BPM is not going anywhere, It is here to live and conquer the enterprise - Part II

Continuing our discussion from the last post, here is what I think is the fundamental difference between a BPM and a RPA

RPA is a short term solution to readily integrate new or old technologies at greater speed and lower cost while you continue with your BPM initiatives which can be thought of as incremental steps delivered in frequent and small doses, as opposed to "big bang" technology changes.

Basically, RPA implementation can be a part of your ongoing BPM strategy, where you are able to cut costs till the time your BPM initiative goes live.

Let me explain this using an example.

Suppose there is an Insurance company who wants to improve and optimize their Claims Settlement Process. After assessing their existing claims settlement process they find that a "Clerk" receives intimation of claims in an excel sheet from different branches everyday in the morning. What he has to do is open the legacy system and data enter those claims. Once data is entered, he has to trigger a mail to branches with the same excel sheet populated with the Claim Numbers generated in the legacy system. Once claim number is generated it is sent for further processing.

A BPM tool will integrate with the email server and legacy system to initiate the process, then provide a workflow to manage end to end claims settlement process. Developing such an application might take some time and will also be dependent on the organizational dynamics e.g. project governance, interaction between different teams, change management etc.

But in the whole process we can definitely reduce the work of that "Clerk" by replacing it by "Bots" provided by RPA. What that Clerk does is just a redundant and mundane work without need of a subjective judgement. Using RPA tools we can automate this task and go live in no time. And when our BPM application is ready we don't need that  "bot" or say the "Clerk" as BPM would take care of integrations and initiation of claims along with other activities.

When an organization implements a BPM, they are kind of trying to change the way people work in their daily lives. People are introduced with new applications, new tools which help them manage their daily work in a better and efficient way. e.g. A good claims process in any insurance company can replace the old physical files on desk with a digital application which makes it easier for an under-writer to route it to proper channels (fraud department, medical check etc) for further inquiries and get a feedback before taking any subjective decision. This will enhance the quality of decision making, speed up the claims settlement time and finally provide a better experience to the customers of the company. More or less that is what a BPM does, enable people to do quality work. Developing such process takes a significant amount of time as it involves identifying the process, defining it, streamlining it, choosing the right tool to do it, identifying the integration points and finally develop an application around it. Once the development is done there is also a need of user training and change management and once introduced, it might be a disruptive change for the users as well as the IT Systems.

However, when an organization implements RPA, what primarily they do is find out what are the redundant and mundane work done by a "human" in the existing process, what are the tasks they perform daily which are based on rules rather than subjective judgement. If they are able to identify such tasks they take help of RPA to create  a "Virtual Workforce" (bots) to perform them in a non-disruptive way. i.e. as an organization you are still following the processes defined by experts, only change is while defining the process you take automation into the perspective, you try to identify the areas which are redundant and/or can be done using robots.

As we all know human resource is costly and they should be engaged to do what they do best like solving unstructured and new problems, interacting with customers. It is better to replace non-human activities with bots thus taking robot out of a human.

In the end I would say both these tech are exciting ones. Irrespective of the differences that exists, I am sure in future both of these will converge to a single technology just like it has happened for "BPM" & "Workflow" in past.

I hope my post helps you get some insight into BPM and RPA both.

BPM is not going anywhere, It is here to live and conquer the enterprise - Part I

Recently I joined a big organization (read fortune 500 company) as a BPM/BPA consultant. As a BPM/BPA consultant, my primary job is to improve efficiency of existing business processes, streamline unstructured processes and make fundamental changes to how the users work in their day to day life.

Throughout my career I've implemented numerous examples of BPM/BPA. I've seen how a good BPM/BPA implementation can cut down operational costs, give managers better control of their processes and reduce wastage of human resource and a bad BPM/BPA implementation can become an overhead on top of existing human resource & create chaos across the organization.

However, this post is not about the pros and cons of a BPM implementation. It is about what will happen to BPM in a post RPA world?

