Model Driven BPM
How BPM enables a higher level of
Business agility
Executive Summary
Model driven BPM represents the next wave in the evolution of Enterprise BPM and
how organizations can deliver on the premise of application modernization in an
intelligent and effective manner.
The following white paper examines how Model Driven lets organizations build for
change rather than invest in traditional development techniques that are expensive,
time consuming and resource intensive. The paper also talks about making Line of
Business (LOB) stakeholders in your organization self-sufficient and IT teams effective
when it comes to supporting them and meeting business objectives that define your
success in the marketplace
Model Driven BPM - How BPM enables a higher level of Business agility
Introduction
Enterprises today are faced with unique challenges in a highly competitive market place
and need to demonstrate business innovation while staying agile and responsive to
customer needs. Innovation efforts however are often hampered due to the business
and IT divide.
Business stakeholders and IT personnel are often at loggerheads when it comes to
consistent problem solving that can reap benefits for the entire enterprise. There is a
break in the collaborative glue that binds these two critical forces together. Business
stakeholders often frustrate IT personnel with adhoc models that play havoc at the
development stage, with the result that long development cycles hamper a business
stakeholder’s quest for operational excellence. There is a certain lag that eventually hits
the bottom line if not addressed and remedied in the right way.
BPM background:
Business process owners, department heads and business unit heads – the very
people driving business processes often face implementation gaps resulting in
needless downtime to reengineer critical business processes. CIOs are concerned
with continuous process improvement as a high impact factor on delivery times of new
products and applications.
Business process management software allows enterprises to model & streamline
business processes for maximum efficiency and reduced down time. Web based, visual,
intuitive design environment offer a minimum code option for business users to create
streamlined processes with minimum IT dependency.
Organizations using BPM quickly adapt to business change enabling them to:
•• Reengineer business processes continuously for operational excellence
•• Leverage their existing IT infrastructure for faster ROI
•• Understand and improve organizational performance
•• Build BPM applications and solutions rapidly saving on development time and
costs
•• Innovate and continuously deliver new applications to stay ahead
Agile
Enterprise
To remain agile in the today’s constantly changing business world, CIO’s need to make
technology open up new avenues for innovation, new markets and better business
models. An agile organization responds quickly to market dynamics leveraging chiefly
on the flexibility of its internal systems for improved business responsiveness. CIOs
realize that LOB stakeholders and IT teams need to work together effectively bridging
the divide that hampers agility.
Challenges
Enterprises today are faced with unique challenges in a highly competitive market place
and need to demonstrate business innovation while staying agile and responsive to
customer needs. Business process management software allows enterprises to model
& streamline business processes for maximum efficiency and reduced down time.
Schneider Electric White Paper
Page 2
Model Driven BPM - How BPM enables a higher level of Business agility
Drivers
Businesses are grappling more and more with staying ahead in a constantly changing
environment. Being able to continuously deliver improved products and modernized
applications means heavy dependency on process flexibility and shorter development
cycles.
So what drives Enterprise Agility?
•• Frequency of new releases
•• Continuous technology improvements
•• Lower cost of development
•• Better resource utilization
•• Closing the gap between business and IT
Organizations that take cognizance of these drivers stand to benefit in the short term
as well as the long term since the time-to-market and responding to dynamic changes
in the market are already factored in.
Model
Driven BPM
Overview
What is Model Driven?
As per Gartner, “Model driven describes an approach to separating business-level
functionality from the technical nuances of its implementation.”
The premise behind a model-driven approach is to enable business-level functionality
to be added using standards, like Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Business
Process Modeling Notation. These offer a common language and visualization method
to drive repeatability thereby lowering modeling time and associated costs.
Model driven is also about expanding operational and collaboration boundaries to
coordinate people and applications across the organization in an intelligent, effective
and governed manner. It delivers a model-driven application framework that enables
customers to adapt and extend application model to deliver new applications faster and
at lower development costs.
Centralized
Administration
Enterprise
Integration
Figure 1
BPM Drivers
User and Group
Collaboration
Model-Driven
Development
Schneider Electric White Paper
Business Rules
Management
BPM
Advanced
Workflow Engine
Simulation and
Optimization
Business
Activity Monitoring
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Model Driven BPM - How BPM enables a higher level of Business agility
The Business & IT divide?
The complex nature of organizations today directly impact complexity of business
processes as well. To ensure that businesses remain competitive, organizational
leadership needs to ensure efficiency at every level of the business and the flexibility to
make continuous process improvements.
