London, Mar 03, 2010 – ICCM Solutions today announced that they have won a Wiltshire Business of the Year Award, under the category ‘Innovation and Growth’. These awards are the most prestigious Business awards in the county.
James Gay, Director, Sales & Marketing for ICCM explained; “ICCM is delighted to receive the news that we have won this award. The prestige that comes with this announcement acknowledges the growth that ICCM has experienced over the past few years. ICCM has beaten World Leaders in the
IT Service Management field with huge investment into our product from many global brands, including, Tesco, BBC Worldwide, Qualcomm, DHL and The British Transport Police.
The Wiltshire Business of the Year Awards recognises companies that have demonstrated outstanding level of business excellence in their particular Award category. Previous winners range from very small companies with just a few employees to large multinational corporations with thousands of staff.
ICCM’s Innovation has resulted in our Growth:
Jason Gardiner, ICCM’s Technical Director Comments: “Companies are looking for a software solution that offers great Return on Investment and also solutions that do not require a huge amount of effort to tailor to their requirements and maintain.” Jason continues: Our revolutionary process based solution offers improvements in returns and efficiencies that are leaps ahead of technology offered by other stock vendors, which is exactly why companies such as Tesco have selected us.”
Tags: BPM, ICCM, ITIL, ITSM, Wiltshire Business Awards
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One of the themes of the 2010 Metastorm Global User Conference was “Unexpected Value”. The concept is that customers who have leveraged Metastorm solutions and services into their environment have realized unexpected or unanticipated value from their investment… Many customers were highlighting this theme throughout the show in their presentations.
I had to chuckle as with so many traditional ITIL/ITSM process projects, there always seem to be “Unexpected Costs” and “Unanticipated Outcomes”. And these are becoming more and more talked about at conferences as well…
Much of this “unexpected” value comes from the process DNA that a BPM process orchestration technology such as Metastorm inherently provides throughout their solutions. Oddly enough, Metastorm’s partner program is called the Metastorm Partner DNA program. Thanks to a core process engine, core modeling and architecture technology, and various other solutions, it’s virtually impossible to create disharmonious solutions. Why would ICCM be at this conference as not only a contributor and sponsor? Simple – e-Service Desk, our industry recognized and ITIL v3 “Certified” solution is built on the Metastorm BPM platform.
Unfortunately, there is not enough room in a blog to highlight all Metastorm DNA partners. They can be found here; http://www.metastorm.com/partners/partner_locator.asp
I thought the following Metastorm partners have offerings that can substantially enhance the value of an ICCM e-Service Desk implementation simply from having a common process platform and integration technology;
Nymbul BPM
From Business Transformation Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. BTI have developed an Apple™ iPhone®, iPad®, iPad® client application for Metastorm BPM. While the mobile technology works on iPhone’s, Droid, some Blackberry’s and Window’s Mobile as a web application, the “App” provides location and rotation to the interface. Planned enhancements include support for the Droid market and end user customization of the interface. http://www.nymbulbpm.com/
ITSM Application: Engineers can register, update, and close Requests, Tasks, Incidents from their mobile device. Managers and Directors can approve requests or changes from their mobile device.
Smart Pen BPM
From Aura Q of Manchester, England. A number of my colleagues and I use Smartpen technology for taking notes and recording audio from meetings with customers (Lightscribe). We affectionately call them “Geek pens”. It’s a slightly larger than normal pen with an Infrared “eye” that reads special Microdot Technology paper (that can be printed on a standard laserjet printer). I always felt this technology has so many other applications. Aura Q now offers a Smart Pen enhancement to Metastorm BPM technology that allows any process (including e-Service Desk) to incorporate forms and data originally handwritten on a piece of paper to be incorporated into a process and through OCR, drive the flow of a process. http://www.auraq.com/pages/procedures/Digital%20Pen.aspx
ITSM Application: Where e-Service Desk is used “outside” of IT, Field Service Agents can provide customers with paper based documents while keeping identical copies (including signatures) associated to the process artifact, without the use of fax or scanner.
SAP Integration
EPO Consulting have created a Metastorm BPM / SAP Connector that enables bi-directional web service integration for Metastorm BPM with any SAP solution. This complete web service integration solution comprises two independent, but perfectly aligned products: a) EPO XML Connector for SAP, and b) B2B WS Integrator for Metastorm BPM. The EPO XML Connector is a SAP certified ABAP add-on product from EPO Consulting. It is a complete integration solution for SAP and can be used for all SAP integration requirements. The B2B WS Integrator enables calling SAP web services from any Metastorm BPM process. http://www.epoconsulting.com/_en/index.html
ITSM Application: Business processes incorporated within SAP can be linked to IT Service processes eliminating manual process integration steps between IT Service Management and Business Applications.
With these and the many other options available for Metastorm customers (ICCM customers are essentially Metastorm customers as well), you can’t help but wonder what is not possible by leveraging BPM technology in the form of Metastorm BPM?
Tags: iPad, iPhone, Metasorm, Microdot Technology, Mobile Devices, Partners, Smart Pen
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London, Dec 22nd, 2009 – ICCM Solutions today announced the release by OVUM Butler Group of their technology audit specifically on ICCM’s IT Service Management (ITSM) and Helpdesk software. By utilising Metastorm BPM® as a business technology and building ITIL® aligned processes from the ground up, ICCM’s software allows instant process and business integration from within the ITSM toolset.
The report that was produced by Stephen Mann, Senior Analyst for OVUM states that: “ICCM, through the use of BPM, differentiates itself from the ITSM vendor pack with a solution that delivers the required functionality with the additional benefits of BPM. Mann continues: and, in Ovum’s opinion, this will stand it well in what is now an overpopulated ITSM tool market.”
Mann further explains: “ICCM’s ITSM software portfolio delivers against all of the core ITIL v3 processes (with flexibility based on customer need), and should be considered by any organisation, from mid-sized SMEs upwards, seeking to meet corporate requirements for an ITSM-enabling tool.
James Gay, Director, Sales & Marketing for ICCM explained; “This independent audit confirms that ICCM adds a unique approach to the ITSM product landscape in that it leverages the capabilities and functionality of BPM technology to provide unrivalled flexibility and agility, with customers achieving rapid deployment times simply not capable with other established ITSM toolsets”.