Let me start with the definition of RPA to make it easier to understand this tech. RPA stands for "Robotic Process Automation". What RPA primarily does is take the robot out of human i.e. it automates the redundant work done by you and let you concentrate on more important work. Sounds cool, right? Yes it is, it definitely is a cool thing and the data suggests it is currently saving many million dollars across the industry (Nasscom Blog)

Recently, the company got involved with few vendors who were offering RPA. People who are directly dealing with this tech seems to be very enthusiastic about the implementation and the possibilities which comes along with it. This has created a lot of noise around the technology and people have starting raising doubts on the survival of old systems as well as cutting of jobs across the organization due to the RPA implementation.

Last week we were on a team lunch and one of the colleague asked what will happen to BPM post RPA world. The question seems to be valid from his point of view as much of the work done in this company is driven by the BPM tools and most of the processes (including invoicing, vendor management, payments, procurement etc) are already following best practices of a BPM and are pretty efficient. If RPA comes, these processes are going to be obsolete or at-least automated and no or very little human involvement will be required to do an invoicing or to process a payment.

At the first glance, it does seem that RPA is going to disrupt BPM tech, making is obsolete in the near future. However, if you look closely, you will find it is not true, it can not replace BPM, it can not offer what BPM does, in-fact, RPA is going to support & strengthen BPM and eventually it will become a sub-set to BPM.

Since RPA is still a very new technology for enterprise and many people doesn't have any idea what exactly it does, people often get confused between the fundamental different between an RPA and a BPM.

To Be Continued...

Note:
BPM: Business Process Management
BPA: Business Process Automation
RPA: Robotic Process Automation

Google My Maps - An awesome product with endless possibilities

Wouldn't it be exciting if you were able to put events, places, people along with their timeline at one place or diagram? It will be a thousand times more understandable than to read it out on the text book and then remember all of them.  From my childhood days I've always wondered if it would be possible to learn history along with the actual location where those events have occurred.

I've always believed that a sense of direction and place gives better understanding and helps you remember the facts quickly. I've always liked Geography. It was my favorite subject in childhood but somehow I was not able to pursue anything in the field. I couldn't imagine how easier it would have been for me to learn Geography if I would have google maps at that time. It is a proven fact that when you learn by visualizing, you tend to remember it longer.

Recently I came across My Maps and I can't imagine the endless possibilities it gives you to learn and explore in a visual way. I created a simple route map for the famous Dandi March. I've added just one layer for the route, we can add another layer where we can specify the timeline and then another layer for people who joined at a particular place. I mean you can just take the whole story from the past and create a visualization on the maps. What could be a better way of looking into the History with a visual map? Have you ever learned History that way? Wouldn't it be easier?

History is just one of the numerous examples where you can utilize My Maps. Take another example, lets say you want to understand the public transport system in an area, what will you do? Go to wikipedia and read all of it. Will you be able to remember the number of lines or the major stations or say the kind of transports available? Certainly not.  I tried to understand the railway network of Kuala Lumpur using my maps and created a Rail Route map for KL. Instantly this map gives lot more information than the static maps or the text readings on wikipedia.

The possibilities are endless, we just need to figure out where and how to use this product. If you haven't came across this, do give it a try.

Happy Mapping :-)

How Vodafone's Advertising campaign depicts beauty of a middleware platform

Recently I got Tata Sky installed at my home and yes Television is a big distraction, its eating up more than 2 hours per day from my 24 hours. But, Of course I wanted it. :-)

The point here is not Tata Sky or the television, but the stuff I saw on the television last weekend. Browsing through the channels, I came across an advertisement by "Vodafone". And as a middleware and  ESB enthusiast it just amazed me how well that campaign fits into our world of Information technology, where business are struggling to have the kind of setup Vodafone has shown. Have a look on the ad first...

The message is simple, this guy had a few instruments which he was able to play separately one by one in the village, but nobody noticed his talent. He might have been good at all the instruments individually, but all of those has lost their charm for the villagers. Finally he decided to revamp the whole idea and converted those instruments into a single set-up, which can be played together, result?? beautiful music came out of the set-up. Villagers started listening to the wonderful music and he got money for his living.

This advertisement finds a perfect analogy for the businesses running around the world. The GUY is the business user (or say business) who has to work on different processes (instruments) or say on multiple screens, (e.g. SAP, HRMs, Legacy Systems)  on any ordinary day. It was becoming increasingly difficult for him to work on them separately and for his customers (Villagers) it was adding no value.

