It’s About Process (or the Ability to be Responsive) — Part III

To that end, Webcom Inc. has leveraged its vast expertise earned while addressing many complex sales quote-to-order (Q2O) process issues (i.e., channel quote approvals, special pricing approvals, special non-standard product feature request approvals, etc.) and has created a brand new workflow engine, which can be (and is already) used for many generic business processes.

Such examples of processes would be: RMA (Return Material/Merchandize Authorization), NFR (New Feature Request), ECN (Engineering Change Notice), NPR (New Product Release), Bug Tracking, Engineering Change Request, and many other business processes that require approval steps.

The Ability to Respond, On-demand

In May 2008, Webcom announced the availability of ResponsAbility, its newest offering addressing the case management and workflow processing areas. ResponsAbility is designed to speed the “time-to-resolution” process, eliminate unnecessary time delays and improve overall value chain communications and productivity through improved transparency and collaboration.

The idea behind this case management and workflow solution was to help organizations keep their projects on track and their employees on the same page, thereby making the lives of internal and external team members much less complicated (and more productive and enjoyable).

This straightforward application provides a central location (repository) for managing the key aspects of many types of cases, including product and service defects, customer and supplier complaints, non-conformance issues, health and safety incidents, and RMAs. Separate tabs keep key information within easy reach, whereby team members can log issues as they arise, prioritize them, and update their status as appropriate.

Built-in reports let users see open issues by project, projects by stage, and many other categories. On a proactive side, the tool can be leveraged by companies to create and implement corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) and to support a plethora of regulatory and compliance requirements. All in all, users that have always had the responsibility now have the “ability to respond”, as required.

This case management software may not currently have all the bells-and-whistles associated with full-fledged BPM packages, such as programmatically driving a workflow engine, visual process modeling, process monitoring and optimization, or automatic task allocation based on workload. Still, it seems well suited for small and medium size companies, who can leverage such a software tool with an intuitive user interface (UI), for handling many, if not all of their processes, in an incremental manner.

The design and enforcement of processes is enabled because both administrators and end-users are able to design workflows, notifications, and data collection forms, as well as setting up permissions accordingly. The system manages cases by ushering each case through the resolution process, and by tracking the progress of each case throughout the entire process.

The multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) delivery model ensures that a customer can be up and running quickly with all of the selected critical processes being modeled and functional. No onsite deployment is necessary and the software only requires a Web browser and some modest to minimal data and process setup to be up and running.

Brethren Software Vendors as Likely ResponsAbility Users?

For example, a software development company can deploy this tool within a day or two and allow its customers to report bugs. This information can then be internally routed according to a customized workflow to the support department, then to the engineering and testing staff, and then back to the customer for approval and case closure.

To elaborate, the Software Bug workflow logically starts with the customer reporting a software bug. Then a default assignee at the software vendor reviews it, and then either resolves it on the spot (hopefully) or assigns it to the software engineering staff by providing a test case. Then the software engineering team determines a cause for the bug and either provides a workaround, fully fixes the bug, or determines that the software behaves as designed after all.

At the same time, ResponsAbility can be used to allow customers to create new feature requests, which are then routed via a different customized workflow starting from project management, via development, release scheduling, back to development, quality assurance (QA), documentation (technical writers), product management, and finally to marketing teams.

Again, if the bug can be fixed, the case is assigned to the testing staff, back to the support team, and finally back to the customer for approval and case closure. But, if the issue turns out not to be the bug after all, the case is then converted to a new feature request and follows an entirely different workflow.

To that end, the New Product Feature Request process starts with customers, sales & service people, channels and/or product managers requesting a new feature. Often, the existing users (install base special interest groups [SIGs]) are allowed to vote on it, and based on the number of votes and other factors, some new features are assigned to the engineering department to estimate the effort entailed to implement the requested feature.

Based on the estimate and other criteria, some new features are then assigned to the engineering or research and development (R&D) departments for implementation. Upon implementation, the new feature is assigned to the QA department for testing and approvals. Finally, based on the QA results, a new feature is returned back to engineering for a rework or is scheduled for production (or general availability).

Apparently, various instances of a process (called cases) can be changed midstream. For example, something that was initially entered as a bug upon investigation may be classified as an expected behavior. The customer who did not expect such behavior from the software can then change a case type of this instance from a bug to a new feature request, without having to re-enter any information and this case will then follow the prescribed new feature workflow process.

Also, a built-in notification and permissions engine ensures that all communication and collaboration happens within ResponsAbility, so everybody is aware of anything that anybody ever stated about the case via comments, file attachments, etc.

Unlike some of the simple issue tracking software packages mentioned in Part II, ResponsAbility can be used not only for tracking things, but also for enforcing a process in order to ensure that things get done correctly. For example, a workflow engine can be set up to make sure that a process status cannot be changed from “bug fixed” to “in testing” until a concrete test case scenario is provided by a user via customizable online forms.

Webcom — “Eating Own Dog Food”

It might be interesting to note that Webcom, as a software developer itself, has since late 2006 been using ResponsAbility internally for its older sibling WebSource CPQ product’s bug tracking and new product features introduction.

The traditional model, whereby the dedicated product/project manager and support staff were the only bidirectional conduit between the client’s team (i.e., WebSource CPQ users and administrators, local project manager, application owners, stakeholders, etc.) and Webcom’s team (i.e., developers, modelers, QA, consultants, product managers, etc.), has over time been shown to have many disadvantages.

Namely, despite the dedicated project manager’s intimate knowledge of the individual client’s installation and the established relationship and hand-holding comfort level, the challenges have repeatedly been the bottleneck nature of the dedicated project management and support team, with no significant value being added by this additional layer of communication.

Other disadvantages would be the all too often “black hole” syndrome due to the lack of a single project/client/tasks/issues depository. Therefore, priorities are often managed on an inefficient (and often redundant or conflicting) one-to-one basis.

The advantages of the new support model, with ResponsAbility providing a single repository of all cases (in a hub-and-spoke manner), start with collaboration and the ability for all parties to both instantly contribute to the case/task/issue and have instant visibility into the case status. Also, new resources that include clients, Webcom employees and third-parties (partners) can all immediately participate and be notified, while the enabler for everyone is also an advanced searching capability within the system.

The Webcom Q2O clients’ adoption was initially somewhat tepid due to the ingrained human habit of emailing or calling directly the preferred contact or due to the clients having their own issue tracking systems. Of course, there is always the need for a human touch and chatting (as a “bonus”) with Webcom associates about the “critical” issues like a “lovely” winter weather in Wisconsin or about the Green Bay Packers’ revival.

Nonetheless, joking apart, from the end of 2007 ResponsAbility has been the sole vehicle for communication, tracking and managing tasks and cases at Webcom. Prior to that, Webcom had used the JIRA issue tracking system, which at the time allowed users to create a workflow based on a set of offered statuses.

However, at the time (the things might have meanwhile changed though) there was not the user’s ability to create statuses and workflows at will. For instance, the offered statuses were “open,” “in progress,” “closed,” etc., but the user could not create a custom status like “material returned”, “in engineering”, “being analyzed” or so.

Further, users could add custom fields, but they could not design forms in a drag-and-drop fashion. There was no way to specify forms and fields for each action (task) either, so that, e.g., when the process passes from the “bug fixed” into the “in testing” phase, the user could not create a mandatory field named “test case.” While administrators had ample controls, the end users had very little control over what fields they could see on the screen, and so on.

Key ResponsAbility Design Tenets

In contrast, ResponsAbility was built with several design concepts in mind, starting with scalability in terms of users’ ability to create an unlimited number of cases, processes, statuses, status transitions, custom fields, users, user types, departments, etc.

There is also flexibility in terms of creating permissions (e.g., by project, by process, by custom fields, etc.) and the assigning of rules and permissions is visible system-wide. As for data flexibility, there are custom fields and forms and process-related fields and forms, while at each process point (step) fields can be assigned as read-only (viewable), editable, and/or required (mandatory). There is also a flexible definition of assignments, notifications, and recipients, whereby conditional actions drive implicit and explicit notifications.