Line-of-business (LOB) stakeholders typically avoid leveraging resident IT teams since
the costs of engagement are either high or the development time is too long. This
results in workarounds that bypass IT completely. Business stakeholders end up using
simplistic ad hoc modeling techniques comprising of mind maps, spreadsheets, and
other modeling tools. These are ineffective since the output generated - process maps
- are deficient and do little to help LOB stakeholders create a lasting impact on process
excellence within the organization.
A Model Driven BPM approach usually achieves the following objectives for your
business:
•• Lesser complexity for the LOB stakeholders
•• Faster development times for the IT teams
•• Quicker response times for business process modifications
•• Lower costs leveraging IT teams only when needed
•• Better collaboration between LOB and IT for process excellence
Model Driven BPM allows LOB stakeholders and IT teams to work effectively in
creating process models that drastically cut down on the time and the complexity
required to achieve process excellence for your organization. Model Driven BPM
balances out the less technically inclined LOB users to model processes efficiently and
technically inclined IT teams to work effectively in developing applications that are high
performance, meeting the expectations of the LOB users and the business objectives
as a whole.
Lesser Complexity
Business users primarily optimize processes within your organization resulting in
process excellence that contributes directly to your bottom line. Having them work on
complex modeling applications can kill their productivity and affect process change that
is being designed to help your business engage effectively with the marketplace.
IT teams typically work with LOB stakeholders to ensure the efficient process models
that they have envisioned can be executed in reality. Having lesser complexity at the
business user’s end can greatly help reduce the primary barrier to process modeling
and execution.
Faster Development
IT teams working with LOB stakeholders can turn around BPM projects faster ensuring
your business objectives are met and your company stays agile in the market. A Model
Driven BPM project helps your IT teams quickly grasp the business objectives helping
them create processes that can be used later on by the LOB stakeholders. Model
Driven BPM works on the principle of BPMN specifications that help IT teams quickly
retain and reuse the business processes that are event driven and complex in nature.
Schneider Electric White Paper
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Model Driven BPM - How BPM enables a higher level of Business agility
Quicker response times
LOB stakeholders that are concerned with process excellence throughout your
organization can quickly respond to changes in the business environment. Model Driven
BPM greatly reduces their dependence on IT support since it delivers a model-driven
application framework that enables LOB stakeholders to adapt and extend ‘application
models’ to meet specific business needs and objectives.
Lower IT Costs
Limiting LOB stakeholder engagement with IT teams for technical support related to
business process modeling can greatly lower your costs and free up time needed for
other IT related activities within your organization. Self-sufficient LOB stakeholders can
easily use Model Driven BPM for their process modeling needs providing them with
intuitive tools for continuous improvement and collaboration.
Better collaboration
Model Driven BPM helps LOB stakeholders design business processes that can also
be easily understood and worked on by IT teams within your organization. Models can
be easily created, shared and collaborated upon by seasoned as well as new users that
are part of your organization both on the business side as well as the IT side. Model
Driven BPM greatly enhances participation and discussion amongst business teams
that formulate business process and IT teams that are instrumental in executing the
processes that make your organization agile.
Application Modernization
Application development in the context of business process serve one major goal
- creating applications/products - that can be used by the business stakeholders in
meeting their objectives. Business stakeholders have one major objective - improving
process excellence - that helps your organization stay nimble and react better to market
forces.
Modernization nets key benefits for organizations such as better collaboration between
business and IT teams, continuous innovation and improved agility.
Application modernization is an approach used by Model Driven BPM that enables IT
teams supporting LOB stakeholders to leverage on existing models. These models
greatly help the IT teams create high performance applications that are linked directly to
process excellence designed by the LOB stakeholders.
Your organization and its ability to compete in the market depends on how well your
LOB stakeholders and IT teams can work together to deliver what matters to you most –
a healthier and robust bottom line.
Application modernization helps IT teams deliver applications to LOB stakeholders in
an optimized fashion cascading their IT expertise to business process through Model
Driven BPM.
Schneider Electric White Paper
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Model Driven BPM - How BPM enables a higher level of Business agility
Conclusion
Business Process Management has evolved in the last decade from being a TQM tool
to a complete suite that delivers modern, intelligent process management solutions
including mobility, social collaboration, big data analytics, cloud solutions and more.
While the current plethora of BPM solutions are feature laden to address ever changing
collaboration tools and delivery systems, a critical differentiator is how they further
enable businesses to stay ahead and break new ground. How does BPM continue to
deliver on the premise of intelligent process management driving operational excellence
and innovation?
The answer likely lies in the next and evolving wave of BPM - a model driven framework
to integrate disparate systems and drastically cut down the time to create, improve and
optimize on functional business process models that benefit the enterprise adapt to
dynamic market conditions.
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