IBM Impact Blog - Tags - bpm

The Latest Business Partner News from Impact 2011: Announcing the Business Partner Award Winners and More

2011-04-11T17:35:31-04:00

Adapted from a post by Jacqi Levy on the IBM Software Business Partner Blog.

This morning, IBM officially kicked off Impact 2011, with an opening general session hosted by comedian Larry Miller, and appearances by IBM executives John Iwata, Nancy Pearson, David Farrell, Marie Wieck, among other guests. The session focused both on IBM's history of innovation, and on how this history positions IBM to help business become more agile in today's marketplace. If you missed the keynote, you can check out the replay on Impact TV. In addition, stay tuned to Impact TV throughout the day for live interviews, conference insights, and more.

For IBM Business Partners, the conference actually started yesterday, with the Impact 2011 Business Partner Summit. The Business Partner summit provided partners with a series of sessions and keynote presentations tailored to help them optimize growth and deliver results. Business Partners also got a preview of Impact product announcements, such as IBM's new Business Process Management platform, as well as insight into how they might expect these announcements to impact their businesses in the coming year. A full list of announcements from the Business Partner Summit, as well as presentations from the Summit breakout sessions, is available on PartnerWorld.

One of the biggest announcements of the Business Partner Summit was official recognition of the 2011 Impact Business Partner Award winners. The awards recognize Business Partners who have demonstrated excellence in delivering business value solutions to our clients based on their integrations with WebSphere software. For details, check out Travis Walker's post on the 2011 Impact Business Partner Award winners. In addition, the winner of the Impact 2011 Best of Show Award was announced today:

Impact 2011 Best of Show Award
Winner: Zobrist Consulting Group
Finalist: OpTier

Finalist: Avaya
Finalist: Summa

Congratulations to all of the 2011 Impact Award winners and finalists!

And finally, for those of you who could not make it to Impact this year, you can get all of the details on these and other announcements with our WebSphere Business Partner Webcast, live from the conference in Las Vegas. The webcast will feature Nancy Pearson, Vice President of Marketing for WebSphere, BPM and SOA, and David Wilson, Worldwide WebSphere Business Partners, General Business and Enablement. The two will share their impressions of the conference, speak with partners in attendance, and inform you of what's new and exciting from WebSphere and IBM's Business Partner Programs. Here's the details:

Date: Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Time: 10:30 a.m. PST - 12:00 p.m. PST

Interested partners will need to register in order to attend. Once you have registered, you will receive a confirmation email with the call-in information and e-meeting details.

Looking forward to seeing you at the Business Partner Summit next year! In addition, don't forget to attend the Impact Business Partner Reception, Tuesday from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. PDT in the Palazzo Ballroom on Level 5.

Is Watson the Next Frontier of Process Improvement?

2011-04-07T17:24:24-04:00

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The following post was contributed by Mihnea Galeteanu, Chief Storyteller, IBM Blueworks Live and Websphere Lombardi Edition.

Language: "a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who

are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition"

Once you’re done reading this blog post, I dare you to stand up and look for wherever people congregate in your office, perhaps around water coolers or coffee machines.

Not only will it be good to get that much needed exercise (just saying) but I’m also confident you’ll confirm my theory: whether in English, French, Spanish or whatever other natural language, your colleagues will be talking/complaining/debating about a process. What a company does, how it differentiates itself in the marketplace, how it orders everything from paper clips to engine parts, can all be expressed in terms of a process.

Process is the language of business

When something goes wrong, it’s either because there is too much process, too little process or the wrong process. Likewise, when something goes right, it’s because the right resources (people or systems) were engaged at the right time. What dictates that is again a process. Too often however, what differentiates something going wrong from something going right is nuance or context if you will. You either had the right alerts in place to alert you when that something is about to go wrong or you just happened to read a whitepaper that proposed an improved way of delivering that promotion campaign and that allowed you to capture market share ahead of your competitor. The equivalent of context in natural language is when your wife asks you “What do you think of this color on me?” and your answer is always wrong UNLESS you had just bought her flowers or are about to take her out for a nice dinner.

Process execution context makes process management more of an art than an exact science

This is where Watson comes in. As demonstrated recently on Jeopardy, Watson can take language and apply the context to it in order to find meaning in their combination and propose an answer or a solution.I can’t help but wonder if this is the next frontier of process improvement. What if Watson could take everything it knows about process improvement in general, about your industry and your company in particular and apply that knowledge to offer you insights into how you can make your processes better, more efficient, more scalable before you even had a chance to have your morning coffee? What if, because it understands the meaning of your process in the context of your organization, it could monitor for changes in your industry and adapt your processes for you (of course, Watson would be nice enough to send you an email and let you know what it did and how much money it saved you or it made you)?

While IBM has been using BPM with Business Intelligence & Predictive Analytics for a few years now, with Watson, we can 'humanize' the output. It allows us to deliver process insights in natural language instead of in reports, dashboards, and in data, which then requires a human to review it, understand it, and apply it. Healthcare will, in fact, be the first industry that will benefit from everything IBM learned from building Watson. At the macro level, what I’m talking about here is the healthcare of your organization and of your business. Same problem, different scale.

What are your thoughts on this? Please leave us a comment below and share your perspective.

IMPACT 2011 Bridges the IT and Line of Business Gap

2011-04-05T18:18:08-04:00

Recently I sat down with IBM Product Marketing Manager Craig Riegelhaupt to get his perspective IBM IMPACT 2011 and why he thinks
companies need to attend.

Q: Please introduce yourself.

A: My name is Craig Riegelhaupt and I'm a Product Marketing Manager here at IBM focusing on WebSphere Process Server.

Q: So why should a company come to IBM IMPACT 2011, Craig?

A: It’s all about bridging the gap between IT and the line of business. It’s also one of the largest conferences IBM holds. I'm especially excited about Day 2 where we will be featuring a lot of the new products that we've been working on.

Q: Tell me more about Day 2, please.

A: Day 2 is all about business agility. There will be over 80 different sessions, including "meet the experts" where you’ll have a chance to talk with some of the speakers at this event. There are so many different ways for you to learn more about how to implement agility within your company. I also think IMPACT is a great opportunity to interact with other IBM customers, and have them share their journey to business agility. It's going to be an exciting time, and it’s something I'm really looking forward to.

Q: Why is business agility critical to a company's success?

A: Companies need to be agile to deal with all of the complexity they are facing today, including interactions both within and outside their organization. These dynamic networks require business agility. Agile companies have higher earnings per share growth, higher ROI, and higher revenue growth. So then IMPACT all about charting your road map.

Q: What would you tell someone who's on the fence about coming to IBM IMPACT 2011?

A: I'd say, where else can you find such a mix of individuals and companies in one place that are leaders in their respective industries, and learn about these brand new products we're announcing that could help you achieve that growth that I spoke about earlier.