Furthermore, the ease-of-use concept translates into hardly any training required, whereby the idea for the tool is to be perceived by users as their enabler for getting things done instead of an enforced mandatory tracking tool by the “ivory tower.” Some examples of the ease-of-use features are:

* An intuitive drag-and-drop interface for administrators to design and preview online forms;
* An instant system feedback regarding the field size, informing users how many characters they still have left or by how many characters they have exceeded the maximum field size, and all of this happens dynamically while they are still typing;
* When looking at the list of cases, dragging a mouse over a case will bring additional fields in a hover (a so called “mouseover”), so that a user can find out more about each case while browsing a list, without having to open each case (thereby saving valuable time); and
* Each list of cases can be customized (personalized) by users in order to show fields as columns based on what that user is interested in or what a user considers to be important. If, e.g., a case type has 100 fields, it is impractical to put them all as columns in a list of cases on the screen. It is also impossible to select 10 most important fields universally because their importance depends on individual user needs. Therefore, each user can determine (select), in a drag-and-drop manner, which fields are truly important for them.

Last but not least, the ease-of-setup tenet starts with a pre-built library of processes, but companies can certainly create their own processes with an intuitive and flexible setup of forms, workflows, notifications and permissions. In addition to the abovementioned advanced search capability, users have a facility of unlimited comments and uploading of attachments.

The administrator is able to create brand new processes, new fields and forms and to define the workflow(s) for new processes. He/she can define which field and when in the process is mandatory, visible, hidden and for whom. The administrator is also able to define who has access to which types of cases and projects, who can oversee which users, and so on.

May a New Day Begin for Mature Enterprise Applications – Part 1

While attending a number of vendors’ annual user conferences and/or by being briefed by vendors about their future directions, I’ve lately discerned this trend: virtually every vendor is attempting to win its users’ hearts and minds (as well as wallets) via a more intuitive and appealing user interface (UI). But it would be a real understatement to attribute everything to improved screens without talking about improved (i.e., “rich” and targeted) user experience (UX) design as a whole.

Namely, a UI is a means to an improved UX end, and the recipe for success is to deliver forms and screens designed for a particular user’s role in the organization. In other words, employees can now log into their own role-tailored user profile and personal place in the business management system. The role-personalized UI displays only the selected tasks, metrics, alerts, and activities they need to perform, providing the users with an overview of what they’ve done and what’s next in line.

One of the most common problems plaguing business software users has been the deluge of data coming from all directions, especially in complex and expanding global supply chain networks. In addition to complex integration and disruptive heterogeneous system upgrades, a major global network’s challenge is confusing UX due to multiple views of information that come from independent resources (e.g., trading partners’ systems) and disparate business processes. Confusing UX means that users spend much more time interacting with business applications, searching for the right information, and consolidating data manually, rather than on actually acting on that information to create value.

The Role of Role-tailored UI and UX

One way to reduce this unproductive time is via a configurable interface that allows users to focus on key tasks, presenting current information from virtually any data source onto a tailored home Web page. Each user’s homepage is then replete with pertinent (contextual) reports and key performance indicators (KPIs) based on the specific user’s role in the company. This means that a modern functional UI has to create a holistic view of dispersed pieces of information that are drawn from various sources such as financial systems, Web storefronts, warehousing management systems (WMS), time & expense (T&E) management systems, and so forth.

Moreover, underlying enabling technologies like workflow management, event management, business intelligence (BI), enterprise portals, etc., bring information and action together. Actionable content means that users can drill down into disparate source systems for further analysis or to enter transactions (as necessary further actions).

The result is that employees have a central repository to find the information that they need in real-time to make decisions and complete their work. Each person then more clearly understands the progression of work in a way that is personalized to their specific job, regardless of whether they belong to the board room, the shop floor, human resources (HR), sales, warehousing/shipping, and so on.

As an illustration, employees in the procurement and sourcing departments can use the system’s consolidated data reporting to make business decisions that reduce excess expenditures and maverick spending, manage vendor compliance and viability risks, and identify opportunities to consolidate multiple vendors and suppliers. On the other hand, tailored reports could provide users in the sales department immediate visibility into trends in sales volumes and customer service levels, as well as the costs of servicing customers. Finally, finance and accounting can gain greater insight in less time into cash flow, total cost-to-serve customers, and other germane metrics that will enable them to make more informed decisions that improve profitability and productivity.

As a result, this modern UI and UX design reduces end-user dependency on assistance from the IT department. That is to say, programmers no longer have to build customized reports for each end user, who now can personalize their own views and the system outputs. In short, this UX approach enables everyone to focus on their tasks and organize their time in the way that works best for their company.

Enter Infor MyDay (Not Mayday, Folks!)

At the Inforum 2008 annual user conference in late 2008, Infor outlined its painstaking effort to incrementally build upon its vast portfolio of acquired products. I concur with Ray Wang’s estimate in his recent blog post that the vendor has moved on from collecting disparate (and sometimes antiquated) products to build a more cohesive strategy and value proposition for customers.

At the core of this ambitious endeavor is the Infor Open SOA architectural framework. Infor Open SOA is an event-driven architecture (EDA) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) that leverages a standards-based approach to distribute data between Infor solutions and non-Infor systems and data sources.

The grandiose idea behind Infor Open SOA is that Infor’s customers can relatively rapidly and economically add future Infor, third-party, and in-house software applications (and component-based enhancements) without the need to “rip-and-replace” software or interrupt other systems during operations. I should commend Infor for being quite up-front about how huge undertaking the delivery of the total Infor Open SOA (sometime also referred to as Infor Network) framework is.

The vendor frankly admits that it is only perhaps halfway done three years after embarking on the journey. This candidness has even lately warmed up some “doubtful Thomas” observers that are known for their customary harsh skepticism towards vendors. I refer here to a relatively positive blog post by ZDNet’s blogger Dennis Howlett.

Most of the Infor Open SOA framework’s components have been delivered by now (or will be delivered soon) and are free of charge to customers who are on active maintenance contracts. The major SOA platform’s parts start with the Development Studio that consists of the following components:

* Modeler - caters to UI Personalization, Dynamic Enterprise Modeler (DEM) Process Choreography, DEM Monitors, and Reporting Studio; and
* Eclipse open-source Integrated Development Environment (IDE) - contains Web 2.0 UI gadgets and Spring IDE plug-ins.

Then, the Administration Environment caters to Security Administration, User Logging & Auditing, Component Registry, Licensing Monitoring, Packaging (in accordance with the OSGi Alliance guidelines), Deployment, and User Management. Finally, the Run-Time Services module consists of the following components:

* Core Application Services – provide Master Data Management (MDM), Business Information Services (BIS), Infor MyDay, Hierarchies, and Resource Control;
* Core Platform Services – provide Monitoring, Workflow, On-Ramps, Configuration Software Infrastructure (CSI), Component Framework, and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).

To explain some of these “ominous-sounding” components, Infor MyDay role-based user home pages are enabled by BIS, another major Infor Open SOA component that helps enterprises capture and consolidate data in a centralized and secure database for reporting processes. The analytic and reporting services come with built-in contextual analytics and support the ability to drill down to the original data source from the user’s home page (into both Infor and third-party applications).

For its part, CSI is a configuration infrastructure for messaging (not CBS’ famed TV series) that entails the technical details of how Infor provides standards-based connectivity. “On-ramp” is a term Infor uses for the connector or adapter for a specific Infor application. So, there will need to be an “on-ramp”–e.g., for Infor BIS database, Infor ERP LN, Infor ERP Syteline, Infor Warehouse Management, Infor EAM Enterprise Edition, and so on.