What he did was "Integration" i.e. integrated all the chunks (instruments) using some mechanism (middleware) and created a consolidated view (one single instrument) of all the processes which enabled him to attract the customers (Villagers). Basically he increased the efficiency of all the processes by putting them together in a single set-up.

Being a BPM & ESB consultant, I felt good. Definitely we are adding some value to our customers and even Vodafone says that :-)

Cordys: The Translator of Information Technology

Hello Again,

From past few days I was  busy like hell (yeah, you heard it right :-) ) with one of the ESB projects. Of course that's not the point I want to make here, am a bit serious today, as always :-).
Just wanted to take out whole lot of things which have eaten my mind in past one month. Okay lets come to the point:

We are living in a world where language no more mean "Hindi" , "English" or "German", in this era of technology language has a broader meaning and "Java" , "C" and many more language and their different versions are in the market. Let me ask you a simple question:

What if a German Boy has to send/receive a message to/from a Hindu Pandit in Varanasi?? or say
What if a "COBOL System" has to send/receive a message to/from a "Java System"??

Yeah, you are right in both the cases we need a "Translator", for the former case it will be a Human, but for the later one it has to be some other "IT System". So, now we know that we need one, what should be the qualities of a Translator so that it can efficiently perform its job??  I've listed down few of the qualities which it should have and will try to make a very simple analogy between the "Human Translator" and a "Technical Translator".

1. Knowledge of Source as well as Target:

Imagine a Telugu Guy speaking to a North Indian guy. Can they both interact and  understand each other ?? What if a guy who knows both Telugu & Hindi comes and let them talk to only him every time they want to say something to each other.

Translator should know the Syntax & Protocol followed by Source as well as the Target Systems in order to understand what's their Input and what's their Output.  Knowing alone is not sufficient, it should be able to adapt to a change at source or target very quickly.

Cordys has a very good ESB layer which understands and can interact with various systems (link)
Apart from the inbuilt so called connectors, it gives flexibility to create your own connectors easily.

2. Preserve the Originality of the Source System:

How do you feel when you watch "Harry Potter" in Hindi? :-)
Additionally we must have heard  that the books which are getting translated to a different language looses its original meaning. What if the guy who did the dubbing or translation not only knows the grammar and syntax but understands the meaning of source language and is able to produce the same meaning in the target language??

Translator should be able to understand the business value of source data while reading and preserve it while writing to the target system. In order to do so, it should be capable to "manipulate the source data", "implement business logic", "add missing information" and also "remove extra information which is not required by the target system" to the source data so that the same business value can be produced in the target system  It should not loose the meaning in the process of translation. 

"Cordys Rule Engine" along with the "WsApp Framework" gives an excellent facility to embed business logic  into any source or target system. (link)


3. Quick Response and Flexibility to work online/offline:

What if the subtitle coming in your french movie, gets delayed by few seconds?? Will you be able to understand what is going on in the movie?? or If you've to wait for the subtitle to come every time someone says something in the movie??

Translator should be quick and give responses in time, it should not take long to process the request and convert it into the target language, as it may happen that by the time it translates the source system, target system has moved ahead of the process. Additionally, it should be capable of running the conversion process in the back-end (batch) so that, process in the front does not get disturb and could run uninterrupted without having bothered about the translation process.

Cordys has a quite good batch job framework which runs in the background without interrupting the main process. Also with correct design decisions

4. Conversation log and Insights into the conversation to improve future communication:

Wouldn't it be better if your VLC Media player auto detects the movie file and can suggest the subtitle automatically?? More, if it can provide you the subtitles based on your interest or your last 5 seen movies??

So far, we've only discussed as if the translator is a dumb system which can follow rules and gives a predefined set of output, but the need of time is to get insights of the interactions between the two systems and improve the communication w.r.t. the "Response Time", "Quality of Data", "Change management". So, a translator should be capable of maintaining the inflow and outflow of data, do analysis of the same & present it in an understandable format.