Forbes is also sponsoring a Leadership Forum that I think companies can learn a lot from.

Q: Can customers talk further with you at IBM IMPACT 2011?

A: Please do! I'd love to talk to anybody who's interested in learning more about our products or process automation and optimization. I hope to see you April 10 - 15 in Las Vegas and we can start charting your road map to business agility together.

Thanks for your time, Craig.

Join the conversation: Register at the Impact Conversations site

Award winning business partner, Prolifics back for Gold at Impact 2011

2011-03-24T12:14:24-04:00

Contributed by Shaku Selvakumar

Prolifics, a Premier Business Partner of IBM, is the one of the largest systems integrator specializing exclusively in IBM technologies and has garnered multiple awards for technical excellence and its SOA solutions, including the 2010 IBM Impact Award for Outstanding Business Process Management Solution. The company helps customers improve and automate business processes through modeling, process choreography and optimization. Prolifics provides expert services including architectural advisement, design, development, and deployment of secure end-to-end SOA, BPM and Portal solutions.

We spoke to Devi Gupta, VP of Marketing, about Prolifics and their presence at Impact 2011.

Devi, tell us more about Prolifics and your SOA and BPM solutions.

Most of all, we would like our readers to know about Prolifics’ deep expertise and highly-specialized skill sets. We have a great deal of experience implementing SOA and BPM solutions for customers, including Equinox, Mothercare, mBlox, Cigna and Portland General Electric.

Prolifics offers a range of services from Quick Starts to creating a BPM CoE to business monitoring initiatives. We also have experience in creating SOA solutions to satisfy various industry requirements, such as payment solutions for the financial industry, smart grid applications for the utilities industry and claims processing for the insurance industry,

We are always excited to work with new BPM products and lately we have increased our focus on Lombardi and ILOG. Several of our recent solutions have including the technologies and we are looking forward to talking to customers about the value of these products and the significance of business process improvement.

I understand you have quite a few exciting sessions at Impact with your customers. Tell us more please.
Actually, this year Prolifics has 5 speaking spots! We are particularly excited to co-speak with two of our customers, Horizon Healthcare and RBS Citizens Bank, for the first time at Impact 2011. These sessions will focus on BPM initiatives and connectivity and showcase Prolifics’ recent success at both companies. We really think these sessions will resonate with this year’s Impact audience. For those who are interested in these sessions, you can click here for more information about all of Prolifics’ speaking opportunities at Impact.

In one of these sessions, Horizon Healthcare and Prolifics will discuss the importance of building a BPM Center of Excellence and how this solution helps Horizon introduce new technology and BPM concepts into their enterprise. With a CoE, Horizon is able to develop expert knowledge of key processes; develop a rollout plan for the adoption of BPM technology; provide reporting on process improvements with KPIs to business owners; and integrate BPM with Development and PMO teams and processes. With such a great story, we are glad that Horizon has also agreed to record a video case study at Impact to discuss more about their business challenges and Prolifics’ solution.

Title: Scaling BPM at Horizon Healthcare by Building a BPM Center Of Excellence Date: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 Time: 1:30 PM – 2:45 PM Room: Venetian-Murano 3205

During another session, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Citizens Bank and Prolifics will present a rule-based BPM solution that improves the bank’s customer relationship management by shortening their customer on-boarding process, creating a 360 degree view of the customer’s portfolio, reducing operational overhead and providing visibility on business metrics. RBS will also discuss a key aspect of their solution – integrating Salesforce.com with other critical business systems to optimize processes and measure KPIs. This is such an interesting story and it will be great to hear about the project and solution benefits from both RBS and Prolifics perspectives.

Title: BPM & Salesforce.com Integration Improves ROI for Royal Bank of Scotland Date: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 Time: 3:15 PM – 4:30 PM Room: Venetian-Murano 3205

Prolifics offers a variety of SOA and BPM services. What are some of the messages you'll be sharing to help customers thrive in today's economy?

Across all industries, many organizations have been focusing on driving greater business agility. Prolifics’ BPM solutions, enabled by Lombardi and ILOG, allow these organizations to optimize and streamline key processes and give the insight needed to control cost, improve sales, manage risk and improve customer satisfaction. We feel that these products have a lot to offer and through our messages we hope to have many conversations with customers about their features and benefits.

Prolifics is quite familiar with Impact and you are back as a Gold Sponsor. Why Impact?

Prolifics has attended Impact consecutively for over 5 years and we have been a Gold Sponsor every year since 2008. We continue to expand our presence at Impact due to the value we get each year. In addition, we also always take advantage of the opportunity to participate in speaking sessions, ranging from customer case studies to various solution topics.

Impact is a great opportunity to recognize leading SOA and BPM solutions. Prolifics has received several awards and finalist recognitions in past years, and we were particularly proud to win the 2010 IBM Impact Business Process Management Award for our BPM solution at Equinox Fitness.

How does Impact 2011 help you reach new customers and maintain your expertise in today's marketplace?

As a Gold Sponsor, Prolifics has a large presence on the exhibitor floor and our reps are able to network with many customers as they visit our booth. During the Expo, we have a lot of interesting things to talk to these customers about at our booth, including our SOA and BPM Clinics, where we can do a deeper dive into certain topics that they may be interested in. In addition, we are planning to execute a Prolifics customer roundtable that will also allow us to collaborate with new customers along with our existing customers to drive more business around SOA and BPM.

With our five speaking sessions, we have great opportunities to get in front of a new audience to talk about topics that we feel are pertinent to their SOA and BPM needs.

Each year, Impact offers great ways to maintain our expertise, including over 500 educational sessions this year. These sessions range from business-level sessions and technical sessions to hands-on classes that allow us to keep up with marketing trends, new products and best practices for IBM’s existing portfolio. We also benefit from hearing from Subject Matter Experts, the analyst community and IBM executives at different panel and keynote sessions that allow us to keep up with understanding the market.

Who are you looking to hear from at IMPACT

We are really excited to hear our customer from American Express speak about their Corporate Travel and Profile System which was designed and built by Prolifics. During this presentation, our customer will discuss business challenges that many other organizations may be facing as well and how they were able to increase business agility. If you want to read more about this session, click here.

Nothing inspires like our customer success stories and great to hear you have so much to share at Impact this year. Thank you, Devi for your time!

Don’t forget to visit Prolifics at the Solution Center and be sure to catch for exciting news on the Akamai Ready relationship at Impact 2011. Follow @prolifics on Twitter for real time news.

Register for Impact 2011 and meet our IBM Business Partners at the world class Solution Showcase Center featuring over 130 business partner and IBM exhibitors demonstrating the latest technology.