Given the several dozen Infor software assets that will require their own on-ramps, one can imagine the magnitude of the still outstanding development work when it comes to Infor Open SOA. Still, Infor can do some interesting things with on-ramps. When configured, an on-ramp essentially creates peer-to-peer (P2P) network messaging.

This network architecture has a fairly distributed (via a number of lightweight on-ramps) and “standardized” approach. In my opinion, however, “standardized” is a relative term, since standardization requires that you have other industry players who buy into that standard. We will have to wait and see if Infor will be successful there and exert some clout in the industry.

I also noticed a shift in the Infor Open SOA approach toward a P2P network, away from ESB, as initially stated and intended. As an explanation, a service bus is a hub-and-spoke architecture where the processes and decisions are made at the central hub, which undermines the supply chain nodes’ autonomy that network architecture promotes.

Moreover, Infor is moving to use OSGi to do the packaging of its software components to simplify the deployment and management of the environment, and current ESBs are not compatible with the standard (although Progress Software is moving to support it). In addition, the requirement to offer the SOA platform to customers as part of maintenance (the vendor has lately seen increase in maintenance buybacks from once off-maintenance customers) is simplified if Infor provides all parts of the solution, and is not dependent upon third parties’ ESB offerings.

Open SOA, So(a) What!?

So, why did I dwell this much on this SOA technobabble? Well, for the simple reason that without this ambitious framework, it would be difficult (if not even impossible) for Infor to viably deliver any refreshing value proposition to its customers (beyond merely milking the recurring support and maintenance revenue).

In addition to enabling flexible buying and deployment options for customers, the Open SOA framework is instrumental to taking companies’ current IT assets beyond transactional systems, to extended directive and prescriptive systems that can respond proactively to prescribed business rules and handle exceptions. The noble idea here is that the software can adapt quickly as business conditions change.

Infor Open SOA offers solutions to the abovementioned global supply chain network challenges (and remnants from inflexible enterprise-centric client/server architectures) via directive and prescriptive UX, a single network view of information, collaborative resource sharing, agile business processes, standard-based integration, and non-intrusive upgrades.

6 Specialists, 6 Industry Domains: Trends for 2008 and 2009

The Learning Review asked specialists from six major industry domains to share their thoughts on how they see various areas of employee management changing in the near future. The question, sent by e-mail, was simple: what do you think the main trends in [domain] will be for 2008 and 2009? Following are each of their answers.

Human Resources (HR) Strategies
by David Ulrich, consultant and educator in human resources management

In the next one to two years, HR professionals will face some interesting challenges.

First, they will need to manage both individual talent and organization culture. A [current] trend in HR is to focus on an individual's ability, called talentship, workforce, or human capital. But having great talent without teamwork makes people into all-star teams who do not work well together. The challenge will be to build both individual ability and organization capability. Organization capability deals with the culture and organization as a whole. HR professionals must learn to manage both the person and the process.

Second, HR needs to connect the inside and the outside. Often HR focuses inside the organization on employees and line managers. We hear the words … “We want to be the employer of choice.” HR needs to connect the inside and the outside, and use the words, “We want to be the employer of choice of employees our customers would choose.” Too often, HR professionals see their “customers” only as employees inside the firm, not taking into account customers, investors, and communities in which the firm operates.

Third, HR must learn to manage both transactions (the administrative, operational work of HR) with transformation (change, strategic, and long-term work). These are often seen as two different types of operations. The operations require efficiency through technology; the strategic requires transformation through alignment and integration.

Finally, we have found that HR professionals must have competencies to manage both people and business. Our study of over 10,000 people shows clearly the benchmark competencies required of HR professionals for the future (see www.rbl.net).

Human Performance
by Roger Kaufman, renowned researcher and professor at Instituto Tecnologico de Sonora (ITSON) in Sonora, Mexico

We will continue to expand our frame of reference—our mind-set—of our individual performance to align it with the goals of improving the organization and adding value to the external client and society. While we are getting increasingly better at … scientific and research-based individual or human performance improvement, we are increasingly seeing that no matter how well we meet individual performance objectives, those objectives must also add value for what the organization delivers to its clients, as well as [the] value … we add to all our external clients, including society.

This is the basis for what we are doing at ITSON in terms of curriculum and applied research. For 2008/2009, we and the profession will be expanding our horizons. And not a moment too soon.

Informal Learning
by Jay Cross, CEO of Internet Time Group in Berkeley, California (US)

Informal learning will continue [to grow] in importance. People do not have time [to take] many classes or workshops. The technology for facilitating self-service learning is available via the Web. Perhaps most important, empowered workers are rebelling against information deluge. They are going after what they want to learn (pull, informal) instead of taking what's thrown at them (push, formal).

Web 2.0
by Stephen Downes of the National Research Council Canada (NRC)

I was just today reading about a report from Gartner saying that software as a service (SaaS) will grow "seven times faster than on-premise software deployments during the next three years." That seems right to me, as for the most part, Web-based software is able to address many of the cross-platform issues facing application developers. And Web-based software allows a person to work with the same applications and same documents from multiple locations: their home computer, their work computer, their iPhone, whatever.
This flexibility may be contrasted with desktop operating systems that have become more and more cumbersome over the years. The result of people creating on the Web will be a continued proliferation of people creating for the Web, and so I think we'll see a steady increase in user-generated content. Also coming to Web 2.0 applications is a single sign-on service—most likely OpenID—which will allow users to mix and match content from different Web-based applications.

Thus, Web-based applications will be more than desktop applications could ever be; they will be social applications supporting collaborative authoring and content creation. In other words, what we will see will largely resemble Web 2.0 as we see it today. But there will be significant improvements in performance and stability “under the hood.”

E-learning
by Tony Bates, president and CEO of Tony Bates Associates Ltd. in Vancouver, Canada

Mainly, [e-learning] will continue to grow rapidly. One of the biggest costs for many companies is employee training, in terms of the time employees are absent from work, as well as travel and lodging expenses during training. E-learning gives some of that time back to the employee. Workers like this option because they can study and still be able to spend time at home with their families.

We will see much more simulation and animation, which will allow us to reduce the time spent being trained on expensive equipment. We will also witness a shift to more blended learning programs—a combination of face-to-face training and online learning.

Finally, due to purely economic reasons, we will see the development of material for online training that will apply to different industries and that can be shared between different companies, especially for basic training.

Knowledge Management
by Javier Martínez Aldanondo, knowledge management manager at Catenaria in Santiago, Chile

Before making any predictions, we must stress that, presently, there is a lack of clarity on what we understand as “knowledge management.” My rustic definition for this much talked about concept is “how to learn from what the company already knows, so that when people need to face tasks, they can take advantage of the experience of someone who has already tried that same task before, and therefore, use what worked, and learn what caused problems to avoid making the same mistakes twice and being inefficient.”

Knowledge is an asset that already exists in the organization; you don't have to invest in developing it. It allows you to get things done and to obtain positive results. However, it is an atypical asset, because it doesn't show up in balances, it cannot be deposited in a bank, and it fades when people leave the organization. Not using this knowledge is a waste that companies cannot afford. There are two terms that will affect knowledge management in the future: innovation and intelligence.

While people are intelligent and learn from their own experiences (every day we accumulate cases and stories that we reuse constantly), organizations have a difficult time finding out what [people] know and learning from it (lessons learned and better practices), and therefore they are inefficient and lose money. Organizations need to learn how to be intelligent, and to do so they have to innovate their concept of knowledge management. Today, this concept is reactive and centered on document management and training solutions.

Companies will need to know what their employees are trying to do, and offer them support when they have issues. When I'm preparing a commercial proposal for a customer, my knowledge management system will ask me, “Do you want to know who did this before you? Do you need help with a proposal similar to the one you're working on [and] that contains sales arguments that worked wonders with this type of scenario and customer?” The organization not only will be able to anticipate to its members' requests, but it will automatically learn while it gathers experiences that will feed its corporate memory. To achieve this, it is necessary to contemplate three areas:

* work with people (experts) who have cases and histories and critical knowledge, much more than [with] documents, procedures, and systems;
* establish real business metrics;
* and, most importantly, understand what knowledge really means—how we learn and what we understand as intelligence.

