Our Heroes
TEXT: MIRJAM HULSEBOS
Jeroen van Grondelle on process innovation
Faster innovation
with rule-based BPM
In highly stable situations with little variability you can manage fine
with pre-planned and set processes, believes Jeroen van Grondelle,
research director at Be Informed. But in today’s network economy,
situations increasingly call for flexibility. Make way for the model-driven
semantic process.
A
lmost all large organizations
today operate with predefined process models.
A process analyst talks to
the business, designs a process and
automates it. And so is it set in stone.
The process has been developed for the
lowest common denominator. Which
means that for some (simple) tasks there
are too many steps, and for other (complex) tasks there maybe too few steps.
All in all, the process meets the requirements fairly well for the 80 percent of
standard situations. In the other 20 percent of cases, complicated work-arounds
have to be found, or the answer is simply
“no”. Another feature of pre-defined processes is that the work is always carried
out in a fixed sequence, even though part
of that sequence is completely unimportant to the outcome of the process.
This model still worked reasonably well
in the 20th century, when organizations
were hierarchically structured and there
were few intensive partnerships. How
different things are in today’s customerdriven networked economy. It is no
longer a company that determines what
it supplies, when, in what quantities, and
to whom; but the customer. Moreover,
there is virtually no organization left that
manages the whole chain from A to Z.
Nowadays it’s all about collaboration.
Rule-based
All of which led Van Grondelle with
some colleagues in 2006 to set up a new
BIG DATA NEEDS A BIG PROCESS
One major reason for the growing need for flexible processes is the increasing use
of big data. More and more organizations are recognizing the benefits of big data.
On the one hand in their primary processes, for example in the use of sensors to
monitor whether machines require preventive maintenance. And on the other hand,
in customer processes, for example social media analytics. “Obviously it’s great
if you can see from the analysis of big data that you need to do something,” Van
Grondelle points out. “But the organization must then flexibly be able to adapt the
relevant process. Because if you can gather and analyze data faster than you can do
anything with it, then big data is pointless.”
6 business information magazine | march 2013
company within secondment company Be
Value: Be Informed. Be Informed focuses
on developing a BPM platform that can
support the flexibility and rapid adaptability of processes.
It does so using a rule-based approach:
there is a minimal set of rules, determined
by, among other things, relevant legislation and regulations, and customer needs.
In addition to these mandatory rules, stakeholders all draw up their own requirements. So instead of everyone being 100
percent in agreement in advance about
how a process should proceed, anyone
can now introduce their own rules. The
process is fine so long as it still meets the
minimum set rules.
Within these set rules, the process now
follows the optimal flow. The sequence
of activities is no longer set in stone, but
can change. And steps can be skipped if
they don’t add any value to the end result.
“There is no longer a common denominator,” explains Van Grondelle. “There is
simply a process that takes the shortest
path within the set rules.”
This approach adopts the principle ‘The
fewer the rules, the more the flexibility’.
“Flexibility is free; you get it by letting
rules go. In situations where there is a
(temporary) need to add rules, you do so;
but you’re not stuck with them, you’re
free to choose.”
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Our Heroes
“There is virtually
no organization that
manages the whole
chain from A to Z.
Nowadays it’s all
about collaboration”
How different things are in the ‘old
school’ process world. Where more flexibility is achieved by adding more paths to
the existing process flow. “In the traditional BPM mindset, more flexibility means
more complexity. Which in turn means
costs can only increase. And certainly in
today’s world that’s something organizations no longer want.”
30/60/90 rule
Van Grondelle likes to explain the advantages of model-based BPM on the basis of
the 30/60/90 rule. Which reads: this way
of working delivers 30 percent savings
in operational expenditure; 60 percent
savings in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO);
and 90 percent savings in the time-tochange.
The OPEX savings are achieved by the
fact that a process always follows the
shortest path. Van Grondelle makes the
comparison with Free Flight: “Right now,
the skies are regulated with corridors;
which are, if you like, process paths in the
air. To resolve airspace capacity problems
and avoid aircraft having to queue up,
Free Flight was developed: there are certain rules about the height at which you
may fly and the distance you must keep
from other aircraft. But within those rules
every pilot can fly his own optimal route.
What’s more, he can leave when it suits
him. There are no longer any timeslots.
This increases flexibility, flight times
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WHO IS JEROEN VAN GRONDELLE?
Jeroen van Grondelle is co-founder and research director of Be Informed, a software
vendor that has developed a semantic, rule-based BPM platform. The business now
has 180 employees, and offices in Apeldoorn, New York and the UK. Van Grondelle
leads the research arm of the company, which participates in scientific research,
as well as publishing on developments in the market and new patterns in the way
organizations work, and work together.
shorten because the pilot can choose the
shortest route, and the capacity problem
is resolved.”
60 Percent savings on TCO is achieved
because, in addition to this reduction
in direct operating costs, there are also
fewer indirect overhead costs. Moreover,
IT costs go down.
Finally, the shorter time-to-change speaks
for itself: you have only to adapt the rules
to change the process. “You can respond
quicker to changing legislation and regulations; but you can also innovate much
faster,” argues Van Grondelle. “Especially
given that innovation is no longer so
much about creating whole new products, but more about finding new ways
to sell and service a product. Rule-based
BPM lets you customize solutions to each
individual customer, and within a completely transparent policy. Which is many
organizations want.”
Need for change
Hardly surprising, then, that the team of
10 people with whom Be Informed started
out in 2006, occupying the upper floor of
a small office building, has now grown
into a company with 180 employees.
“We’re responding to a strong need in the
market. We’d seen it coming for a long
time,” Van Grondelle concludes, “but now
that the crisis is forcing organizations to
change, kissing goodbye to their existing
processes, the need for model-driven
BPM is greater than ever.”
march 2013 | business information magazine 7