Follow the conversation: IMPACT on Twitter and hashtag #ibmimpact

Interact: Social @ Impact

Discuss with peers: IMPACT LinkedIn Group

Friend us: IMPACT Facebook Page

IMPACT 2011 and The Big Announcement You'll Miss If You Don't Go

2011-03-16T10:44:41-04:00

A conversation with BPM Product Marketing Manager, Trent Shupe

by Krista E. Summitt, Social Media Strategist, BPM/DM Product Marketing

(Transcribed and edited from interview recorded on March 7, 2011)

Recently, the IMPACT blog sat down for a conversation with BPM Product Marketing Manager, Trent Shupe. Find out why he believes IBM is making its biggest announcement in five years at IMPACT 2011, and get a preview of the sessions where he’ll be speaking in the Q&A below.

Trent, I’m looking forward to finding out what exciting announcements and sessions you’ve got going on at IMPACT, but first can you tell us what your job at IBM entails?

TS: My primary responsibility is making sure that the mission and objectives are consistent and on strategy and are communicated effectively and consistently, so that includes written deliverables, events, web and all of the other channels and resources we leverage to market our portfolio. As Product Marketing Manager, I work with a broad team that spans product management, development, pricing, legal, and other marketing disciplines to plan and carry out our marketing strategy.

Can you tell us a little bit about IMPACT 2011 and what activities you have going on there?

TS: Sure. You know, lot of people don't really realize this, but IMPACT is really the world's largest BPM event. We've got over 65 business partner sponsors, ten different peds dedicated to BPM in our solution center, and a combined 250 technology sessions that will be delivered around BPM and connectivity.

Sounds like a tremendous opportunity for Business Process practitioners or IT professionals. Is that the audience you're trying to reach?

TS: It is, however the audience really "spans the gamut". The folks on the IT side like to come get hands-on experience with the software, play with the code, and experience IMPACT that way. But we also have a Forbes Business Leadership program, which is really targeted towards line-of-business professionals. While it’s not dedicated solely to BPM, there are a ton of relevant sessions where BPM will be highlighted and folks can come and learn what's important from a business perspective, see the latest trends, and find out how BPM will affect their own organizations.

Trent, with all big events like this, people always want to know if any exciting announcements are happening. Is that something you can tell us about?

TS: Absolutely, absolutely. Especially in the BPM space, we're really excited this year to highlight a couple of key announcements, because, this is pretty much the biggest product announcement IBM has made in this space for at least 4 or 5 years. Of course, you know I can’t give a lot of product-level details about the announcement (we’re saving that for the big event.) however, I would say, for those coming to IMPACT, or on the fence about coming to IMPACT, I encourage you to just come and hear how this product announcement really changes the game for IBM and our customers. We’ve been listening to the analysts and our customers, and they’ve been sending some strong signals about what they'd like to see IBM deliver. I truly believe we’ve gone above and beyond the expectations and delivering an announcement that will create a ton of buzz and excitement in marketplace. Folks will really be excited to get a better understanding of IBM’s strategy overall, and what we’re delivering with the specific announcement in April.

KS: So I'm sure you have an awesome, dynamic speaker to deliver such a big announcement. Can you share with us who it is?

TS: We sure do! Phil Gilbert, who is the Vice-President of BPM for IBM, will be making this announcement on the Day Two main stage. If you've not heard Phil speak, he's a tremendous speaker, he’s very dynamic and will certainly deliver the message about announcement that we're making.

So, Trent, if someone wanted to meet you at IMPACT and talk to you more about these offerings, can they do so? Where can they find you at IMPACT?

TS: Absolutely. First, I'll be speaking at 2 different sessions around this announcement.

The first one is WS BPM 2011 Intro to Powerfully Simple Process Improvement. That's at the Venetian, Palazzo H, Session TBP2152 on Tuesday 4/12 10:15 to 11:30 and is open to anyone.

The other session will be for the Business Partner Summit, Session #2968 I’ll be co-presenting with Dave Marquard, Manager of BPM Product Marketing , on "Positioning the Best BPM Solution For Your Customer" In addition to speaking, I’ll also be at a ped in our Solution Center, so people can meet me there as well.

Trent, you've given us a lot of exciting information today. Are there any final thoughts you'd like share if say, someone is reading this who may be on the fence about coming to IMPACT?

TS: I’d reiterate a couple of points. First, this announcement we'll be making is tremendously exciting. More exciting than any other that IBM has made at IMPACT in the past. Now, if that doesn't do it for you, I would consider all the educational and networking opportunities with peers, technology, experts and business partners. To get this kind of education in one place in this amount of time, in a format that's consumable would cost you a tremendous amount of money. So considering the cost of IMPACT, compared with what you are getting, it’s just a great opportunity. Plus IMPACT is a lot of fun! We have a great lineup of speakers and activities.

Trent, this has been a great conversation. Thank you for your time.

Meet Trent and the BPM team at Impact! What does Business Process Management (BPM) have to do with Decision Management?

Come to Impact 2011 for the answer. More than 100 dedicated sessions, hands-on labs and demos featuring IBM BPM and Decision Management solutions make Impact the largest BPM and Decision Management event in the world. Learn how to make BPM projects successful and make that success repeatable.

Find out how BPM technologies can streamline and automate business processes across the entire business network. Sessions explain how to achieve the automation and improvement of operational decisions that drive business processes and applications.

Follow the conversation: IMPACT on Twitter and hashtag #ibmimpact

Interact: Social @ Impact

Discuss with peers: IMPACT LinkedIn Group

Friend us: IMPACT Facebook Page

What you need to know about delivering citizen-centric services: from strategy to execution.

2011-03-07T10:57:38-05:00

Contributors: Bruce D. Baron, Offerings Manager Government, Public Sector and Smarter Cities, IBM Rational, and Cecile Poyet, Industry Marketing Manager, Government and Media & Entertainment, IBM WebSpere

For a typical government, almost half of their budget will be spent on citizen-centric activities, through social programs, infrastructure and economics, safety and security. Spending on what would be called social programs, including entitlements, has been the center of many discussions around the exploding cost and size of governments. The challenges in defining what is discretionary, and where will investing and disinvesting hurt the longer term viability of the citizens, has never been more in focus than it is with the current economic situation.

This spending crosses multiple areas and industries, including healthcare, education, family services and law, as well as employment and training. For many people, that level of spend seems appropriate based on a premise that helping people will help business in the economy. But many disagree as to the way that government approaches spending in these sectors, the connection between actions and expected outcomes, and relative beliefs that governments could get more productive, and more value from these investments.

In a recent paper by analyst firm MWD, analyst Neil Ward Dutton outlines the several areas where information technology has been shown to be very effective in private industry where governments are seeking to build a foundation to better deliver citizen centric services. Neil identifies the most important lesson from the private industry: without a plan that connects specific initiatives to the long-term strategy, and assesses associated risks, more effective outcomes are simply not possible.