Cordys has "Business Activity Monitoring" framework which can be used to provide insights into the process execution. (link) Also, fusions charts are another good option to provide the dashboards. (link)

Installing Cordys BOP4.1 & BOP4.2 both in One Machine

Overview:

As BOP4.2 is released many of us would like to install both the versions simultaneously on a single machine. The problem is BOP4.2 runs on Java7 while BOP4.1 runs on Java6, and at a single point of time only one JRE has to be defaulted. (Although we can install both the JDK/JRE in any machine simultaneously). This writeup will enable you to run either BOP4.2 or BOP4.1 at any point of time, you still cannot run both the versions simultaneously.

Steps to Install:

Assuming BOP4.1 is already installed on the machine with Java6, I will proceed with installation of BOP4.2 and related components the next steps.

1. Stop All the existing cordys services in your machine.

2. Download Java7 (32 or 64 bit as per your machine)

3. Install the same (do not choose to upgrade the existing java installation instead install in a different folder). The java control panel should look something like this

As soon as you install Java7 in your machine there will be some registry entries made, screenshot is given below:

The current version attribute of "Java Development Kit" and "Java Runtime Environment" will be changed to 1.7 instead of 1.6. (And ofcourse your Cordys BOP4.1 will stop running :-) )

Let it be like this and dont change anything here.

4. Download and install BOP4.2 (take care of 32bit or 64 bit) in your machine. [I hope no other issue comes in the installation and it is perfectly smooth (which is least likely :-) )](A restart of the machine is preferable after you do this)

At this point of time your BOP4.2 will be running perfectly fine but BOP4.1 will stop running.

Now to run BOP4.1 again all you've to do is to change the "Current Version" attribut of "Java Development Kit" and "Java Runtime Environment" to 1.6 again and start the BOP4.1 services from windows services console. 

IT Industry, Top to Bottom

Its been around one and half year that I am working with a company which deals in Enterprise Application or specifically I would say BPM. What I learnt about the IT Industry is that it can never exists alone, IT exists because business needs it. And in any business IT is implemented broadly at three levels. The basic idea here is to segregate the need for IT and how applications has been evolved one after another resulting from the demand for better and efficient business strategy and competition.
These days I am hearing a lot about the process and tools present in IT Industry. Though I don't have much exposure of tools other than BPM (or I should specifically say "Cordys"), here I would try to explain the different layers of Enterprise Applications which are currently in the market.

Data Storage
The First Layer is applications which are used to store data or which were used to support users to store and retrieve data easily. Data is the king for any business. You need to store all the relevant/irrelevant data generated on a day to day basis. This can be from your client or generated internally due to the different processes in the business model. The very first use of IT hence is to store all data. I would call this process as "Data ware Housing". Databases are used for the same but there are simple applications build over these for users to easily upload, retrieve data. e.g. of such systems can be P400 over IBM-DB2. Though there is basic logic involved in these system but they were not able to manage users activity and a big part of these are manual.

Process Establishment
As the business grew it was not the data which was difficult to manage, but the people involved and the complexity of process which demanded attention. Then a new layer was introduced in business to manage & streamline the ongoing process and introduce new process (when required, factors involved competition, client friendly, change in regulations etc ) . Applications over the existing system or new applications were built to address this issue. This particular layer is called Business Process Management. Tools involved IBM Websphere, Cordys etc.

Process Analysis & Business Intelligence
Once the process has been established,streamlined and managed successfully there was a need for betterment of the process. To analyse the same and make business more efficient and competitive. For this, existing system/process needs to be revised and relevant data has to be picked up. Various tools has been introduced to pick data in different forms. Logics has been developed in order to differentiate the relevant and irrelevant entities of a business. And a different kind of IT applications were developed which gave only analytics support to business and helped them know the flaw, demerits of their process. This particular layer contains the Analysis, reporting and presentation of the data in the best suitable form. So that managers can take better decisions. Tools involved are SAP Business Objects, BI+,

Top two layers are clubbed with each other and called Business Intelligence tools.

"Google Plus" First Look

Finally Google has come up with something new. Here is my first impression about the product.