ICCM has already beaten World Leaders in the IT Service Management field with investment into our product from many global brands, including, Tesco, BBC Worldwide, Qualcomm, DHL and The British Transport Police to name a few.
About OVUM Butler Group
OVUM is a resolutely independent advisory organisation, combining the ICT expertise of Datamonitor Technology, Butler Group and Ovum Tech, with Datamonitor Group’s 350 business analysts and relationships with 18 of the largest 20 global corporations; and, is uniquely positioned to provide practical advice to the technology, telecoms and other business sectors. OVUM’s clients have access to research and support from best-in-class analyst and consulting teams, turning analysis and insight into action. Research and advisory services make clients’ planning more effective, and help them to identify and assess relevant business opportunities. OVUM doesn’t just advise its clients, it collaborates with them to help them exploit these opportunities and to turn them into business results. At the heart of OVUM’s approach is its mission to help, to be approachable, responsive and focused on clients’ business issues, and to provide pragmatic and actionable advice and recommendations.
About ICCM
Extraordinary Service Desk Software created within the Leading Process Improvement Architecture
ICCM’s core objective is to provide revolutionary software and superior services to organisations aspiring to Best Practice Service Management. Rather than the legacy “application development” driven approach that many vendors in the market have adopted, ICCM’s forward-thinking approach blends their first-class ITIL® aligned Service Desk tool with the functionality of business technology in the form of Metastorm BPM®. This collaboration delivers unparalleled Service Management capabilities across all industries and business functions in almost every geographical region.
You can download the full report from here; http://is.gd/5xdHx
Tags: BPM, ITIL, ITSM, OVUM Butler Group, Whitepaper
Posted in BPM, General, Industry Analyst, Press Release, White Papers | No Comments »
Introduction
Ever since the “Information technology” function has existed, it has been inundated with new trends and capabilities – some of significant value, many that have and will pass into obscurity. Thanks to current economic conditions, the only new ideas lately that make it are those that demonstrably reduce cost, grow or transform the business, or a combination of all three. This weaning process is actually a good thing as far too much technology acquisitions have occurred without understanding business basics – resulting in “black eyes” for IT, and the notion that IT is a black hole for company money. No matter what the technology, IT needs to address many of the most traditional objectives of business (make money, save money, grow customer list, increase quality, decrease lead time, etc).
This article outlines some of our views on the SAAS market, explains our new solution offering in simple terms, and allows the reader to make an informed decision based on the options provided and available.
Current Market for Software as a Service
Service-Now is the arguably the first ITSM vendor to achieve success with a SAAS model. And we say kudos to them. Service-now has certainly become the name in the ITSM SaaS industry and we aren’t looking to duplicate the Service-Now model. Other vendors have jumped into the SAAS market as well, either by re-engineering their applications to be web based and mimic applications originally designed for SAAS delivery. The important thing to consider is that software is software whether it is licensed or provided as a service. According to Gartner Group – software delivery is challenging regardless of delivery model.
The fundamental business principles of our licensed solution apply to our Software as a Service solution as well; At ICCM, we believe customers who wish to be self-sufficient should have the tools to do so. Furthermore, we believe scalability and a solutions’ ability to grow and adapt with your business is essential to any investment.
One of the most compelling reasons that organizations choose to partner with ICCM is the agility and flexibility of the e-Service Desk solution. The architecture leveraged within e-Service Desk allows ICCM to take a radically different approach to the design, build and deployment of ITSM solutions to all others within our marketplace. Traditional point solutions that people are most familiar with are developed in a rather awkward and dated fashion with a ‘feature function’ approach that often overlooks the complexity of the underlying process flows, interactions and business rules.
Most ITIL consultants and even ITSM vendors will agree that defining your ITSM processes and aligning them to business need is one of the most important steps in adopting the ITIL framework, however once these processes have been defined many find difficulty in how to realize this through an ITSM toolset! What makes ICCM e-Service Desk truly different and the most innovative solution available today is that utilizing Metastorm BPM as a business technology and building ITIL aligned processes from the ground up allows instant process and business integration within the ITSM toolset.
This ensures that all components are working in an integrated and coherent fashion with a clear understanding of process touch points and the information that is being passed between the various aspects of the solution.
The enabling factor that has allowed ICCM to adopt this pioneering approach within ITSM is the architecture that the solution is built upon; Metastorm BPM. The comprehensive Metastorm BPM suite of EA, BPA and BPM solutions allowing organizations to drive business and process efficiency throughout all aspects of the organization through from business strategy at the very highest level to executing complex and detailed processes at ground level.
According to Gartner Group (Symposium, 2009);
Software as a service (SaaS) is a delivery model that is now more than 10 years old. Early predictions and success of salesforce.com had many predicting the end of on-premises software as a delivery model. The current facts tell a different story. In 2008, on-premises software spend was 13 times higher than SaaS. Many of the bad practices that occurred in the on-premises world are also now moving their way into SaaS. The biggest example is shelf ware. An early promise of SaaS is that you would pay for what you need, where in fact we see many companies over buying subscriptions leading to the new phenomenon of shelf ware as a service. Shelf ware as a service is analogous to on-premises shelf ware but only now companies are renting the shelf from the provider instead of using their own data center.
The main business value of SAAS isn’t necessarily in licensing, but in avoiding new IT hires, extensive training costs, and purchasing infrastructure hardware and software.
SAAS, ASP, Private, Public, Tenancy…Oh my
It’s amazing how much arguing and debate takes place on LinkedIn and Twitter regarding SAAS vs. ASP, Private vs. Public, Single vs. Multi-tenant, etc. When what really matters the most to the customer is what business options are available, what does it enable, and what business value is derived from these approaches both now and in the future. Does it really matter what it is called?
Gartner Group identifies the following characteristics for SAAS;
- An application owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers;
- Where the provider delivers an application based on a single set of common code and data definitions, which are consumed in a one-to-many model by all contracted customers at any time;
- and on a pay-for-use basis or as a subscription based on use metrics
BPM Technology introduces a very interesting twist to this equation though. And the virtualization technology ICCM is leveraging for e-Service Desk introduces even more twists – All resulting in more options available to our customers.