It’s About Process (or the Ability to be Responsive) — Part IV

Other Real Life ResponsAbility Use Examples

In addition to the examples described in Part III, another example of the ResponsAbility software in use can be found in Grayhill, Inc. an electronics manufacturer from Lagrange, Illinois (US), servicing industrial and government customers. While the company has been a long-term WebSource CPQ user for sales configuration purposes, the ResponsAbility sibling was later introduced for managing several processes, among them for product returns or return merchandize authorizations (RMAs).

Customer return requests are either imported from the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or directly entered by customers and/or Grayhill associates into ResponsAbility as a “request for material return.” Based on the entered data via a customized form, the return is authorized or denied. Namely, a default assignee reviews a request and approves it, rejects it, or asks the customer for additional clarifications.

Upon authorization, when the goods are received a case gets assigned to the quality assurance (QA) team. This is another “gate review” step in the process where the quality team determines if the failure is due to a product defect or misuse (user-induced damage). If a case is determined to be a defect, then the part is repaired at no cost or a new part is sent to a customer.

The defective part is also sent to the engineering department for analysis to determine the root cause and future corrective actions. Namely, in order to ensure the highest quality for which Grayhill is known, the case cannot be closed until all the corrective and preventive action (CAPA) requirements are fulfilled. To that end, the following outputs must be generated: the detailed explanation of the root cause of the problem, the short-term fix, the long-term fix, sent a final report to the customer, etc.

If it is not a defective part case, the case is closed and the goods are returned to the customer, who may in turn elect to convert it to a special service request case type. Logically then, another workflow process is followed, consisting of steps such as creating a service estimate, approval, service fulfillment (repair), invoicing, etc.

In other words, in case of misuse, the customer is asked to authorize a repair for a fee. If and when an approval is received, the product is repaired and the case is closed. Similar to the new feature request vs. bug software example from Part III, a repair service for fee process follows its own workflow via the repair department and QA, and then is shipped to the customer.

Ken Hoving, Grayhill’s vice president (VP) of corporate quality said

“The Webcom solution allowed us to consolidate all of our customer corrective actions in one system and enable web access across the entire organization, including our customers, resulting in cycle time improvements and increased customer satisfaction.”

Also, the company asserts that due to all the system’s nifty drag-and-drop Web 2.0 personalization capabilities for both users and administrators, the BPM tool is not something that users feel forced to use, but they truly want to use it because it helps them to do a better job. They do not have to worry about forgetting to do something or missing a step in a rush, since ResponsAbility ensures that the process is thorough and consistent each time.

Another important process that ResponsAbility enables at Grayhill is SDPR (Special Design Pricing Request).

Namely, when a prospective customer inquires about a product that Grayhill does not currently manufacture as a standard, then such a request gets routed via a number of departments, starting with sales that captures the detailed inquiry/request. Then, the engineering team will estimate the cost/time to complete the special request, while the marketing and accounting staff will analyze the economic viability of the special job (it is still expected to be some batch/series production rather than a one-off engineer-to-order [ETO] product), and create a catalog number and its price (quote).

Before that happens and the sales department can communicate back to the customer Grayhill’s interest and official price (quote), several collaborative iterations have to take place between the customer, Grayhill and its vendors (e.g., the special tooling and fixtures’ cost and lead time discussion).

Product Information Management Example

Broan-NuTone, based in Hartford, Wisconsin (US), and North America’s leading manufacturer and distributor of residential ventilation products is another combined WebSource CPQ and ResponsAbility user. Its products include range hoods, ventilation fans, heater/fan/light combination units, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Fresh Air Systems, built-in heaters, whole-house fans, attic ventilators, paddle fans and trash compactors.

The company has thousands of products, each with a slew of attributes such as length, width, material, standards to comply with (e.g., the UL Safety Standard, Canadian Standards Association [CSA], CE-Marking, etc.), voltage, power, air flow, and so on. The goal is to publish all that vast catalog data electronically via WebSource CPQ.

However, that cannot happen without consolidating all of the above data for all of the company’s products. ResponsAbility comes into the picture here, whereby each product will go through a special product information management (PIM) workflow.

Namely, the engineering team will have to fill in over hundred data points for each product, the marketing staff will add in their pertinent data, and product management will then have to fill the various product prices (list price, distributor price, wholesale price, etc.). Once the PIM case is closed, a prepared Microsoft Excel document with all of the required data about all the products in a product family can be imported into WebSource CPQ.

“After months of review and the evaluation of numerous vendors to help implement a Product Information Management system, we chose ResponsAbility from Webcom”, stated Mark Hughes, Internet Marketing Manager at Broan-NuTone. “Having several thousand products to manage from conception to obsolescence, we wanted to have stability out of the box. We feel that ResponsAbility is the perfect fit,” added Hughes.

Underlying ResponsAbility Technology

With some research indicating customer acquisition costing multiple times more than customer retention, ResponsAbility complements Webcom’s quote-to-order (Q2O) solution, WebSource CPQ, and continues the company’s focus on simplifying complex business processes.

“Attaining your goals and objectives requires not only a focus on obtaining new business through a quote-to-order solution such as WebSource CPQ, but just as rigorous a focus on retaining your most treasured asset, your customers”, commented Aleksandar Ivanovic, Webcom’s chief executive officer (CEO) and founder.

“ResponsAbility is just the type of solution needed to help drive customer satisfaction, innovation and repeat business”, added Ivanovic. “Especially in today’s uncertain economy, driving productivity through repeatable and reliable processes is crucial to success, and ResponsAbility could be a valuable tool helping companies improve customer service through nimbleness and implement process control.”

However, in order not to create internal competition for research and development (R&D) resources, WebSource CPQ and ResponsAbility, although both being offered on-demand, have intentionally been developed on two different technologies, Microsoft .NET Framework and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), respectively. For more information, see TEC’s earlier article entitled Understand J2EE and .NET Environments Before You Choose.

Some best-practices sharing between the two teams could still be possible on the user interface (UI) side, since both products leverage Asynchronous Java and XML (AJAX) for rich client enablement and Web 2.0 gadgets. Although the two products are currently English-only, a common translation mechanism for other languages is being developed. Both products will be able to leverage these schemas for deployments in several languages. However, the decision on which languages to tackle first and deliver has yet to be made.

But, in contrast to WebSource CPQ, ResponsAbility is enabled for the Hibernate database-independent object/relational persistence and query service. The product features full audit trail and archiving capabilities, and the ability to export data in the CSV (comma separated values), Microsoft Excel, extensible markup language (XML), Adobe PDF (portable data file), and RTF (rich text file) file formats.

KISS IT or Leave IT

Webcom’s main challenge with the new workflow/BPM product will be to balance its “keep it straight and simple (KISS)” mantra with the complexity of full-fledged BPM applications’ deployments. On the one hand, the vendor positions ResponsAbility as a “lite BPM” product, given that it features much more capabilities than a mere workflow product, but on the other hand, it is far more limited than any other notable BPM suite’s functional footprint at this stage.

To be fair, some BPM functional requirements can be rendered moot in the on-demand model. In fact, product versioning, acceptance testing and/or whether workflow notification mechanisms can integrate with desktop products or interact via email are all capabilities that are a “big deal” for client/server on-premise BPM deployments, but are virtually irrelevant in software as a service (SaaS) subscription-based deployments.

The same goes for integration with third-party integrated development environments (IDE’s) due to the web-based workflow modeling environment within ResponsAbility. Indeed, IDEs like Microsoft Visual Studio are relevant for on-premise programming development, i.e., for writing source code, compiling it and making it executable code. In contrast to that, workflow modeling within ResponsAbility does not require coding, compiling, server deployment, etc. Furthermore, the SaaS deployment model completely obviates the need to buy and install an IDE.