The first area where governments can make a big difference is by making their enterprise architecture “actionable” in other words to leverage our ability to capture and analyze the interconnected nature of people, processes and technology and model a future state blueprint and roadmap that captures a shared vision where the value and risks of decisions can be transparent. A key way to do this is through diligently working to connect the outcomes expected with the required programs and activities through the development of a “business architecture”, which explicitly connects the long-term goals in the business processes that will be used and the goals the government needs to deliver on. The second area, as underlined by Neil, is business analytics as a key input into both the strategic and operational layers of the plan. Predictive analytics and line of sight reporting ensures that governments can validate the connection between their strategy and to monitor the evolution of citizen centric delivery, to modify processes as needed, for constant improvement.

Neil's work also capture several case studies to show how these successes are starting to show up in the public sector, in places like Canada, where multiple government, civic, and business leaders have organized themselves ,focused on making government across Canada faster better and less costly. The organization, the Municipal Information Systems Association, or MISA, has developed a municipal reference model that captures best-practice process and measurement content for budgeting and operations of 700 municipal processes, contained in an Enterprise Architecture, so each municipality can adopt the best practices of others, benchmark their progress, and ultimately deliver repeatable, successful, proven outcomes in the various services areas where they intersect with public needs.

Another good example is the professional certification accelerator solution developed by Texas Education Agency (TEA) to automate and enhance the teacher-credentialing process, now turned into a reusable asset for all other states in the U.S. The solution developed by IBM and TEA simplifies and tracks the certification process for each applicant, combines easily adjustable business rules with automated processes and enables government education agencies to apply advanced analytics, driving better student outcomes and ensuring that key criteria are met in a timely manner. Today, TEA can implement legislative changes using business rules 90 times faster than in the past and spends 35 percent less time on rules administration.

Rick Goldgar, the Deputy CIO of Texas Education Agency, will present the solution in details at Impact 2011, the Global IBM Conference that bring together more than 6,600 technology and business leaders to discuss and master the latest Business Process Management (BPM), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Cloud solutions

Learn more about Texas Education Agency’s solution here

Learn more about IMPACT 2011 here and our Government Industry programs for both line of business and technology professionals.

Read the full paper from Neil Ward-Dutton from MWD Advisors here. Follow Neil Ward Dutton on Twitter @neilwd

Connect with our blog contributors: Bruce Baron on Twitter @ppmthinking and Cecile Poyet on Linkedin

Also on Twitter, follow @IBMGovernment and join the The IBM Center for The Business of Government on Linkedin

Because each industry faces unique challenges, we have designed a special track that allows you to benefit from your peers. Hear from those who have successfully delivered business integration, designed flexible and secure application and transactional infrastructure, or enabled dynamic and interconnected business processes to address their business needs.

With more than forty sessions dedicated to industries, the "Implementing Industry Solutions for Improved ROI" section of the Technology Program will offer a wide array of customer and IBM implementation success stories, technical education, lectures, workshops, hands-on labs and networking opportunities designed to help IT executives and professionals address the specific challenges of their industries.

Learn from these industry experts who have successfully leveraged WebSphere technology to design, develop and connect flexible infrastructures aligned with their business needs.

Follow the conversation: IMPACT on Twitter and hashtag #ibmimpact

Interact: Social @ Impact

Discuss with peers: IMPACT LinkedIn Group

Friend us: IMPACT Facebook Page

5 Small Scale IT Projects for Big Time Business Results

2011-03-04T12:51:36-05:00

Contributed by Tiffeni Woodhams, WebSphere Marketing Manager

How to pilot your way to greater business agility and near term ROI

Companies are redesigning operating strategies for ultimate speed and flexibility, targeting those initiatives that can deliver significant business improvements quickly, especially in the CEO-hot button areas of innovation, operational efficiency and customer experience.

We looked at five proven IT projects for greater business agility and flexibility, designed to deliver faster ROI by taking a practical and incremental approach to implementation.

Each project:

Targets a key initiative where IT can expand its business impact as a value creator and cost cutter – process improvement; operational decision-making; business connections; cloud and virtualization; build, deploy and manage applications.
Provides assurance of a successful initial implementation with actual business results; establishing the proper infrastructure for expansion and preventing wrong and costly redesign and changes down the line.

NACCO Increases Engineering Productivity in 15 days

NACCO Materials Handling Group implemented new BPM processes for Engineering Change Notice (ECN) and Product Cost Authorization, using IBM WebSphere Lombardi Edition and Lombardi Edition for Microsoft Office, because the existing platform was inefficient and manual-intensive. The new system increased the productivity of NACCO engineers by reducing their manual hand-offs and interactions with legacy systems. One process was selected for implementation before wider roll-out. Attend this webcast to learn how the ECN was designed, developed and deployed in 15 days, and NACCO extended this process to all ECNs (both new and existing)

Join us and learn more. Register for the March 10 webcast

How to efficiently deploy and virtualize your application environment

Wondering if your organization can leverage cloud in the midst of flat or tightening budgets? Don't miss this webcast to learn how you can begin enjoying the cost saving benefits of efficient application deployment to private Clouds with WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance, regardless of your enterprises size, industry or internal expertise. Additionally, enhance server utilization and efficiently manage application workloads with WebSphere Virtual Enterprise. Don't miss this time and investment saving session!

Join us and learn more. Register for the March 24 webcast.

How to increase efficiency by streamlining your application infrastructure across multiple environments.

A Smart SOA Application Foundation lets you build, deploy and manage robust and re-usable SOA applications and services of all types. Watch this webcast to learn how you can quickly deliver business objectives while reducing application infrastructure costs across mainframe and distributed environments.

Join us and Learn more. Register for the April 21 webcast

Decision Automation Pilot: “Improve the timing and quality of your most important operational decisions within key business processes”

Imagine being able to implement 20% of your business rules that cover 80% of your business transactions; allowing you to double the pass-through rate of all billing transactions in just 9 weeks. One major transportation company in North America did just that. With this Quick Win pilot, you start small, with meaningful business rules, deploying a subset of your business decisions to demonstrate and validate the value of the technology and implementation methodology. Through this pilot, you will directly and measurably experience how intelligent decision automation can improve your business before making a larger investment.

Join us and learn more. Register for the May 19 webcast

Making Vital Business Connections Faster and More Effectively

Did you think you could onboard a new business partner 50% faster, or reduce the time and cost to change your IT systems by 50%? You can. By leveraging an incremental approach to SOA, you can begin to make faster, better, and richer connections across your business network in less than 9 months. Watch this webcast to learn how.

Join us and learn more. Register for the June 16 webcast.

Business asks more and more of IT as new market dynamics and customer demands require finding new ways to achieve business growth. Yesterday’s business strategy is no longer good enough. Today’s market leaders need the business agility to adapt quickly and grow despite market fluctuations.