Most SaaS based solutions are fixed in function, providing varying levels of “configuration”. For ITSM, this is usually in the form of categories, statuses, fields, etc. Process, data and security integration remains a challenge because of this fixed functionality. The differences between BPM and traditional Service Management solutions is highlighted in a previous blog article The Difference between traditional IT Service Management Applications and a BPM Based IT Service Management Solution. All of these differences hold true whether you are using our licensed solution, e-Service desk, or our SaaS solution, e-Service Desk live.
Our virtualization technology leverages a new capability recently introduced by our partner, Cincinnati Bell Technology Services. This virtualization technology, called Virtual Data Center, or VDC, resides on Cincinnati Bell’s N + N redundant network, provides our customer with a private partition in a CBTS data center and appears as a private extension of your network. You specify and use your own IP addressing and your connectivity options are layer 2 and layer 3 agnostic via private circuit, MPLS, VPN. As a telecommunications carrier, obtaining direct, high performance connectivity with most of the globe is not a problem. In fact, CBTS has British Telecom connectivity already direct to the United Kingdom and Europe. Of course public options exist as well.
As a customer of ICCM e-Service Desk, you will automatically be a customer to the CBTS VDC service. ICCM e-Service Desk live customers can take advantage of their VDC environment, expanding or contracting not only e-Service Desk, but any server or infrastructure component needed, at a small fraction of the cost.
Capabilities of ICCM’s Software as a Service Offering
e-Service Desk addresses many of the downsides of traditional ITSM software. When ICCM decided to create a SaaS offering, we wanted to avoid and address many of the same downsides that Gartner Group has identified with SaaS vendors. The following outlines how ICCM e-Service Desk live addresses the many issues that Gartner Group has highlighted in regards to Software as a Service;
Avoiding “Shelf-ware as a Service”
Like our on-premise software, e-Service Desk, licensing is simple and reporting is available on usage. As a matter of fact, many of the analytical tools used for web technology tracking can used to monitor your usage of eSD Live. ICCM will monitor your usage suggesting changes when applicable.
Different functionality between On-Premise and On-Demand
Thanks to our virtualization technology partner, Cincinnati Bell Technology Services, your instance of e-Service Desk Live can be completely public (Internet based) or private (appear as though it is a part of your data center and infrastructure – within your domain and IP address space). The BPM technology and process models are identical to on-premise. Your capabilities to modify processes, integrate other systems, enhance and grow e-Service are no less limited than with an on-premise implementation.
With e-Service Desk Live, Release Management is not dictated by ICCM.
The common “BPM Technology” that all customers are executing doesn’t change the business rules and logic of your processes. Just like our licensed software, the paradigm shift BPM introduces with regard to customer ownership of data as well as the processes, is also preserved with e-Service Desk Live. Your processes are your processes and you can change them when your business requires it, not on a scheduled defined by ICCM.
Security Concerns
With e-Service Desk Live, your virtualized environment is not public (unless you want it to be). Your data and most importantly your processes are yours, distinct and separate from other customers. Infrastructure is shared but partitioned and your performance is not impacted by other customers. The BPM technology that e-Service Desk Live is based on has achieved a number of security certifications within intelligence and defense agencies within the United States Federal Government.
Data Ownership
Like your processes, your data is yours. The method by which you backup data is entirely up to you. Since the VDC environment can be part of your infrastructure, it can be setup to backup like other applications within your environment. Or, you can leverage other backup options available thanks to our partnership with CBTS. The question you should ask yourself is “Is my data even useable if I discontinue my SaaS contract?”. e-Service Desk Live can be implemented as a blended model (part SaaS, part on-premise), and you can decide to move all data to an owned and existing BPM infrastructure.
Reduced Long Term Cost of Ownership
Customers may see huge short term cash flow advantages with Software as a Service. Often times, if they take the financial analysis out five years, the cost of ownership may not be as appealing as that of on-premise, locally managed software. The perpetual annuity imposed by many SAAS providers doesn’t justify itself long term for smaller and medium sized companies and in some cases larger enterprises. Exclusive SaaS providers are depending on a “Multiplier effect” over the years meaning they will generate more revenue with this model than if they had sold software directly. In fact, ICCM can structure your contract so that your cost of ownership in fact declines over time, and you can even take ownership of the licenses at a certain date, or continue existing contract. It’s completely your choice.
On-premise to On-demand integration
Since the VDC environment can be public, or appear as a secure segment of your infrastructure, all of the BPM based integrations through web services, API’s, database, command line, etc. are available exactly as they are with the licensed software model.
Conclusion
Considering licensed or on-premise software is not an easy task. Customers look to SaaS as a means of lowering their cost of ownership, cost of acquisition, and reducing risk. Perhaps SaaS as a phenomenon has resulted not entirely from innovation in the delivery mechanism of software but as a result of the limited existing software choices and problems in the software industry. Companies can simply no longer afford the 6-12 month implementation times of traditional, big box service management software.
Ironically, the value proposition messaging in the industry for SaaS vendors echoes that of BPM Technology; quick implementation times, quicker ROI, no Infrastructure costs. BPM enables additional value drivers such as a consistent process and model based configuration, scalability and process agility, integration and an unprecedented level of security.
BPM technology already delivers accelerated value and process enablement at a level unheard of in the industry. SaaS pushes that capability even further providing our customers with an unprecedented number of options and choices allowing them to leverage the right model, for the right price – to achieve measurable business goals and objectives that can go well beyond IT Service Management.
For a demonstration of this capability, to setup a Proof of Concept, or if you simply want to learn more – contact us at info@iccmco.com, or (800) 651-7408.
Tags: BPM, SaaS, Software as a Service
Posted in BPM, ITIL, ITSM, SaaS | 2 Comments »
ICCM had an excellent show in Dallas, Texas at the ITSMF USA Fusion09 conference. There was a lot of interest and buzz about our solution, e-Service Desk. It also highlighted for us the need to continue to raise awareness and education in areas that on the surface, appear equivalent, but in reality are very, very different. During the many demonstrations, several Fusion09 attendees asked us; “What exactly is the difference between BPM and Workflow?”. The obvious observation was that they were one in the same. This is simply not the case as you will see below.