It might be interesting to note here that Salesforce.com, when it started several years ago (and likely even still today) only had a fraction of customer relationship management (CRM) functionality that Oracle Siebel has had (and still has today). Still, this functional deficiency did not stop the on-demand CRM pioneer from succeeding.

The goal is not necessarily to out-feature other software packages, since most of them already have so much functionality that much thereof is never implemented or used (as can be seen in TEC’s article entitled Application Erosion: Eating Away at Your Hard Earned Value).

Thus, Webcom’s main goal is to make ResponsAbility so easy to set up and so easy to use that there will never be a failed implementation or a disgruntled customer. The goal is to quickly and simply help people to get their respective jobs done in a way that they get almost addicted to the tool, so much so that they cannot even imagine doing it any other way.

For what is worth, getting back to the “eating own dog food” mantra from Part III, Webcom’s staff admits to being addicted to ResponsAbility. If they look at their own statistics, which are available in the application, each Webcom employee will have personally performed thousands of transactions therein.

In the next product release, due in the fall of 2008 (which is another advantage of the SaaS development, i.e., the frequency of new releases), Webcom will be adding several new features, such as visual workflow/process designer, rules and conditions, escalations, service level agreement (SLA) tiers, field dependencies, scheduled events, analytics (graphs, charts, trends), etc. Features like Web Services application programming interface (API), support for personal digital assistant (PDA) and other mobile devices, case and task interdependencies, etc. might come in future product releases.

While the vendor strongly believes that ease-of-use and ease-of-setup are far more important than a long list of out-of-the-box supported features, it is necessary to have some of those in the request for information (RFI)/request for proposal (RFP) phase of any selection project to avoid outright elimination.

Even though some of the capabilities which are often marked as a “must have” will likely never be implemented by prospective clients, the selection team wants to make a safe decision and get all of their bases covered. Without those capabilities on paper, ResponsAbility may get eliminated before users ever get a chance to fall in love with the application.

Webcom also strongly believes that if users need to be trained extensively on how to use the application, the product will have failed. We concur that no one can expect customers and partners (channel and supply) to take additional classes on how to collaborate with the company using its applications.

The software needs to be as intuitive as going to the Amazon.com web site and buying a book or a CD, or going to Google and doing a search. It is Webcom’s approach that until it figures out how to make each feature that intuitive, it will not introduce it in the application.

Current State of Affairs

ResponsAbility has been generally available (GA) since May 2008, with a free trial option. Deployed in a SaaS subscription model, pricing starts at US$ 19.95 per user per month for an internal user, and US$ 4.95 per user per month for an external user/trading partner (or alternatively 99 cents per each case generated by external users). Such aggressive pricing a la espresso coffee drinks or music downloads are hoped to generate the initial “critical mass” user base.

Webcom also recently announced the expected availability of ResponsAbility for Salesforce.com’s AppExchange directory of on-demand applications. Leveraging Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform, the next ResponsAbility release (expected in September or so) will be available for test drive and deployment at the AppExchange site. There is already GA for the Oracle CRM OnDemand ecosystem.

Every customer that installs the software over the Web in a self-service manner gets the following four default workflow process templates: Bug Resolution, New Feature Request (NFR), Engineering Change Notice (ECN) and RMA. Certainly, customers can define and create their own process templates to their heart’s content. The experience has shown that it typically requires a few hours for a major business process to be thought out and defined.

As additional food for thought, here is a (partial) list of potential groups of processes within various lines of businesses (LoB’s)/departments that could hereby be automated:

* Finance — asset management tracking, budget approval, invoice approval, payment request, capital acquisition request, credit approval, merger and acquisition (M&A) tracking, etc.;
* Product Development – product specification approval, product change notice, engineering change request, issue management, enhancement/new features requests;
* Back-office (Administration) — expense claims, travel authorizations, help desk requests, purchase requests, document change control, etc.;
* Customer Service — call management, field service management, case handling, customer survey forms, information technology (IT) services request, etc.;
* Human Resources — new hire setup requests, training enrollment, certification alerts, etc.; and

May a New Day Begin for Mature Enterprise Applications – Part 2

Infor’s “Three E’s” Approach

The “enrich” part of the strategy refers to adding value to Infor’s raft of current products (solutions or assets). Infor has released over 100 product upgrades and feature (service) packs free of charge for customers on active maintenance contracts. It is also important to note that there is no forced march imposed upon customers here; these feature packs can be enabled or disabled by turning the appropriate switches “on” or “off” in a parameterized setup.

The “extend” part of the strategy refers to extending functional footprint via OSGi standards–based interoperability within Infor’s portfolio of applications in order to meet the growing complexity of global supply chains. Customers will receive ongoing service-oriented architecture (SOA) integrations. On one hand, these product connections represent cross-selling opportunities for Infor, on the other hand, they should also enable customers to extend their current solutions and build a broader foundation for future capabilities that might be required.

For example, Infor’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) users will be able to leverage, e.g., Infor’s supply chain management (SCM), business performance management (BPM), or enterprise asset management (EAM) products. But in contrast to the “extend” feature packs (and new individual product releases), these new functional capabilities are logically available for an additional license fee.

Finally, the “evolve” part of Infor’s Open SOA strategy follows along the lines of developing brand new products that will solve some particular business problem and improve users’ competitiveness (and thus will not become obsolete for quite some time). These new components promise to feature universal interconnectivity to major Infor products.

Depending on their nature, they will either be free of charge (e.g., Infor MyDay) for eligible customers or for a commensurate license fee. For more details, see TEC’s previous article entitled “Ambitious Plans and Promises: An Enterprise Software Provider Keeps Its Word.”

At the Inforum 2008 user conference, Infor touted about 20 new “evolve” components to be generally available (GA) , i.e., tested on limited release with real customers for several months) by the end of 2009 (and many more to come afterwards). In addition to the MyDay role-based portal (which will be described soon), are Infor Decisions and Infor Order Management are already GA.

Infor Decisions brings real-time, enquiry-driven business intelligence (BI) to line of business (LoB) managers. These folks have been inundated with data coming from disparate sources such as financial management systems (e.g., actual vs. budget), customer service systems (e.g., customer and product profitability), external systems (e.g., a customer’s financial performance) and operations (e.g., inventory status).

But this overflowing data has unfortunately not traditionally been linked to the context of business. To that end, Infor Decisions drives a “train of thought” inquiry, which transforms users from transactional to information workers and facilitates informed decision-making and action.

For its part, Infor Order Management provides multi-model pricing and time-phased inventory reservation right across supply chains. The solution was built to enable the true and unified order experience, i.e., how companies really sell and how customers buy (and not how the system “thinks” the trade happens).

For example, order capturing and inventory reservation can take place centrally, while the actual delivery and customer service takes place in a certain local division. Infor Order Management was designed with flexibility in mind to accommodate ever-changing business practices.

Evolution Continues

The upcoming Infor Advanced General Ledger (formerly also known as Multi-Books Accounting) module is an “evolve” component that should give global companies the ability to conform to multiple, country-specific accounting standards and currencies. The module can either run concurrently with an existing general ledger (G/L) system or serve as the primary accounting module.

The idea behind the multi-books accounting capability is to enable the system to work alongside financial management systems to help companies cast their financials in multiple ways. If, for instance, a corporation has an operation in China, India, or Brazil, and it has to follow these governments’ rules on what one precisely refers to local accounting concepts and regulations, like “salary,” “wage,” or “value-added tax” (VAT) or “sales tax,” how do users get a system without having to rip and replace what they already have in order to work in China, Latin America, the US, and Europe? Advanced G/L and about a few dozen other upcoming “evolve” components, such as, e.g., Pricing, contracts & promotions; Actual costing; Multi-echelon inventory control, and Sales & operations planning (S&OP), are slated for delivery by the early 2010s.