Gain value from one project, and proceed to the next until you have employed all the engines of agility across your organization with BPM, SOA and Cloud. To learn even more about Business Agility solutions, you can register and attend Impact 2011.

Follow the conversation: IMPACT on Twitter and hashtag #ibmimpact

Interact: Social @ Impact

Discuss with peers: IMPACT LinkedIn Group

Friend us: IMPACT Facebook Page

Q&A with Larry Hargrove on BPM, SOA, and Cloud at Mobile World Congress 2011

2011-02-24T17:08:28-05:00

This interview was contributed by Jennifer Dubow @jennifer_dubow.

I was able to catch up with Larry Hargrove, IBM Global Telecom Sales Executive, at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2011 this past week in Barcelona. Mobile World Congress (MWC) is the leading mobile technology event worldwide. Larry spent a few minutes chatting with me about the value that WebSphere software provides to mobile service providers globally and those seeking to build mobile applications.

1) What's IBM showcasing at Mobile World Congress that would interest our readers?

We featured some pretty exciting stuff at MWC this year. The big story is all about Smarter Communications. We showed examples of how we are helping our telecom service provider clients improve their marketing effectiveness by capitalizing on the massive amounts of data they generate every day. We demonstrated how automation can help them use that information as a way to build competitive advantage against new competitors. We highlighted the automation of cell tower management to reduce energy consumption and labor costs, the deployment of self-optimizing network capabilities for LTE network rollouts and our implementation of TMF Frameworx in WebSphere Telecom Content Pack to speed the adoption of industry standards for process transformation.

2) What's hot in the Telecom industry for 2011?

Cloud Computing is a very hot topic across the industry. Our clients are coming to IBM to talk about building Cloud Infrastructures to create new services that help them drive more value from their networks. They want to monetize the massive opportunity they see as computing and communications converge around Cloud. Some of the work we are doing in Cloud Computing was mentioned in a press release from AT&T and in an AT&T keynote at MWC.

Real-time analytics is another very hot topic. Clients want to understand and act on new a deeper understanding of real-time analytics and decision management capabilities to improve the end to end customer experience, improve service quality and increase revenue.

We are also seeing a lot of interest around the Wholesale Application Community (WAC), which provides a new business model for our clients to create, manage and monetize an application ecosystem that accelerates service innovation in the industry. In fact, IBM just made a press announcement on Monday February 14, that it is partnering with WAC To Streamline Creation of Mobile Application Stores leverage WebSphere Commerce.

We're also showed something brand new this year, which is our participation in the Embedded Mobile House. This house inside the show highlights how service providers can participate in Smarter Planet applications to transform people's lives at home, at work and on the go. A very exciting aspect for IBM is that we are highlighting Smarter Planet applications from other industries to help clients create new sources of revenue. Applications from IBM’s work in the banking, health care, transportation, retail and other industries generated lots of new ideas for our clients.

3) I see at the IBM Booth there is a "Transform Operations" demo that focuses on order management. Why is this area so important for service providers? How can IBM help?

Every operator in the world wants to automate their business processes to reduce costs and shorten their time to value. Most of our clients have applications and processes that were built in siloes that were organized around traditional lines of business, like telephony, internet and wireless services. As the competitive intensity increases our clients are responding by introducing new services, blending services together from different lines of business and expanding their application ecosystems.

In this demo, we illustrated how IBM is helping our clients use TMF Frameworx to implement business process management using telecom industry process models to increase process agility and accelerate their business transformation. We've had some great results from our clients who are transforming their business processes. We've seen that the combination of our TM Forum Frameworx accelerators in WebSphere Telecom Content Pack, our implementation of policy- driven SOA and the deep expertise of our delivery teams can help many of our clients reduce the cost and time to value for process transformation by about 50%.

We are also introducing how Sterling Commerce fits into our solutions for the telecom industry in this demo, which is a very exciting addition to our capabilities. You may recall that we purchased Sterling Commerce from AT&T last year and we've moved quickly to exploit their deep telecom industry experience and assets into our solutions.

4) Many clients have grand visions for transforming their operations, but then the rubber meets the road, where do clients begin their implementation of new processes?

Most of our clients are choosing to start their transformation with Order Management. This helps them reduce the time to market for new services and reduce the costs of manual intervention when orders fall out of the automated processes. This seems to be an area with the fastest return on investment for our clients. Within this broad category, we've seen some great projects for order capture, order management and order execution with the WebSphere portfolio including the BPM capabilities and Business Rules Management System.

5) What can our communications industry clients look forward to seeing at IMPACT 2011?

We have a lot of great things planned for our Communications industry clients at IMPACT. Not only are we offering the Forbes Business Leadership Forum again that will feature a business track with three dedicated CSP industry sessions, we also feature dedicated industry session in the Technology track.

In addition, we are hosting the following events at IBM Impact 2011:

1) A Smarter Commerce event integrated into Impact’s curriculum with over 30 dedicated Sterling Commerce sessions in the Technical and Business Program, a networking lounge, a client advisory council, and much more.

2) A major focus on Cloud with a Mini-Main Tent on Day Two led by IBM Senior Vice President, Robert LeBlanc, plus 35 Cloud sessions in the Technical and Business Program, a dedicated Cloud “hands-on lab” at the Product Technology Center and a Cloud Zone at the EXPO.

3) A new dedicated Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Track in the Business Program for marketing professionals. We are also featuring additional sessions for our recent acquisitions including Unica, Sterling Commerce and Coremetrics.

Impact 2011 is shaping up to be a great event for our communications industry clients and I look forward to seeing lots of new and existing clients and partners in Las Vegas.

To learn more about IMPACT 2011, go to ibm.com/impact
To learn more about BPM for Telecom, go to ibm.com/bpm/telecom
Follow us on Twitter at @larryhargrove and @jennifer_dubow

Batch processing is the key to solving business process automation

2011-02-21T11:47:43-05:00

In November of last year, I had the pleasure of talking with Sridhar Sudarsan, Chief Architect, Batch Processing Strategy, IBM Software Group. You can read our interview here: Java Batch - An Interview with Sridhar Sudarsan.

In that interview, Sridhar talked about how important batch processing is today as the need to cost-effectively process large quantities of data becomes more challenging with increased data volumes and higher customer expectations. He stressed the need to design for and provide an always-on environment for batch and OLTP workloads and talked about the growing popularity of Java as a programming language for batch use.

Now, there are a couple of ways you can hear more about Batch processing and talk with Sridhar directly.

1. Attend the webcast, ‘Batch Processing, the key to solving business process automation’, on February 23 at 1:00 EST in the new Binarium virtual briefing center for developers. Sridhar will be available after the webcast to answer your questions.