Every BPMS (Business Process Management Suite) and BPM (Business Process Management) solution set on the market have in common key differentiators from the “embedded workflow” often found within applications. Some of these differences include;
- Embedded, application based workflow is usually application-specific sequencing of pre-defined activities (ie. in an ITSM context, Change Management workflow is just Change Management)
- Embedded, application based workflow rarely interacts with external processes, systems or data sources
- Embedded, application based workflow often leverages proprietary graphics, execution language, etc
- Embedded, application based workflow effectively provides the ability to choose the specific order of execution of pre-built activity steps
The purpose of this article isn’t to contrast application specific workflow to BPM in a negative context. Application based workflow can and is often implemented as a subset of BPM. The original premise of BPM was to manage and coordinate processes executed in other technologies and on different systems as well as within itself. The initiatiation, monitoring and termination can be integrated at any point in the process to any application. BPM allows us to design and execute business process systems without being subject to the constraints of a single application or single location.
One of the value propositions of BPM is how it is often leveraged at an enterprise level to deliver processes and services beyond the company firewall. Quite often this ability is a driver for BPM within an organization. This enables processes to extend to and include remote company locations, supply chain and business partners, and agents of your organization. In this context, there are some other less obvious, but important distinctions of BPM over embedded workflow;
- BPM inherently provides diverse integration and technology support as business and supply chain partners always have different technologies.
- BPM provides the ability to vary process descriptions locally while keeping common touch points for systems to enable collaboration.
- Most BPM Suites typically can leverage industry standards such as BPEL, XPDL, and BPMN
As stated in my previous post; “Optimizing IT with BPM”. The basic value proposition of BPM is the ability to enable business (or IT) processes with less effort and cost, with higher quality than traditional means. In fact, BPM is intended to respond to the following set of business values; Agility – The ability to bring new products and services to market more quickly and adapt processes more effectively to changing market demands; Efficiencies – Most processes are inefficient due to manual effort, poor hand-offs between departments and a general inability to monitor overall progress. The deployment of BPM solutions helps to eliminate these problems. The efficiency benefits are typically expressed in the reduced number of Full Time Employee’s (FTE’s) required to perform particular tasks; and Visibility – Providing management insight into process-based performance indicators. This enables an organization to make better business decisions and handle exceptions better.
Gartner research indicates that even without process redesign, a basic investment in a BPM suite yields significant returns. By simply “making the current-state handoffs, timing and responsibilities explicit, productivity improvements of more than 12 percent are normally realized[2]”. In another report, Gartner indicates that 78% of projects see an internal rate of return (IRR) of greater than 15%. The same report indicates that these projects were deployed in very quick order (67% in less than six months, 50% in less than four months). How are these kind of results consistently possible? Once you understand how BPM works, it becomes clear;
- The ability to design process in a graphical (non-technical) way by the business process owner or analyst;
- The ability of the application to easily integrate with a wide range of data sources and supporting systems, with bi-directional data sharing;
- The ability to quickly execute a new process for evaluation, a facility to “roll back” an executed process if you get it wrong, without having to do clean-ups to data etc.
In a survey conducted in 2007 by Forrester Research of ITIL adopters in 2007 67% believed they were benefiting from adoption but only 4% reported having means in place to measure that success! Only 9% of respondents could even link the process changes to performance improvements, 75% could not link process maturity to performance improvements!
When you take the technical capability of BPM, and drive it with a process framework such as ITIL, you end up with a unique, extraordinary solution that is as mature as any company needs, has an inherent roadmap built-in for future process and service integrations, but most importantly, provides the process management and measurement that so many companies have been longing for with their ITSM program.
In summary;
- BPM is the definition, improvement and execution of an automated process
- BPM is rarely limited by technical constraints, and can be used to rapidly deploy solutions within, across and between organizations
- BPM is flexible enough to quickly adapt to changing business needs without requiring changes to the underlying technology
- BPM is flexible enough to allow changes in the underlying technology without requiring changes to the business process being executed
Special thanks to David Elliott of ICCM Solutions Ltd for providing much of the content above. He shares a Business Process Modeling and IT Management background like myself.
Tags: BPM, e-Service Desk, Workflow
Posted in BPM, Workflow | 4 Comments »
As noted in my blog entry “The Difference between traditional IT Service Management Applications and a BPM Based IT Service Management Solution” there are many benefits that result from a Business Process Management (BPMS) based Service Management solution such as ICCM e-Service Desk. The following demonstrates and highlights an example of how BPM technology is applied to the ITIL Event Management process. Event management existed in the vendor specific reference process models that I used prior to the introduction of ITIL v3. Fortunately, Event Management survived and was included in the final drafts of ITIL v3. Incident Management, when integrated technically, and from a process perspective, is where a good deal of technical integration and automation takes place. Unfortunately, this automation sometimes leads to unintended results and a ton of effort.
Traditionally, when integrating monitoring systems that generate events into a Service Management or Service Desk solution, they most often “dump” alarms directly into the Incident Management process. This integration is often very complex as well. The resulting “process problem” creates the need for “mass deletes” and purges to deal with incidents that aren’t actually incidents. This is an obvious waste of resources, but more importantly, it creates a number of inaccuracies that get recorded and consumes time for agents and/or managers to fix the problem for reporting.
Prior to joining the ranks of ITSM consultant, I used to work in Enterprise Systems and Network Management solutions. It was always best practice, and still is, for correlation, summarization, filtering and suppression to occur as close to the source as possible and within various element managers such as the Network, System, and Application management platform. Normally, only events that are necessary for service reporting, and/or require operational intervention should be recognized. If that is properly configured (which is rare but does occur), then the next step is to manage and control what enters the Service Desk. Event management is about managing and monitoring events, resulting from alerts, as objects with a lifecycle, similar to Incident, Problem, and Change management.
Some terminology first;
- Folders – A folder is the object that progresses through the procedure. Each time a business process (i.e. BPM procedure) is initiated; the system creates a folder containing one or more electronic pages of information. When an end-user opens the folder, these pages of information are displayed on separate tabs. At the bottom of the window, action buttons are displayed. Users can add or edit the information on the folder pages by clicking on actions. A folder can also contain documents. These documents are attached to the folder using a Clip.
- Stages - A stage is where the folder is in the process. Stages can be thought of as the place where the folder stops, awaiting an action like where a paper form stops on a managers desk before they approve or reject it. There are six types of stages in BPM;
- User – where an action is required by a single, specific user, a user stage is specified.