So, What’s The Big Deal with Infor MyDay?

Typically, when I attend vendors’ annual events, I ask their staffers to tell me what in their mind is the highlight of the conference. I was a bit dismayed after hearing the strangely named MyDay feature as the major theme of the Inforum 2008 event.

Namely, IFS Enterprise Explorer (IEE, part of the ongoing Project Aurora), Microsoft Dynamics Client for Office (DCO), Lawson Smart Office, Epicor Productivity Pyramid, IQMS Smart Page UI and so on revolve around themes like role-based portals, contextual analytics, KPIs, alerts, dashboards, shortcuts, favorite/recently used pages, etc. In addition, the role-based UI was implemented with common controls and gadgets, and delivered for basically all of the Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource planning (ERP) products after introducing it and testing first in Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Thus, I wondered what I was missing at the time within MyDay that was making me a bit indifferent (and why I should not have been indifferent). To be fair, Infor MyDay is designed to deliver persona-based content to over 150 roles Infor has identified in its customers’ businesses. Infor’s blog post explains as follows:

“…What do we mean by persona-based? A persona is a composite of a user within an organization. A lot of vendors talk about role-based interfaces. A persona takes this concept to the next level. A role is generic, designed for a departmental role such as the “finance user.” A persona is specific to an individual user within that department, such as the VP of Finance or Controller. A persona also adds texture to that individual. At Infor, we’ve given them names and faces and built stories around their life. These are imaginary people, but they are based on the hundreds of users we studied to understand the real needs that real people need to get their jobs done. From conception, design and development to sales education and marketing, this gives us the understanding we need to build and deliver great content for people.

Let’s take a look at one of the 16 persona roles we are delivering with this first release, Bob the Production Planner. Bob is a composite of the typical production planner. He is the choreographer of the manufacturing shop floor, managing planning and production. He determines what to produce, how much and when it’s needed. He acts as the go-between between the shop floor and the corporate side of the firm. He has a degree, probably business or engineering, and about 10 years experience with manufacturing. He knows how to use applications but he’s not an IT gearhead.

Bob has to deal with unexpected events – late purchase deliveries, machine downtime or last minute work orders. He wants to be more proactive, but the reality is that he is in ‘reacting mode’ much of the time and plans are always changing. He has to deal with inaccurate inventories and bill of materials, and he has an avalanche of unstructured information that he needs to gather, format and assimilate to take action on.

From our research, we have learned Bob’s typical responsibilities, his skills, his working environment, pain points and goals. We have learned how he uses his ERP software, the other applications he uses and the value he needs to get from them. We learned all of this because we’ve done our homework. A lot of it. We started in early 2007, logging thousands of hours of research into the personas of the people using our software. We’ve built-in the content they need to make their lives a little easier, so they can focus on strategic activities instead of looking for information…”

While an impressive and thorough exercise, persona-based profiling (and subsequent UI tailoring) is not necessarily a unique practice. Namely, TEC’s recent article entitled “Application Giants in Duel—and Duet—for Users’ Hearts, Minds … and Wallets” explains at great length Microsoft’s rationale for its elaborate approach to UX, including role centers (based on numerous interviews of real-life users and their needs).

It’s About Making the Users’ Day (and Less about Impressing Analysts)

The just-announced availability of Infor MyDay for Infor ERP Adage [evaluate this product], the renowned process manufacturing ERP solution, has given me an answer to my quandary. After Infor MyDay was unveiled at Inforum 2008, this represents its first GA for one of many Infor ERP solutions.

As the recent Infor blog post explains, one issue that almost all of the process manufacturing companies can relate to is cost to service customers. In most process ERP systems, actual cost of production, post invoice rebates, disallowed discounts, non-salable allowances, and return data are just some of the data captured over time.

“…This data often resides in ERP modules or disparate, standalone systems. Most companies struggle to pull this information together with customized reports, spreadsheets or complex general ledger allocations. The problem is, by the time you sort through all the noise, the information is months old and the impact is diluted.

With Infor MyDay, the information is immediately at your fingertips, without having to call IT to develop a custom report. This information is built into the Infor MyDay personas for finance and sales managers, who receive these reports on their personalized page and can now better control cost to service and ensure their most profitable customers get the most profitable products…”

For all this time, I was thinking as an industry analyst (rather than a user of a specific product), and comparing MyDay to what other vendors are doing, thinking about the possible market differentiation. On the other hand, to a user of an aged Infor ERP Adage instance, which has been a very functional product but with a rudimentary UI (to put it mildly), MyDay will likely feel like time travel to at least two decades in the future (or as if they were participants in ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover show).

And who might then care about what other vendors might be doing in this regard? The Infor ERP Adage MyDay Datasheet is available at the company’s web site here.

Now I get that MyDay, being free of charge and exhibiting a unifying, dynamic, and snazzy UI, should resonate with Infor customers on antiquated and diverse products. The UI enhancement has also very recently been made GA for Infor ERP LN, Infor ERP SyteLine, and Infor ERP Visual to provide these users as well with visibility into the “why” and “when” and not just the “what” of business operations. As mentioned in Part 1, Infor MyDay does this by filtering data by job function and relevancy and delivering it in a condensed home-page format.

The Wizardry of Business Process Management – Part 3

Namely, on March 23, 2009, Alan Trefler, Pegasystems’ founder and CEO, gave his luncheon keynote presentation at the Gartner BPM Summit in San Diego. His theme was “Don’t just Survive… Capitalize.” Trefler begun by reminding the audience that in today’s turbulent economy we are all “not in Kansas anymore” and may just need some “ruby slippers” to find our way back home to profitability. If you have 14 minutes to spare, you can re-capture the spirit of the event here.

In the main part of his presentation in Part 2, Trefler maintained that to follow the “Yellow Brick Road,” which will lead any business to Oz (and back to profitability), requires three capabilities in particular, starting with the ability to directly capture business objectives into the BPM system by the business users.It cannot be overemphasized how important it is for business users to be able to capture corporate objectives directly into the software technology so that these new objectives can immediately impact their customers, partners, and employees. The ability to easily record, erase, revise, and organize business rule changes creates the foundation for organizational agility. Letting organizations design for both planned and (even more importantly) unplanned business changes is of paramount importance.

It’s About (the “Six Rs” of) Automation, After All

Companies have to optimize their processes through technology that automatically integrates new objectives into their systems to adjust for every specific situation. They need a “brain” that ensures that processes and decisions are optimized per these new objectives in both mainstream and exceptional situations.

The idea is to get the initial process quickly and iterate later. Business users can do it one customer issue at the time, starting with any business process that needs improvement: e.g., open a new account, charge dispute, detect fraud, increase credit line, handle a missed payment, and so on.

As said in Part 2, Pegasystems (also known as Pega) users can use the familiar Microsoft Visio diagramming tool to visually create (model) the processes that will deliver better customer service. There are many pre-built solution frameworks with industry best practices to get them jump-started if necessary.

But the second brick in the Yellow Brick Road is the ability of the technology to automate all necessary computer programming. Namely, business people can draw nice pictures and diagrams to capture objectives, but if between that model of what you want and ultimately running your business you need to do lots of tedious Java or C++ programming, you cannot be agile and nimble enough. To that technical end, the model that business users create should actually automate the programming that makes the business process run.

The final brick in the Yellow Brick Road of BPM is the automation of business processes that then “drives the work to be done” by, well, automating the actual work. In other words, the work is not merely tracked or routed for human intervention, but is also completed with the power of smart automation and minimal manual effort.

Nirvana would be to ultimately automate the work for people, who then only add value as required. Although the human touch is always needed, the point of business process automation (BPA) is to eliminate any distractions.

Again stepping out of Trefler’s presentation’s narrow scope, let me try to explain here how Pega’s SmartBPM suite really turns work automation into a tool for business changes on the fly. Let’s explore the “Six Rs” of driving work to be done via Pega’s BPM technology.

