prohibited – Request Permission Publish an Article: Do you have a process management tip, learning or case study? Share it with the largest community of Business Process Management professionals, and be recognized by your peers. It's a great way to promote your expertise and/or build your resume. Read more about submitting an article.
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