- Group - where an action is required by one (non-specific) member of a group such as a support team or a receptionist pool, a group stage is used.
- System – where no user intervention of any type is required and where system validation/ automation is required, a System stage can be used.
- Sub-procedure – interrelated processes may need to complete in parallel rather than sequentially. Sub-procedure stages are used for this, linking additional maps (called sub maps) back to the main map. Sub-procedure stages can be queued to continue when one or all of its sub maps have finished.
- Common – actions from a common stage can be applied to multiple stages on the same map, eliminating the need for duplicate actions around several different stages.
- Archive – when a folder reaches an archive stage, the process is completed and when the folder is no longer active and cannot be viewed by the Client. This information s still in the underlying database, and can be reported on using reporting tools.
- Actions – Actions represent the activity that happens to a folder as it progresses through a procedure. Actions can loop back to the same stage or can link stages which would cause the folder to move from the originating stage to the recipient stage. There are five types of actions in BPM;
- User – Actions performed by a user, such as entry of data and making decisions via buttons associated with a form. These actions automatically appear as buttons at the bottom of a form in the Client.
- Timed – Actions that are triggered by a date-time condition. Timed actions are triggered after a set time period before or after a specific event.
- Conditional – The Process Engine can test a condition and performs actions based on the result. Conditional actions are executed when their only start action if property is met.
- Rendezvous – Once a sub-procedure has been completed any folder waiting at a sub-procedure stage can be moved on using a rendezvous action. This action can be set to be dependent upon any or all of the sub-procedures being completed. This action can only be drawn from a sub-procedure stage.
- Flagged – Flagged actions are used to link maps and external applications with a BPM procedure. A procedure may contain more than one map, allowing actions in one folders life cycle to influence actions performed upon another. Flagged actions are triggered by flags, which can be raised to declare that an event has occurred and to pass data between maps.
- To Do List – Each users “To Do” list contains folders on which the user is required to perform an action. The BPM Engine automatically updates this list whenever a folder reaches a stage for which the user is defined on the To Do List.
- Watch List – The Watch List is similar to the To Do List. However, users do not normally have to perform an action on folders on their Watch List the folders are just displayed there so that the user can monitor the status of the folder as it progresses through the procedure. Just like the To Do List, the BPM Engine automatically updates the Watch List whenever a folder reaches a stage for which the user is defined on the Watch List.
The following diagram is the event management process within ICCM e-Service Desk. This is a “Map” which essentially shows the stages and actions in a given process. The important thing to note is that this diagram isn’t just a picture. It is the model that is used to drive the application.
ICCM e-Service Desk Event Management Process Map
As you can see, the process is defined from start to finish and is not embedded into an event management application. If you wish to change any flow, integration or activity, it is done to this map. Forms are also associated to each of the stages and actions.
You will notice the flagged action (green flag) which would be the flag raised by monitoring systems to generate an event. As indicated before, flagged actions are how external systems, such as monitoring systems, as well as processes within the system, integrate with one another. This is done via web service, API, database or any number of other triggering mechanisms. Subsequent to these, you can see the manual actions (a hand), timed actions (a clock) and conditional actions (a question mark) that identify filtering and suppression that takes place. As long as the monitoring system could raise this flag and pass data, it could easily be integrated to e-Service Desk.
The Event Manager would actually use a role based “Rules configuration” form such as the following. Administrative forms allow for the modification of non-folder data, such as administrative data;
ICCM e-Service Desk Event Management administration form.
From this, you can see the Event manager (the person) has the ability to identify events that should be suppressed, filtered, closed, turned into an Incident, Change or Problem, etc. It’s very easy and you have the ability to quickly modify the rules that the process executes against. With the Enterprise nature of BPM, handling 40,000 new folders a day is easily handled with two process engines and more could easily be teamed if needed should that volume grow.
Hopefully this blog entry has provided you with an idea of how easily and quickly e-Service Desk is leveraged for Event Management. The same holds true for any of ITIL v3 modeled processes within ICCM e-Service Desk. This is also how new processes are designed, rendered, orchestrated and integrated as well.
If you have any questions or would like to see Event Management and/or any of the other processes, please send an email to jclark@iccmco.com to setup a web demonstration.
Have a great day!
Tags: ITSM ITIL BPM Event
Posted in BPM, BPM, Event Management, ITIL, ITSM | 2 Comments »
As ICCM continues to grow in North America, and around the world, our focus is on raising the awareness of BPM and its impact on IT Service Management. Customers in the United Kingdom and Europe already understand the value proposition of e-Service Desk, and typically state there is no comparison between a traditional ITSM application and ICCM e-Service Desk.
Yet here in the United States, customers still take the traditional “application specific requirements approach” to RFP’s and solicitations, comparing e-Service Desk on a functionality basis to other “vertical” ITSM solutions on a requirement by requirement basis. While this approach is fine, and we are more than happy to engage that way if that is what is required; if these customers considered for just a moment, what BPM technology provides to any business process, including those defined by the ITIL framework, they would quickly realize any process requirement can be met out of the box, or through process design, as that is exactly what BPM was created to do.
I have outlined below some of the key differences between traditionally developed (from the ground up) IT Service Management applications, and BPM based IT Service Management solutions, whether purchased from a vendor such as ICCM, or developed in-house with current BPM technologies such as Metastorm and other BPM solutions;
- A BPM based Service Management is not “hard walled” and limited to original process scope. Traditional IT Service Management solutions are confined to the processes and “process modules” included or purchased, often times “digitized” in multiple technology platforms that are loosely integrated through complex integration mechanisms. Conversely, a BPM Service Management solution provides the infrastructure for an organization to add customer (or bespoke) processes, beyond those defined by ITIL v3. And these new, custom processes are as easily integrated into the ITIL processes, and measured in the same form and fashion.
- A BPM Service Management solution is driven by a graphical process model from start to finish rather than manually “coded” to support a process requirements specification. Traditional IT Service Management solutions may try to implement processes from models and may use UML models for requirements definition, but the solution is “developed” or “customized” to support the process requirements. A human being (typically referred to as a developer) must convert the model or requirements specification into code or configuration settings to “imitate” the process. BPM allows for models used for documentation, to be used for defining how the application executes.