As the first “R,” the BPM product makes it easy for users to receive the work that needs processing. SmartBPM has a broad ability to receive input out-of-the-box from virtually any conceivable channel.

To that end, flexible, self-expanding extensible markup language (XML)-based data structures make it easy to capture whatever data, attachments, images, or other content may be appropriate, so that users can always have the right information at hand. Web services, e-mail notifications, and so on are all treated through a common software architecture, to ensure that processes designed for one particular channel can be leveraged in a multi-channel environment.

The second “R” stands for route. To that end, rules ensure optimal work management for either people or systems by organizing related work into Cases and Folders, thus prioritizing and managing them. The duplicate checking ability prevents redundancy, while skills-based routing (SBR) optimizes work assignments.

For the third “R” of automation, report, the system offers over 100 standard reports, plus an open database to integrate with other customer information and enterprise reporting systems. Canned reporting capabilities can even be extended to include real-time business activity monitoring (BAM). For instance, built-in Service Level Agreement (SLA) management and statistical sampling provide management impacts in real time.

Customers use these capabilities to coordinate and control key business functions. For example, National Australian Bank (NAB) uses SmartBPM to control the receipt, prioritization, and execution of billions of dollars of high value payments, ensuring that every wire transfer request is handled according to the best practice.

The Exceeding “Three Rs” of BPA

But these are just the basic three “Rs” of BPA, something like the reading, writing, and arithmetic abilities in elementary school. They are the basis of what was originally called workflow automation that represents the procedural side of the world.

These days, competitive organizations need much more than the basics. To that end, PegaRULES Process Commander, a thin-client collaborative environment for both business users and IT departments, brings the further benefits and the power of automation with the additional three “Rs” that make the procedures even smarter.

Thus, the fourth “R” stands for research: the ability to dynamically get the data needed to automate work when and as needed, and use the best sources. Retrieving data if and only if it is needed saves resources and money. In addition, the system saves users’ time by only asking relevant questions and making it easy to dynamically insert alternative data sources.

Then comes the “R” for respond: the ability to reduce effort and provide service by ensuring that interactions with people are “smart.” For example, users are able to alter the forms and fields of the hypertext markup language (HTML) screens based on the rules and the situation. In addition, companies are able to notify partners, customers, and other relevant parties effectively and appropriately, and even have them directly participate in the completion of the work over the Web.

Last but not least, the sixth “R” stands for resolve: the ability to drive work through to completion with the power of an inference engine. In other words, it is the ability to fully automate work where possible and guide users if and when user involvement is needed.

The “Six Rs” of Automation in Action

Pega’s customers use these BPA capabilities to weave policies and other declarative rules into their procedures. As an illustration, let’s see how the “Six Rs” would work at an insurance call center:

1. Receive – A New York customer wants to add boat coverage to his homeowners and auto insurance plan. He or she goes to the online portal, gets partially through, but has questions about what happens if he or she moors in Maine in the summer, but brings the boat back for storage in New York in winter. He or she picks up the phone, switching from the Web to the phone channel.
2. Research – In the background, the system pre-determines that the local insurance agent is not skilled enough to write the policy for a boat moored in Maine, calculate the right policy for a commission sharing (and potential discounts), and up-sell.
3. Route – Thus, the customer profile triggers an SBR to a preferred customers queue in the call center. The right customer service representative (CSR) quickly asks a few relevant questions (e.g., near-shore or offshore sailing?) and recommends an additional multi-line coverage umbrella.
4. Resolve – The customer receives a quote to his liking and the change in policy is resolved by underwriting and a system-driven straight-through processing (STP) to be bound.
5. Respond – The customer gets an automatically generated confirmation e-mail with a print snail mail follow-up and confirmation of the change of policy and debit acknowledgement.
6. Report – The activity is monitored for ongoing process improvements and optimization via productivity and quality alerts.

The benefits of such intent-driven user experience are that it eliminates the CSR’s guesswork, since the system analyzes information on the customer history, coverage, value, prior interactions, etc., as well as the insurance provider’s business goals to determine the best course of action. Furthermore, CSRs benefit from improved effectiveness and efficiency, since the SmartBPM suite guides the agent through the interaction process and delivers the appropriate scripts, process steps, and customer information exactly when needed. In addition, Pega dynamically alters the agent experience to accommodate multiple roles (e.g., sales vs. service) and locations.

The Wizardry of Closing Execution Gaps

Going back to Alan Trefler’s luncheon presentation, in summary, he concluded that it takes the following: corporate courage (not to flinch in these times, but to instead try to see what can be done), a BPM brain (to capture the business intent), and a heart (a service oriented architecture [SOA]-based infrastructure). This creative cinematic BPM metaphor did not come out of thin air, since the presentation took place exactly on the 70th anniversary of the great “Wizard of Oz” movie.

Another salient point in Trefler’s creative speech was that the market for BPM software is driven by competitive businesses that seek to close the execution gaps that may exist between their business objectives and their actual business processes. Pega’s target customers are large, industry-leading service organizations faced with managing transaction-intensive, complex and changing processes that seek the agility needed for growth, productivity, and regulatory compliance.

Financial services organizations require software to improve the quality, accuracy, and efficiency of customer interactions and transactions processing. Pega’s customer process management and exceptions management products allow its financial service customers to be more responsive to changing business requirements. Representative Pega’s financial services customers include Bank of America, Barclays Bank, Citigroup, Credit Suisse Group, HSBC Group Holdings, JPMorgan Chase & Co., National Australian Bank (NAB), and TD Bank Financial Group.

Pega’s financial industry knowledge and experience has resulted in solutions to help these customers close execution gaps and improve the following processes:

* In Bank Card Operations: Multi-channel service; Self-service account opening; Product roll-out; Fraud processing; Customer on-boarding, etc.
* In Retail Banking: Event-driven marketing; Account opening; New product introduction; Service case management; Specialized fulfillment, etc.
* In Wholesale Banking (e.g., wire transfers and treasury management): Proactive service monitoring; Account servicing; New product introduction; Compliance trade monitoring; Exception management, etc.

For their part, healthcare organizations seek products that integrate their front-office and back-office initiatives and help drive customer service, efficiency, and productivity. Representative Pega’s healthcare customers include: Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, Group Health Cooperative, HealthNow New York, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals (Kaiser Permanente), and Wellpoint.

Pega’s healthcare industry involvement has resulted in solutions to help these customers close execution gaps and improve the following processes: Automated Underwriting; Sales Renewals; Appeals & Grievances; Consumer Directed Healthcare (CDHC) offerings; Facilitation; Authorization Management; Small- and Large-Plan Enrollment and Servicing; Disease/Care Management, and so on.

Insurance companies, whether competing globally or nationally for customers and channels, need software to automate the key activities of policy/contract rating, quoting, customization, underwriting, and servicing as well as products that improve customer service and the overall customer experience. Representative Pega insurance industry customers include: American National Insurance Company, former American International Group (AIG) that recently changed name into American International Underwriters (AIU), John Hancock, Farmers Insurance Group, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, and The Prudential Insurance Company of America. Pega’s insurance industry knowledge and experience has resulted in solutions to help these customers close gaps and improve the following processes: automated underwriting; event-driven marketing; product cloning; claims management; legacy transformation, etc.

A CRM Provider Too?

While its customers are typically large companies in the financial services, healthcare and insurance markets, with SmartBPM Suite, Pega is also able to offer solutions to a broader range of companies and industries, such as telecommunications, government, life sciences, manufacturing, and travel services. Marquee customers here include Amgen, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), General Electric Company (GE), Ford Motor Company, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, and The ServiceMaster Company.

All of the abovementioned companies are largely concerned about their customer service levels. Pega’s customer interaction know-how has also resulted in solutions to close gaps and improve the following processes: Customer retention and cross-selling; Specialized fulfillment; New hire training; Post-order clean-up; Objection handling; Reducing on-call time, Product warranty and servicing management, and so on.