In this webcast followed by live Q&A, Sridhar will provide an overview of batch processing and discuss common batch scenarios. He will show how a continuous interleaving of bulk and real-time processing maximizes the balance between operational efficiency and market efficiency. Sridhar will discuss the batch processing reference model and how WebSphere batch offerings map to that model. He will demonstrate how WebSphere Batch solutions provide an environment and infrastructure for efficiently running mixed workloads in Java. In addition, Sridhar will describe how WebSphere Compute Grid, which is production ready with many customers running mission critical Batch workloads, provides capabilities for development to accelerate time-to-value for clients.

Register for the webcast with Sridhar today!

(Hint: You only have to register once—you can return to WebSphere Binarium as often as you would like to view new materials, see demos and talk with peers.)

2. Another way you can learn more about Batch and talk directly with peers and subject matter experts is to attend Impact 2011. And this year, we’re also offering the WebSphere Unconference where you can set the agenda!

Plan to attend Impact 2011, where you can learn about the latest technology trends in over 500 technical sessions, deep dives and hands-on labs. In addition, the WebSphere Unconference for developers provides an opportunity for you to present and discuss the topics that interest you the most. At the WebSphere Unconference, you set the agenda.

Follow the conversations: IMPACT on Twitter and hashtags #ibmimpact #websphere #unconference

Interact: Social media @ Impact
Discuss with peers: IMPACT LinkedIn Group
Friend us: IMPACT Facebook Page

Plan to meet us at the Unconference on April 14!

Ryan Boyles (@websphereemerge) and Kathleen Holm (@kmholm )

Business Process Management for Healthcare Providers

2011-02-16T00:40:12-05:00

Contributed by Pete Melrose, WebSphere, Global Industry Marketing Manager for Healthcare & Life Sciences

Business process management and performance optimization or transformation efforts for healthcare providers, both hospitals and physicians in private practice, generally have been unsuccessful.

This is so for a least a couple of reasons:

1) because of the manually intensive nature of administrative, business and clinical processes such as accounts receivable and billing, patient admission, inventory management, clinical staffing, quality assurance, in-patient care and treatment, accounts payable, out-patient/post-discharge follow-up care; and

2) the difficulty of designing, implementing and operating such processes is exacerbated by the typical “siloed,” rigid, monolithic, and/or “closed” architecture of the supporting information technology (IT) environments interoperating with complex software interfaces that render the IT systems and the processes that they support difficult to use, maintain and modify.

Furthermore, the distinction between hospital information system (HIS) modules or ancillary/departmental best-of-breed applications and the processes that they include or in which they are included often are blurred or ignored. For example, the “admission” module of a typical HIS accommodates the recording of admission/”face sheet” information with input edit checking and reconciliation with the patient record archive using an interoperable Enterprise Master Patient/Person Index (eMPI) application; to determine whether the patient being admitted is “new” or a “readmission” and to ensure that redundant patient records are not created and/or that previously existing patient records are not reactivated and appended erroneously.

However, the complete admission process – typically including recording of patient history data and perhaps automated analysis vis a vis the patient record archive, physical specimen submission to the clinical laboratory for testing and results reporting, determination of available bed space, scheduling of consults if required, ordering and administration of medications and a plethora of other activities – is not often automated from end-to-end across the varied HIS modules and ancillary applications with coordinated and time-critical human tasks required of medical and administrative staff. Therefore, the opportunity for errors exists in a complicated operating environment in which the extended morbidity and possible mortality of admitted patients lie in the balance.

Improving “business” processes – which for healthcare providers includes clinical, heuristic, administrative/financial, research and teaching (CHART) activity – can help hospitals, physicians and administrators to work more efficiently, effectively and economically; to manage both the hospital facilities (the so-called “environment of care”) and also the care and treatment of the patients. Healthcare providers can and must undergo business process and performance transformation, just as has manufacturing, financial and other industries; by applying modern principles of management engineering and process efficiency (e.g. – Lean Six Sigma) and then by modeling, assembling, deploying and monitoring process operation with state-of-the-art IT methods and tools.

IBM provides industry-specific standards-based solutions that deliver robust, highly available and scalable WebSphere middleware software and firmware/appliance suite for business process management, service oriented architecture (SOA), connectivity and integration, and dynamic application infrastructure. These software solutions are built on the IBM Health Integration Framework (HIF) which ensures flexibility and reduced risk. How? Because the framework leverages industry-specific assets and best practices gained from IBM experience in deploying healthcare solutions over the past six decades – and aligns technology with business needs, with a focus on building a simplified enterprise architecture, one project at a time. With each project, customers can realize a return on investment over a shorter payback period.

The BPM offerings specifically enable providers to discover, document, deploy and drive optimization of its processes in a more complete, accurate and timely manner than can be achieved by clinical and administrative staff, often manually. BPM by IBM is the cost-effective way forward in order for healthcare providers to minimize the cost and risks inherent in delivering patient care -- while maximizing the frequency of favorable outcomes and the quality of care.

Learn more about process transformation in Healthcare at HIMSS from Sunday February 20 – Thursday February 24 at Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, FL. You can visit the IBM Booth #3763 and see a demo of "Healthcare Process Management Solutions" (ped 12).

Because each industry faces unique challenges, Impact 2011 features experts from different industries and disciplines. They will share how they have successfully leveraged technology and best practices to solve business problems. Their solutions encompass a mix of business integration, flexible and secure application and transactional infrastructure, or dynamic and interconnected business processes.

Over 45 dedicated sessions by industry in both the Business and Technology Programs help you build a roadmap for greater efficiency using BPM, SOA and Cloud. Visit the dedicated Industry Zone in the Solution Showcase to see demos of your preferred industry technologies. Benefit from the collective experience of over 300 industry leading experts at Impact 2011.

Follow the conversation: IMPACT on Twitter and hashtag #ibmimpact

Interact: Social @ Impact

Discuss with peers: IMPACT LinkedIn Group

Friend us: IMPACT Facebook Page

Gain Insight with Decision Management

2010-12-10T13:16:26-05:00

Contributed by Duncan Clark

Earlier this quarter, IBM released announcement letters on a set of new offerings. One of these is WebSphere Decision Server, which brings together business events and business rules technologies to be used within decision management solutions.

So why is this important? Businesses are asking for greater effectiveness to automate, improve and govern high-volume operational decisions. WebSphere Decision Server brings critical capabilities for:

Centrally automating decision-making across processes and applications, which shortens response time in actionable situations.
Empowering line-of-business users to manage and improve decisions, in order to optimize decisions about resources, risk or value while simultaneously delivering business alignment, compliance and transparency.
Fine grain decision-making at the point of contact with customers, delivering smarter personalization and self-service.