- A BPM Service Management solution inherently is self-documenting. Traditional IT Service Management solutions may provide some documentation, but many, including the “leaders” in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, require extensive manual documentation effort. The resulting documentation almost always ‘atrophies’ over time as the application is modified.
- A BPM Service Management solution inherently provides “workflow” as a means of controlling application. BPM is essentially a superset of workflow, taking traditional workflow technology way beyond and incorporating integration, roles, forms, attachments, handshakes, timings, etc as part of the workflow. Traditional IT Service Management solutions may provide embedded workflow within specific hard-walled processes, and are typically used for status or field control.
- A BPM Service Management solution is an integrating platform by nature. BPM technology was developed many years back to solve a specific business problem; managing and optimizing business processes that thread though a number of heterogeneous systems. Why train users on six different interfaces for systems that do not measure the overall business process? Isn’t it more optimal to leverage one technology to provide a single interface, controls and measure the handshakes and transitions among the systems, and provides the necessary process foundation for making any kind of improvements. This heritage of BPM is not lost in today’s BPM technologies, which make integration to virtually any system “out of the box”, cost effective and easy. The only hard and fast requirement is that you understand the process. Traditional IT Service Management solutions typically require integration products and projects, which in some cases are as elaborate as the implementation of the solution themselves. And because they lack the overall process awareness, they typically are not capturing the necessary process data to do any kind of process improvement.
- A BPM Service Management solution provides a “process orchestration engine” sometimes referred to as an Enterprise Orchestration Engine (EOE) that can be leveraged for other processes, not just IT Service Management processes. Customers have the option of implementing BPM tactically or strategically. With a tactical implementation, the Service Management solution is essentially identical to traditional IT Service Management solutions in that the technology is only orchestrating ITSM processes. However, with a strategic implementation, IT Service Management can be the first of many business processes to be implemented and can become the foundation on which to build an Enterprise Orchestration Engine. A pre-designed solution, based on ITIL v3 best practices, such as ICCM e-Service Desk, can service as not only your Service Management platform and initiation point, but a launch pad for a BPM environment within your environment.
- A BPM Service Management solution doesn’t require extensive administration, designer or user training. As BPM technology typically “walks” a user through a process, preventing mistakes and errors, monitoring timings and conditions, the amount of training required for a user is minimal. Furthermore, with a common interface for any process, as user only needs to understand process specific information, as they will understand navigation almost immediately. Traditional IT Service Management solutions often times have entirely different interfaces by process, requiring process specific training for both administration and navigation. A BPM trained administration/designer resource can be leveraged for any process. Traditional ITSM solutions typically have multiple training curriculum for each process and/or module, and typically at extensive cost.
- A BPM Service Management solution, depending on the BPM technology, typically incorporates document and forms management. Another by-product of leveraging BPM technology is that it typically supports document or form management, allowing for easy forms modification, document storage, indexing, etc. Traditional IT Service Management solutions usually can add this capability through third party add-ins, or custom development.
- A BPM Service Management solution costs significantly less to purchase, maintain, administer, change and support. The benefits of developing and executing processes within a BPM environment are well known and documented. See my first blog “Optimizing IT with Business Process Management” (http://tinyurl.com/l9l847) for an outline and reference to this research. As an ITSM solution provider, we are able to incorporate our experience, customer feedback and improvements to our system in very little time. This savings is obviously passed along to our customers in that we don’t have to charge for long development, QA, testing cycles, nor do we have to have a large organization to do the design. Traditional IT Service Management solutions are encumbered by their own legacy application technology. According to Gartner, this is one of the reasons they cite that there is no innovation in the industry, as it is too expensive and time consuming to “add” capabilities to existing solutions. So they acquire other companies and solutions from other vendors but the “suite of solutions” still looks like 6 different boxes shrink wrapped together.
- A BPM Service Management solution results in greater visibility into business metrics and response time to business needs. BPM technology provides common process architectures, process metrics, performance indicators, audit trails, timings, etc. Because this architecture can be leveraged into the business, either integrated to existing business systems or as a full business process orchestration solution, visibility and integration into the business is almost inherent in the solution. Traditional IT Service Management solutions focus just on IT Service Management and often miss opportunities to integrate, at a process level, with business processes important to the business.
- A BPM Service Management solution provides quick and reliable compliance with regulations and improved communication between business and IT silos. BPM customers have been able to demonstrate PCI, Sarbanes-Oxley, FDA and other compliance in a very short amount of time. Evidence required by the control objectives of any compliance framework typically are the result of process execution, which is easily mapped and measured within the BPM environment. There are plenty of examples available of how customers within and outside of IT Service Management, has been able to demonstrate many forms of compliance, in a very short amount of time, and significantly reduced cost.
- A BPM Service Management solution provides improved transaction reliability and seamless B2B integration with partners, suppliers. Thanks to BPM technology integration, measurement, validation, and auditing, it is almost impossible to miss transitions or drop information. Typical “objects” within BPM technology contains various mechanisms to ensure that the objects flow through the process with measurement and assurance. Traditional IT Service Management solutions typically provide “records” which can be lost and modified to bypass process orchestration.
- BPM Technology and Architecture lends itself to several flexible pricing models. BPM based ITSM solutions are inherently “web 2.0″ and require little to no modification to a customers clients or systems. This architecture lends itself tremendously to some very flexible pricing structures, making the solutions even more affordable to a customer. This includes Software as a Service (SAAS), Application Service Provider (ASP) as well as Subscription and Traditional licensing models.
- A BPM Service Management solution can be implemented “in whole” or modularly, depending on the existing systems and processes of a customer. Traditional ITSM solutions tend to “fall down” if part of their process is contained in outside systems. A BPM solution, thanks to the integration architecture, process focus and measurement, and flexibility, allows for a BPM based ITSM solution to be implemented modularly, or completely, depending on the customers needs.
Other smaller differences that customers make comments about;
- Less mouse clicks to get through a process
- Web Client and web interface, no client installation or configuration
- Integration to outside tools
It’s time for the ITSM industry to recognize a new and proven approach to process execution, one that provides;
- Process Focus: eService Desk is designed with process in mind first, not as an afterthought
- Process Creation: You have the ability to design and orchestrate specific processes to your organization, as extensions to e-Service Desk completely stand-alone.