In fact, Pega is also regarded as a customer relationship management (CRM) provider. ZDNet’s 2007 blog post mentioned Pega within a Forrester’s CRM Wave research document. Pega does acknowledge the competition from CRM application vendors including Chordiant Software, Microsoft Dynamics CRM by Microsoft, Siebel by Oracle; Pivotal CRM by CDC Software, and Consona CRM to name but a few.

There is also competition coming from companies that provide application specific software for the financial services, healthcare, insurance, and other specific markets such as Norkom Technologies, SmartStream Technologies, SunGard, The TriZetto Group, Oracle’s solutions for financial services, Misys, etc. An interesting nugget of information is that Pega used to be a Salesforce.com on-demand CRM customer. The vendor recently made a decision to replace Salesforce.com Enterprise Edition with its own CRM system, in an “drink your own champagne” manner.

Traffic Audits Make Strange Bedfellows: Part I - The Why's and What's of Auditing

Why Audit The Numbers?

If you're ever feeling really and truly mean, here's a nasty trick to play on your marketing and ad sales colleagues. Wait, with a friend, until some of these folks get on the elevator, and follow them in. Here's what you say to your companion in crime: "I just heard that there was a real glitch in the traffic numbers and the last six months worth were all twice as high as they should have been." If you don't understand why this is mean, read on.

Many content sites are in the business of selling just one thing - numbers - to a very demanding audience - advertising executives. These websites range from portals like Yahoo! through specialists like ESPN or ABCNews all the way to search engines like Links2Go and thousands of others. The economic job of such sites is to turn marketing dollars into reports that show how many surfers visit the site or view the ads. While this is not the only way that web sites earn revenue, it represents the majority of revenues for a great many sites.

There is an easier way to create those reports than to build the website and spend all those marketing dollars: just make them up. Unfortunately, advertisers got wise to that long ago, when information was disseminated through newspapers and magazines - before television and radio, even. If you've ever enjoyed a television show that got cancelled because of "ratings," you know how important audience measurement can be.

Over the years, the publishing industry and the entertainment industry developed standard ways to determine these ratings. These standards include both definitions of what to count and procedures for doing the counting. Take something as simple as a magazine. Obviously, each subscription counts, as does each newsstand sale. There are, naturally, various ways to cook these numbers. For example, given the relatively low cost of printing, it might be worth it for publishers to give out gift subscriptions by the truckload to improve their numbers. So auditors look for evidence that subscriptions were paid for.

But there are other complications besides fraud. Publishers argue that magazines often get passed around in an office, or between friends; they'd like to count the extra readers when that happens. So auditors have developed procedures for measuring that kind of readership fairly. On the other hand, advertisers want to be sure that ads are seen by the right people, those who are likely to respond by making purchases. The Beef Council doesn't advertise in Vegetarian Times for obvious reasons. But it's less obvious whether they should advertise in Newsweek, or TV Guide, or X-men comics, or the Ann Arbor Times.

Once advertisers caught on to the Web in the latter part of the 1990's some were ecstatic. "At last! A measurable form of advertising!" they thought. And to some extent they were right. But measurement is neither easy nor foolproof even in this brave new medium, and the responsibility for those measurements to be accurate falls largely on the IT department. The responsibility is immense, because it reflects directly on the corporate bottom line. Remember that little elevator prank we suggested? If the numbers reported by the website turned out to be grossly incorrect, the site might have to give back money to the advertisers. Sometimes lots of money! It's rare that this happens, and rarer that the amounts are very large, but it does happen. And the blame, as you might guess, falls squarely on the technologist.

So in the next sections we'll explain the different kinds of numbers, how they are collected, what the situation is regarding audits and what to do now to ensure that your numbers pass muster when the auditor comes to call.
Most websites get paid for ads based on the traffic they bring to see them. The basis might be the count of page impressions, the number of pages on which a particular ad is served, the rate at which people click on the ad, or the degree to which people who click on the ad do something, such as buy product or register or request more information. It could also be related to the kinds of people who see or do those things

Advertisers are for the most part interested in three kinds of numbers. First, there are traffic numbers. These are the counts of the number of pages served from the site, the numbers of unique visitors, and the numbers of visits. (See Counting Website Traffic - The Skinny On Hits, Impressions, Visitors and Clickthroughs).

While it may be enough to report simple totals on a weekly or monthly basis, in some cases a finer level of detail may be necessary. It all depends on your site's ad model. The ad model is the collection of different packages that your salespeople have for selling ads. Let's illustrate with an example. The web site associated with the President of the United States does not, of course, accept advertising but it can be used to illustrate some different kinds of ad models.

Which kinds of ads might an advertiser be able to buy at whitehouse.gov? There would probably be a banner on the front page. Some of the sections, such as White House History or Gateway to Government could possibly be sponsored, with a button or text ad naming the sponsor. They might also accept banner ads that run just within the section. This is because people who visit White House History might be seen as being of interest to certain kinds of advertisers - antique dealers or travel agencies for example - while visitors to Gateway To Government might be seen as more likely to patronize advertisers for foreign policy journals.

There might be other considerations as well. A surfer who visits White House History at 3 A.M. might be a citizen of a foreign country, and the advertisers who'd want to reach such a person could easily be different from those looking to reach the 3 P.M. visitor. Perhaps surfers from certain foreign countries shouldn't be shown ads for advanced armaments - or those from other countries should definitely be shown such ads.

This website, like many others, also has a search engine. Advertisers often want to buy ads that show up on search results pages, based on the search term. The logic is obvious: a surfer who searched on, say, "flags" is more likely to be attracted by ads for "flags" or "flagpoles" than is one who searched for "Lincoln bedroom."

An ad model consists of the options that are provided to advertisers for purchasing ads. Most options are defined by a collection of pages, times, and surfer characteristics. Another kind of option in the ad model is the search term, again modified by times and user characteristics. Options also specify the basis of charging. An advertiser might own all of the banner impressions on a page, or pay by the number of times an ad is served, or pay a fixed price for a number of impressions. It can get more complicated, but we've covered most of the cases.
Traffic numbers are important tools in the salesperson's arsenal. Before buying an ad, advertisers want to know how many people will be eligible to see the ad. If the advertiser is interested in buying a banner on the home page, the obvious question is "how many people see the home page." If the advertiser is being sold an ad that will be presented only to surfers from the South Pacific who visit the White House Tour section between the hours of midnight and 5 A.M., you'd better know how many South Pacific islanders people actually surf those pages at that time. More specifically, it is the salespeople who have to provide the information. If IT is involved in the initial development and review of the ad model you'll have the chance to make sure that the right numbers are collected in a form that's easy to generate reports from. If you aren't involved in design then be prepared for late afternoon calls for traffic measurements that aren't normally made - and may require special programming to deliver.

Once an advertiser decides to advertise, the interest turns from the potential to the real. How many people actually saw the ad? How many people actually clicked on it? Where the numbers about potential viewers probably come from the webserver's traffic logs, sometimes supplemented by your user database, the numbers about actual ad impressions come from the logs of the adserver (see How to Serve an Ad: Better to Buy Than to Build). The number of clickthroughs can be determined by the advertisers. However, you will need to count these yourself as well, to protect against advertisers claiming rebates because the clickthrough numbers were lower than expected.

With all these complex numbers, and thousands of dollars on the line from every advertiser, why should an advertiser trust you to deliver accurate numbers? After all, you were willing, just a paragraph ago, to not trust them to report clickthrough numbers accurately. In the world of advertising you may not trust, but you always verify. That's where the audit comes it.

With all these complex numbers, and thousands of dollars on the line from every advertiser, why should an advertiser trust you to deliver accurate numbers? After all, you were willing, just a paragraph ago, to not trust them to report clickthrough numbers accurately. In the world of advertising you may not trust, but you always verify. That's where the audit comes it.