The intent of WebSphere Decision Server is to allow our customers a flexible approach for building solutions which require the ability to detect event-based patterns and then determine precise decision responses in areas such as risk, promotions, and prioritizations. Some examples include:

An energy utility monitoring data from smart meters across the grid and then determining which event pattern alerts require follow-up inspection by its field operations personnel.
A healthcare provider tracking patient monitoring devices and test results, then using this information to detect situations that require proactive assessment and/or intervention.
A retailer coordinating its interactions with consumers across web, store and call center channels, so that it can provide more relevant offers based on actual consumer behavior.
An insurer assessing incoming claims at the time of submission for potential fraud, and automatically re-routing high risk instances for special review.

Recently, Mike Gualtieri from Forrester Research and Brett Stineman from IBM presented a webinar on “How Business Rules and Business Events Support Agile Decision-Making” examining the complementary aspects of these technologies, which can be summarized as shown here:

Detect: collecting and correlating events to identify actionable patterns or situations. An example might be repeated insurance quote requests from the same end user trying to get the best deal. Once a situation has been identified a decision needs to be made as to what to do – or what action to take. The action will depend on a number of factors and business rules can be used to decide the business outcome. Information can be added to the event data from other sources to provide the data the rule engine will need to make the decision.

Decide: interpreting the request from the decision service invocation and providing a response according to the rules and associated data. In the case of the repeated insurance quotes the decision might be to promote a particular insurance policy with specific discount terms or additional benefits. Alternatively the rule engine may determine that the user is attempting to obtain a type of policy for which this individual is not eligible.

The results of decision outputs are used to initiate the appropriate action within a process-based or transactional business application.

For a fuller description of how the combination of business events and business rules technologies can be used to solve decision management problems, see the whitepaper Working smarter through intelligent, responsive decision automation

For more information:

Learn more about WebSphere Decision Server

Visit the BRMS blog

Register to attend Impact 2011 and learn more about decision management and BRMS

Follow: IMPACT on Twitter hashtag #ibmimpact

Register: Social @ Impact

Join: IMPACT LinkedIn Group

Become a Fan: IMPACT Facebook Fanpage

We would love to hear from you. Please tweet or email Shaku Selvakumar.

5 Reasons to Speak at Impact 2011

2010-12-06T14:45:06-05:00

1. Engage with an engaged Audience

This is THE all-in-1 conference for Business and IT leaders. We are expecting over 6,600 attendees who will be there to learn, to network, to share knowledge and best practice with the best experts in our industry.

2. Educate, train and learn

An intrepid techie?

We have the best technical education covered in just one week. This extensive Technology Program offers over 500 sessions that includes a wide array of implementation success stories, developer education, lectures, workshops, hands-on-labs. Technology Program submissions should be targeted at a technical audience consisting of IT professionals such as architects, software engineers, IT executives, server-side and web application developers, administrators, and integrators. The Technology Program seeks submissions that cover the latest BPM, SOA and cloud computing technical advancements and IT solutions, new product enhancements, and best practices for taking advantage of IBM's BPM, SOA and WebSphere portfolio of products. We are looking for a wide variety of session types, including product integration and implementation success stories, education, lectures, workshops, and hands-on labs. The majority of sessions selected will be in-depth technical sessions, but a few presentations that provide high-level overviews of product functionality and features will also be selected. Sessions covering integration of products across the IBM portfolio are especially welcomed.

3. Share the stage with the best in business

A business leader? Or best of both, IT and business?

We are looking for sessions from industry experts with an emphasis on how to implement IBM products to address the unique business requirements and challenges of a wide range of industries, with particular focus on healthcare & life sciences, insurance, banking & financial markets and retail & consumer products.

In addition, the Forbes Business Leadership Forum is offering tracks around business innovation and technology outlook, key strategies for new growth, essential skills for innovative leaders, and how to grow the business with next generation marketing.

Though the Forbes Business Leadership Forum is not accepting direct submissions through the Call for Speakers process, external speakers who have a session they want considered for this program may submit an abstract to the Customer Submissions or Business Partner Submissions category.

4. Share, contribute and benefit through thought leadership

You will be in the company of stellar thought leaders. We will have more than 300+ customers, analysts and industry speakers to share their insights and experience.

5. Of course the perks of being a speaker

Accepted customer speakers may be eligible to receive a complimentary conference registration depending on the qualifying criteria. They get to use the exclusive speaker cabana for meetings and networking opportunities with other speakers and attendees.

And there is more for you to access at Impact 2011

We have a state of the art Product Technology Center offering open labs, Meet the Experts sessions and product demos integrating networking, hands-on training and other social learning into a single program

A world class Solution Showcase Center featuring over 130 business partner and IBM exhibitors demoing the latest technology

A dedicated Business Partner Summit focusing on strengthening the IBM partner relationship and enabling over 1,000 business partners on our strategy and rich portfolio.

A dedicated Industry Zone in the EXPO plus targeted sessions by industry featuring best practices and specialized demos along with the collective experience of 300+ industry leading experts on site.

Interested and want to become a speaker?

Dates and deadlines: The Impact 2011 call for speakers opened on October 25, 2010 and we are accepting session proposals till January 7, 2011

Join the Call for Speaker Impact 2011 Webcast on December 7, 2010 at 11 am ET.

Join leaders from the Impact team for an informative webcast on December 7 to learn more about becoming a speaker at Impact 2011. This live webcast will answer all your questions about the Call for Speakers process and how to improve the chance of being selected as a speaker for Impact 2011.

Want to get started now? Please visit www.ibm.com/impact and click on Call for Speakers

Follow: IMPACT on Twitter hashtag #ibmimpact

Join: IMPACT LinkedIn Group

Become a Fan: IMPACT Facebook Fanpage

3 Reasons You Should Be Excited About IBM Blueworks Live

2010-11-22T12:35:13-05:00

Contributed by Krista Summitt, Chief Storyteller, IBM Blueworks Live

I have a confession to make.

I didn’t know a thing about business process management software 8 weeks ago. Zip, zero, nada. Oh now, I knew about process: workflow diagrams, flowcharts, etc. I’m talking about the traditional BPM software tools that help you discover and design your processes. Enter Blueworks Live. Blueworks Live is a cloud-based, SaaS offering that allows you to discover, design, automate and manage your processes. Why I'm so excited is: now literally anyone, anywhere can automate your business processes. It is a wonderful way to get started quickly with process automation and start reaping the rewards faster.

Tribal Knowledge

One thing many companies struggle with is intellectual capital, or what one of our clients calls “tribal knowledge”. When the only person in your company that knows how to onboard a new hire hits the lottery and retires to the Bahamas, that tribal knowledge goes right out the door with them. With Blueworks Live, you can capture that process knowledge in the cloud once, and its there for as long as you need it to be. If the HR manager retires, it can be reassigned to someone across the hall or across the ocean. This video demonstrates just how easy it is:

Status, status, what is the status?

Whether you are a staff person or a manager, we are all asked many times a week “What is the status of (fill in the project)?” So what do we do? Sort email by date or by name, search our desktops for the status report, and call everyone on the team frantically to see what they know, right? Blueworks Live has a built in management reporting function so you can instantly see a snapshot of process status, completed items, and next steps.