Main Features:

• Circles: No more Friend Request, Its all about anyone to everyone. Removed the concept of friend requests from social networking sites. but how? when u add someone to your circle a notification is sent to the user, no approval needed if someone can add any person in his circle or not.
• Sparks: Sharing became easy, its all about what u Google  :) .Generally we share things which we come across on internet, Google has enabled us to get those interesting stuffs rite inside g+, and share them instantly. We don't have to login or give authorization to different websites of our profile to share stuffs as posts. Basically sharing news stories, links has became easier 
• Hangout: Group Chat at its best, its all about putting your social life on internet but more lively. Enhanced features of group chat with video chat and youtube video sharing has certainly put the whole social life on internet.

Small but excellent features:

• Share someone else's post i.e. re-share. Missing in Facebook
• Grouping of notifications
• Getting post from people who've added me in their circle, even if i don't know them (can be annoying at a later stage, but u can stop this in settings), these posts are nothing but the posts shared publicly by people who've added you in their circle
• Incoming stream: people who've explicitly share a post  with you or with a circle in which your added.

All other features are more or less same as other social networking sites, the only difference is in ease of sharing and uploading data from different sources. But Google plus has still a long way to go. Some of the very common features missing from google+ are

Missing Features:

• Fan Page: I don't see any option to create a business/celebrity/campaign page or basically fan page in Google+
• Group  feature is missing as of now
• Questions/Polls: 
• Messages: This can be fulfilled by email feature (currently there is no option to send email to anyone)
• Events: 
• Applications
• Integration with other social networking sites

I personally loved spark thing the most. I can read news feeds of my Google reader directly here and share with people right away. Finally a good post on Circle algebra : link 

Google (revenue) model of Android OS

Yesterday we were hanging out at my place and suddenly one of my friend asked a simple question. What is there for google in this Android thing? What is the revenue model of Android OS. Is Google doing it just for charity?

One thing of which I was sure was that it cannot be just for charity. There must be something big. And then Google's advertising model came into my mind. But I disagreed with myself immediately since it looked like a joke to me (as i am naive in these discussions). How can a massive project like Android be feeded with only one source of income. I Googled a bit and was surprised to see that there is no clearly defined revenue model for Android, but my observation was almost right, though there are other means of earning but primary was advertisement only. Let me now explain it in detail. Google could be earning from mainly two/three sources:

• Mobile Advertisement Platform: Why an Internet search company was getting into the mobile operating system business? The answer is hidden into the question itself. Since Google was a search company it is trying to increase traffic on google search so that they can sell it to advertisers which are glad to pay if there business/product is reaching more customers. Thus we can easily say that Android was purchased by google to ensure a growth trajectory for Google's mobile search advertising efforts. And the idea is working exactly as they had imagined: Google mobile searches grew 130 percent in third quarter of 2010 (Link).According to Rosenberg (SVP of Product Management at Google) "mobile search queries have grown five times over the past couple of years. And recently Android is fueling this". and according to Eric Schmidt "Revenue is large enough to pay for all of the Android activities and a whole bunch more."  
• Android Market: Another source of revenue is the default application store for android OS "Android Market Place". Although Google can face some competition from other apps store vendors (like Amazon) in future. But right now google is filling its pocket from applications listed on Android Market and is earning money as transaction fees on buying an application through Google's checkout billing mechanism. (Link)
• Sharing revenue with Carriers & Handset makers: This might be a good source of income for Google as they can share ad revenue with Android supported device manufacturers when they include google's native apps like gmail,maps,talk etc in their platform. Although Google denies from this revenue model it is still a mystry (Link). 

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Smartphone_share_current.png

Industry & Idleness

Idle Time: Nonproductive time during which an employee is on the job but not working.

From past few days I was wondering about average time an employee in IT-Industry (entry-level or 1-2 years experienced) spends working on projects/modules. And the time which he/she spends sitting idle in office and doing nothing or some work which is unproductive or not adding any value to the company.