- Ease of Administration: Process Owners have ability to configure the system without the need of specialized technical resources
- Low Cost of Acquisition, Rapid Implementation Time , and Minimal Support Requirements and a Considerably Low Cost of Ownership
- Microsoft Integration: SharePoint workflow/attachment, Office Plug-ins, Tasks and Calendars in Outlook.
All it takes is a demonstration to see what this is all about! For a complete set of “Frequently asked questions (FAQ’s)” about e-Service Desk, download our FAQ document; http://tinyurl.com/dj9zmz
Tags: BPM, ITIL, ITSM, Requirements, Value
Posted in BPM, ITIL, ITSM | 1 Comment »
Executive Summary
“It is not the strongest species that survives nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin
The economic conditions of 2008 and undoubtedly 2009 will go down in history as the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. And since Information Technology wasn’t around in 1929, this is arguably the worst economic downturn for IT in history.
Like others my age, many in IT will recall the economic downturns over the past 20 years (or more, but I am not going to date myself), where the IT organization was considered a safe haven for employment, and viewed by the company as the life boat, providing innovation to help the business position itself properly for the next business upswing.
Now that organizations have options and alternatives such as IT outsourcing, off-shoring, new business models and IT service delivery mechanisms, it is incumbent on any vestiges of remaining IT to optimize its own processes and itself in order to validate and confirm its contribution to the value chain of the business it serves. As many in the industry painfully understand now, the IT organization is no longer immune from this or future recessions and/or business cycle downturns.
A wise man once told me; “It takes ignorance to take something simple and make it complex, but it takes a genius to take something complex and make it simple”. ITIL isn’t necessarily a complex subject, but it has been made overly complex leading to misapplication and misguidance resulting in a number of failures. The current “back to basics” trend suggests people and organizations want real lasting strategies, approaches, methodologies and technologies that make sense.
This whitepaper is intended to provide insights and ideas into how Business Process Management, or BPM, an already established process enabling technology, can be applied to IT processes as a means of simplifying, driving costs from, and optimizing your IT organization.
BPM Explained
Most people guess the “BP” correctly but opinions vary on the “M”. Some say “Modeling”, “Monitoring”, and others “Measurement”. Actually – Business Process Management encompasses all these things and typically at the root of it all is the concept of models.
Business Process Management (BPM) is a set of methodologies and technologies designed to support explicit business processes, right from analysis and definition to orchestration/execution, monitoring and optimization of business processes. The BPM market was formed from the opinion that business must be managed from a process point of view. The rest of the business world actually drove the creation and demand for BPM. BPM vendors provide technology that deliver “Model driven process execution” as opposed to code-based execution. Gartner Group advises that this is the best way to enable business and IT professionals to manage and change processes collaboratively, especially in a volatile business environment[1].
ITIL® is about formalizing and optimizing the way in which we (in IT) behave and work. Process execution and improvement requirements are often unique to each organization, even when adopting ITIL® best practices. This obviously favors a “Build” vs. “Buy” approach to supporting technology. Unfortunately, time frames and costs are not compatible with this level of process improvement. BPM is the alternative approach to “Build” and “Buy” that delivers flexibility and uniqueness of “Build”, while at the same time providing the time value, standardization and reduced cost of “Buy”.
The basic value proposition of BPM is the ability to enable processes with less effort and cost, with higher quality than traditional means. In fact, BPM is intended to respond to the following set of business values:
- Agility: The ability to bring new products and services to market more quickly and adapt processes more effectively to changing market demands
- Efficiencies: Most processes are inefficient due to manual effort, poor hand-offs between departments and a general inability to monitor overall progress. The deployment of BPM solutions helps to eliminate these problems. The efficiency benefits are typically expressed in the reduced number of Full Time Employee’s (FTE’s) required to perform particular tasks
- Visibility: Providing management insight into process-based performance indicators. This enables an organization to make better business decisions and handle exceptions better.
Gartner research indicates that even without process redesign, a basic investment in a BPM suite yields significant returns. By simply “making the current-state handoffs, timing and responsibilities explicit, productivity improvements of more than 12 percent are normally realized[2]”. In another report, Gartner indicates that 78% of projects see an internal rate of return (IRR) of greater than 15%. The same report indicates that these projects were deployed in very quick order (67% in less than six months, 50% in less than four months).
BPM has proven in almost every case to increase efficiency, effectiveness and agility.
As a management discipline, BPM emphasizes modeling the business from a cross-functional process perspective and establishing performance goals from that perspective as well. Years ago Dr. Geary Rummler called this “managing the white space in the organization chart,” and it remains central to the process perspective today.
To some management consultants, BPM begins and ends with process modeling, but there’s much more. Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) solutions provide the technology platform that takes models and metrics, defined by the business, turning them into an orchestrated and executable implementation. This platform actually automates the human workflow, integrates data between disparate backend systems, and executes the business rules, defined and controlled by the process model. And while it’s executing the business process, the system continuously records snapshots of data that allow the process to be measured end-to-end, as well as in real time, and corrected easily when the need arises.
Modeling as a Science (and art)
Modeling is a formal means of documenting the artifacts, relationships, goals, steps and states of the end-to-end process. Documenting processes in a way that can be understood across functional units, geographic units and divisions of the enterprise. Processes can easily be analyzed for cost, quality and efficiency improvements which is a key feature of BPM as a new management discipline.
Process modeling is inherently a business function, and modeling technologies empower the business to define the steps, and the performance metrics. While there is an art to model layout and construction, methods and standards are employed and followed for consistency and structure. The most important thing to understand is that a model is not just an illustration or graphic. The objects and links in a model represent objects and relationships that are re-usable, can be abstracted, related, measured, etc. In other words, a model is a window of something larger that cannot be viewed in two dimensions in its entirety.
Most modern modeling tools support not only publishing complete and consistent process documentation in various formats, but also provide a means of process analysis through various tools such as simulation. This allows “what if” analysis and process improvement initiatives that yield real business analysis metrics – resources, cost, units, etc.