Take the guesswork out of social media

One criticism BPM customers have voiced is the lack of an open, relevant, online community in business process management tools. Many tools only offer closed, proprietary function that is not connected to the all-important public social media community. What we’ve done with Blueworks Live is create space for your private process community to interact with each other, and a space for you to interact with the public community via our curated online community stream. And, you don’t have to go seek out the right BPM thought leaders to follow, we’ve already done that. So, from day 1 you will be able to connect when you want to with the best minds and best practices in the public community.

Why not see for yourself how Blueworks Live can ignite your business processes? Take a free 30-day test drive. Register at http://blueworkslive.com.

Learn about Blueworks Live capabilities: check out the Brochure!

Attend the IBM Blueworks Live customer webinar

Title: From Zero to Process in 90 seconds

When:Tuesday, November 23 at 12pm ET / 9am PT

Speaker: Phil Gilbert, VP of BPM. Follow Phil on Twitter: www.twitter.com/philgilbertsr

Join us for TweetJam Tuesday, November 23 1 pm – 2pm ET immediately following Phil’s customer webinar.

Chat with IBM Blueworks Live SMEs and community, using #bwlive to join the conversation in Blueworks Live stream!

Follow the official IBM Blueworks Live twitter feed: http://twitter.com/blueworkslive #bwlive #bpm

We would love to hear from you. Please email Shaku Selvakumar.

Closed loop action on analytical insights

2010-11-17T12:41:07-05:00

Contributed by Aniruddha Worlikar

One tenth of a second – that’s how much time a hitter has to hit a fastball from the time it is thrown. Fortunately in business you don’t have to act that fast. Nevertheless, it is important for organizations react rapidly to any insights, especially in fast changing business conditions.

IBM with its powerful BI capabilities, enables organizations to get the analytical insight into their businesses. By coupling that with BPM, IBM has enabled businesses to act rapidly on this insight in a closed loop fashion. Take a supply chain analyst who is using looking at a BI report to check the projected demand and supply over the next quarter for items with long lead times. Cognos provides the analytics to enable the analyst to forecast the demand and the supply. If this analyst detects a shortfall, the analyst wants to order the item immediately. IBM enables a link to an order process to be embedded in this report, so that the analyst can immediately kick off a process managed by the BPM system to order the item. The advantages of acting this way rather than by shooting an email to somebody are immediately obvious. The time to action on this insight is reduced, and now this action is almost instantaneous. And more importantly, the analyst can now keep track of whether the correct item was ordered, what step in the ordering process the item is at. She does not have to contact the ordering manager and lose time doing this.

IBM helps organizations gain the insight they need into their businesses, act on those insights very rapidly to take advantage of opportunity or mitigate issues, and keep track of actions to ensure that the action has been taken.

Download the Whitepaper Unleash the Power of BPM and Business Analytics for Smarter Business Outcomes

Attend Unleash the Power of BPM and Business Analytics for Smarter Business Outcomes Webcast on November 18 at Noon Eastern.

Speakers: Kramer Reeves, Director of Marketing, WebSphere and Harriet Fryman, Product Marketing and GTM Strategy, IBM Cognos for more details.

Want to learn more about BPM? Visit www.ibm.com/bpm

Or Analytics: www.ibm.com/software/analytics

Follow us: www.twitter.com/ibmbpmupdate

Hashtags: #bpm #analytics #bizagility

We would love to hear from you! Please email Shaku Selvakumar

Why Business Analytics and Business Process Management Drive Greater Business Agility

2010-11-16T11:03:50-05:00

Contributed by Trent Shupe

In today’s dynamic market environment, agility separates the most successful businesses from those that simply get by. The networks that make up these agile businesses—networks of employees, partners, functions, customers and suppliers—must constantly adjust to rapidly accelerating change, both out in the marketplace and within the business itself. The business ecosystem is filled with examples of accelerating change and growing complexity. Advances in technology lower the barriers to entry, resulting in increased competition. Global labor pools are becoming increasingly available, at changing costs. Capital markets are constantly restructuring. And new economic powers—such as Brazil, Russia, India and China—are emerging.

According to a 2010 Gartner survey, process improvement is the CIO’s single most important priority, for five years in a row. In order to stay ahead of the market, and still respond to customers’ ever-changing needs, businesses must foster a dynamic business network, including integrated processes, service orientation and collaboration. With a dynamic network in place, business becomes truly agile, capable of responding to change with unprecedented success.

Traditional business models have changed. Today’s business isn’t a single entity—it’s a network of relationships between employees, functions, customers, suppliers and partners.

These external connections are just as important as the ones inside the business and, in fact, are becoming more important. In a recent survey of business executives, 79 percent said that they expect the number of collaborative relationships they have with third parties to increase, and 87 percent of CIOs think their organization will be more collaborative in the next five years. As more functions move outside the walls of businesses, the distinction between external and internal members of the business network is disappearing, and companies must look to maximize the value of interactions throughout their networks. Even more challenging is the fact that this broad business network is anything but static. Furthermore, the need for deep Business Intelligence (BI) is imperative: people within the dynamic network must be able to access relevant information and data, and act on it. An IBM CIO Study shows that organizations which make the relevant data available to the right users are 61 percent more likely to be successful high growth companies. Yet CIOs struggle with this business imperative. Nearly one in three business leaders still make decisions without access to relevant and trusted data, and users spend close to 20 hours per week searching for data.

So how do organizations become agile enough to proactively respond to all this change? They require processes, analytics and structures that give them real-time situational awareness into occurrences both inside and outside the organization— and they must possess the ability to quickly act and respond to these occurrences efficiently to drive the best business outcome.

IBM helps organizations confront these challenges with a combination of industry leading Business Process Management and Business Analytics technologies. The combination of these technologies can help CIOs raise the ROI of IT investments, make innovation real by leveraging the latest technology and position their companies for growth in this flat world.

To learn more about how you can leverage these technologies that enable agility and position your organization for growth, please visit the following resources.

Download the Whitepaper Unleash the Power of BPM and Business Analytics for Smarter Business Outcomes

Attend Unleash the Power of BPM and Business Analytics for Smarter Business Outcomes Webcast on November 18 at Noon Eastern.

Speakers: Kramer Reeves, Director of Marketing, WebSphere and Harriet Fryman, Product Marketing and GTM Strategy, IBM Cognos for more details.

Want to learn more about BPM? Visit www.ibm.com/bpm

Or Analytics: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/analytics/?pgel=ibmhzn&cm_re=masthead-_-products-_-sw-bizanalytics

Follow us: www.twitter.com/ibmbpmupdate

Hashtags: #bpm #analytics

We would love to hear from you! Please email Shaku Selvakumar