I did some research on google and the results were shocking.  A survey conducted by 24/7 wallst and salary.com shows the reason for idle time/wasted time during work hours:

1. Don’t have enough work to do (33.2%)
2. Underpaid for amount of work (23.4%)
3. Co-workers distract me (14.7%)
4. Not enough after-work time (12.0%)
5. Other (16.7%)

According to a Salary.com follow-up survey of Human Resource managers, companies assume that employees will waste 0.94 hours per day. They take this into account when they do their compensation planning. However, those managers privately suspect that employees waste 1.6 hours per day. In fact, employees admit to wasting 2.09 hours per day if they are on a project. And if not the whole 8 hours can be considered as waste.

The overall effect of this idleness is increased cost of Software products. Which in turn is increasing IT-Budget for their customers. So whats the solution ??

Let me suggest some, don't know about the feasibility part though. :)

Here I am not going to suggest them to install employee monitoring software and restrict computer activities that are not work-related such as instant messengers, online games, installers, social networks, etc. Its not only about computer activities its about the overall idle or non-productive time an employee spends in a day. And it also does not depend on whether they have project or not. Many time it has been seen that the project which could have been done in 30 days took 3 months or so. I do agree that the time wastage is due to a lot of reasons including mentioned above and controlling them will reduce it, but here I am concerned about the idleness due to no-work.

The point is why they've hired more employees than needed?? Can't it be done with less or no employees.

The point is why do they have this much full term employees when the work can be done effectively with short term or employees which works on hourly basis. How?

(these are some raw thoughts, i've no idea where it will go but i think there is a huge potential in this area)

Discard the concept of full time developers or 8 hours work a day.

The Method:

• Divide the project into small tiny modules,
• Decide amount given and expected time to finish the module 
• Create a platform (preferably web based) where these modules can be developed, 've to build an infrastructure for seamless collaboration 
• Let the job-seekers (anyone with a set of required skill-set in the market)  bid for the modules (bidding will be time based)
• Lowest bidder(or whoever you choose based on skill-set) will win the module and work with other module-winners of same project.
• On completion of module they will get money.

Industries on which this concept can be applied: 

• Companies developing web-based applications (e.g. Zoho)
• Companies developing mobile applications (e.g. MoFirst)
• Companies developing social-networking apps/games (e.g. OxyLabs )

note: Dont have ny idea if this concept be extended to big IT Companies. :(

Put Employees in Open Source Projects -
Its an old and already implemented solution, but i think is effective since employees will gain different skill-set and utilizing open source technologies cheap solutions can be developed. Here is some examples.

IBM has transformed its business models to accommodate, even encourage, open source
Even microsoft is ready to contribute in open-source and has already setup the infrastructure


.

OS Application Stores v/s Mobile Application Stores

Recently i came across this Airtel App Central, isn't it strange?? I mean at first I too took it normally but after a while what came into my mind is why a service provider is opening its application store as we already have application stores from the OS providers (e.g. Android Market, iPhoneApps, OVI store, BlackBerry App World etc), what are the benefits of having an application store?? will the users go for their application when they already have inbuilt apps from OS manufacturers?? also they are charging more than any other OS-App e.g. Airtel is charging Rs 1 per day for some of its applications.

Initially it was quite weird for me but the statistics ( link ) surprised me even more and made the whole mess a lot clear. So here is my observation about the whole story. Why they are successful.

• Mobiles with low cost: Mobile phones below Rs. 5000 almost do not support any OS application store, this is one area where service providers can have advantage. Since most of the phones today are GPRS enabled and supports java applications, this user group can be a big market for service provider's apps store. This is very clear from the stats of Airtel apps Central.
• User's are not stuck with a handset: Second advantage is from the users point of view, a lot of time it happens that they change there handsets and finds it difficult to download the same applications for their phone. Also service providers keeps a track of your purchased apps and downloaded apps which you can use on any handset with your simcard in it. Let us say I changed my phone from Nokia 5800  to Xperia X 10 mini. Now I have to download all my favorite apps again and will have to pay for it again. Suppose I've used all the Airtel apps before, means they can be downloaded on the new phone as well thus saving a lot of time and money. 
• Buying Process: Buying an application from OS App store is quit long and requires credit card/paypal account etc, while with mob app stores the amount will be deducted from balance. Today in India very few people have credit cards/paypal accounts which means they will prefer the mob app store.