Inefficiencies in IT (why IT needs “Optimized” in the first place)
Business Process Management technologies obviously cannot solve all issues that result in IT “sub-optimization”. Some are rooted in poor management practice, organizational challenges, and barriers that completely derail optimization efforts. Obviously management support and involvement is necessary for optimization to take place. Other “usual suspects” of IT sub-optimization include:
Lack of adoption and understanding of a process culture
Obviously the “people” component of processes and IT optimization require that where there are human “actors” or customers of the process, they must understand their part in the processes and workflows, the metrics, control objectives, goals, owners and most importantly, their role within the process. Process defects are usually a result of people incorrectly executing a process, or supporting technology that does not enforce or detect process controls.
Processes operating in isolation
As Dr. Geary Rummler stated in his book “Improving Performance – How to manage the white space on the organization chart”, it’s the organizational white space often missed as technology and process are implemented in vertical, stove pipe fashion. Process integrations and opportunities to integrate are often missed, and there is little to no process improvement possibilities where processes have been organizationally “stove piped” or implemented within vertical technologies.
Atrophied process initiatives that have failed to demonstrate value
Many ITSM programs start with Incident, Problem, or Change and Configuration Management and then stop. Why this happens is subject for debate. One reason might be that technology solutions are selected based on the requirements of the upfront processes that are known at the beginning of the project. Since processes to be implemented later aren’t included in the requirements, tool selection results in an optimized tool for the initial processes – but a technology that sub-optimizes or completely omits support for future processes.
Managing artifacts but not processes
The problem with implementing many different solutions to address process execution is that integrations typically transfer artifacts such as incidents, changes, and configuration items, but miss process metrics and information – metrics that are typically used to measure and manage the process itself. As a result, process metrics and measurements are not typically incorporated into the integration design.
BPM for Service Strategy and Design
Modeling Strategy through Principles.
When ITIL® Version 3 was kicked off, the road show actually included a model that decomposed the Deming Circle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) into sub-domains. One could argue this is a “meta-model” (model of a model) describing the “supporting” artifacts within the scope of each step of the Deming circle.
From a Strategy perspective, these items can be captured in model and object form, reused in other models, and related in different ways to other models for other purposes. For example: Policies and Principles can be captured, related, grouped, categorized and prioritized in strategy models. This provides the basis of future states, what is to be accomplished, and in what priority. Later, those principles and policies can be related to workflow activities that will explicitly identify where policies, goals and objectives are met by the processes being implemented.
Various types of models can be leveraged for Service Design such as goal, capability, organizational, class, and use case models – to name a few. Again, these can be related to objects of the strategy model’s policies and principles, and become the basis for yet more downstream models.
One advantage to using models is that they provide a bridge to Enterprise Architecture and other areas as well. For example: Enterprise architects will often refer to “Capabilities” of an organization, depending on the EA framework they leverage. If you look at the definition of capabilities, it aligns closely to what ITIL practitioners call a service. They are similar and through modeling, it is very possible to align and integrate your Enterprise Architecture initiative with your IT Service Management initiative.
BPM for Service Transition and Operations
Process mapping and execution through BPM
Business process models and maps are valuable tools for understanding organizations and how they operate. Dr. Geary Rummler summarized the inherent value of developing business maps with the simple phrase, “If you can’t draw it, you don’t understand it.”
By using several types of models such as organization, workflow, state and goal models, with relationships to one another, you can capture the verbs (what gets done) AND nouns (what artifacts that work is done on). But most importantly, how all of these activities and objects will be measured and managed. And this happens at levels that are meaningful for the organization. Within the modeling environment, these models can be related back to strategy models to reference and answer the question “What are we doing, and why are we doing it?”
From an orchestration perspective, many BPMS technologies have reached the point to where graphical models actually ‘orchestrate’ the service management application. Process orchestration is a growing business technology that can be leveraged stand-alone or across disparate systems to make a process appear as one despite the many systems involved in supporting the process.
The benefits of leveraging BPM for IT Service Management include;
- Consistent and standardized process measurement across all ITSM processes (lead time, queuing time, cycle time), resulting in decreased cost and effort to produce process dashboards and reporting.
- Cost effective implementation of preventative process controls vs. detective controls resulting in reduced training requirements, and less after the fact documentation and reporting.
- Reduced reporting demands as actionable process metrics and preventative controls result in immediate actions such as escalations, messaging, and artifact modification prior to process defect or service impact. Process improvements can be identified before a poor service experience with your customer has happened and implemented in a remarkably short amount of time.
BPM and Continual Service Improvement
By this point, Continual Service and Process Improvement is implicit as the process has been designed, modeled and linked based on strategy defined by the business customers with appropriate goals and metrics. If BPMS technology then is being leveraged for process orchestration, continual service and process improvements are easily spotted, adjusted, modified in orchestration, and monitored.
The whole point of BPM is to optimize and improve processes that quickly and easily can be change based on changes of the customer, the business, or the organization. By leveraging simulation capabilities available with process/workflow modeling tools, “what if” analysis is easily performed against proposed changes to a process based on real metrics. Once a process improvement has been identified, it can be modeled fairly quickly for orchestration among users of the process. Measurement then is immediate once the new orchestration is implemented.
Summary
Never before has business and IT been under such tremendous pressure to transform itself and make decisions based on actual value contribution to its customers. This new reality requires a level of IT optimization that is no longer an optional decision. Business Process Management Suites (BPMS) have been providing demonstrable value to the business process and application side of the house for years. Why it hasn’t made inroads into IT Service Management until now is an interesting question. The majority of BPMS vendors rarely target internal IT organizations for IT process design and orchestration, missing out on huge opportunities for them to reduce cost and increase agility.
IT process documentation is costly to create, often ineffective and inconsistent, difficult to maintain, and usually ends up on a shelf or in an electronic store never to be touched again. Technologies implemented to support these IT processes often fail to achieve alignment with the business, resulting in sub-optimization of the IT organization as a whole. By leveraging BPM within the IT organization itself, opportunities to truly reduce operational costs, improve quality and capabilities, and increase capacity, will surface. This is something organizations that have already leveraged BPM external to IT operations have already experienced. As a result, not only is operational IT process documentation maintained and kept current – but is aligned with the business and actually drives the process orchestration technology. This then results in a measureable means of optimizing IT.
[1] Source: Gartner Research: Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites, ID:G00164485 Date:18 Feb 2009
[2] Source: Justifying BPM Projects, Gartner Group 2004
Tags: BPM, ITIL, ITSM
Posted in BPM, ITIL, ITSM | 1 Comment »