Executive Insight

Formerly President and CEO at Fuego, Inc., Jon W. Lauck brings over 25 years of experience in executive management, sales, engineering and investment banking to his new role as Vice President of Marketing for AquaLogic BPM at BEA.

BM. Business process management has been enjoying something of a resurgence recently. To what do you attribute this renewed excitement and activity?

JL. Yes, business process management has definitely reached a ‘tipping point’. When we first began selling BPM solutions a few years ago, we had to explain the value of improved business processes. Today, BPM has proven to cut costs, increase productivity, improve customer relations, and promote corporate visibility and governance. More than 60 percent of the CIOs at Gartner’s summit last December rated BPM as their top spending priority for 2007. The conversation has moved from “Why should I use BPM” to “How do I get started?”

BM. How can BPM help executives quickly respond to increasing competitive pressures and changing customer demand?

JL. BPM improves business agility – your ability to change product direction, capture new markets, or react to market pressures – in three critical ways. First, BPM provides visibility. Knowing how your business operates today enables you to better measure the risks, opportunities, costs, and rewards of future strategic initiatives. A good BPM system not only analyzes potential change, but provides simulations to better measure any impacts. Second, BPM provides orchestration. Business agility is more than just shuffling people around; typically, it means significant shifts in IT investments. A good BPM solution will provide human and system synchronicity. Finally, BPM provides optimization, which leads to innovation. Top-down change can only go so far; BPM provides teams at all levels of the production cycle the opportunity to improve their productivity and innovate in their jobs. Given the complexity of today’s organizations, processes and systems, BPM puts control back in the hands of the executive.

BM. Business process management inevitably leads to significant changes in company culture. Why is change management important to help BPM implementation go smoothly? And how can firms successfully measure, monitor and evaluate the results?

JL. Change is always hard, and it’s especially hard when employees are comfortable and familiar with the existing processes. Successful BPM implementations begin with a mix of business consulting and technical solutions to ensure everyone involved is working toward the same objectives. BEA has several services offerings and training options to help employees get more familiar with BPM – allowing them to see, first hand, the benefits resulting from more predictable workloads, with fewer hassles and internal conflicts. Obtaining this consensus at the beginning is critical: without it, the “old” processes will persist.

Measuring, monitoring and evaluating process change is the essence of BPM, and it’s critical throughout the “process lifecycle” – in the beginning, to baseline the current process and identify bottlenecks; before deploying, to simulate options for change; and after the process is implemented, through Business Activity Monitoring dashboards and process reporting. However, a successful implementation must also measure organizational efficiencies – such as the adoption rate of the new process.

BM. Conforming to compliance regulations – whether they relate to Basel II, Sarbanes-Oxley or others – is an essential part of business process management. Why is this so important, and how can firms ensure that their business processes are compliant?

JL. Inefficient processes are ripe for fraud and abuse. With BPM, organizations are able to track work items as they are processed, enabling managers or auditors to clearly establish custody and accountability of any item at any time. Government and Industry regulations are increasingly requiring this kind of visibility and accountability – not just for corporate fiduciary responsibility, but to thwart abuses such as embezzlement, fraud, or money laundering.

Having an experienced partner can significantly reduce the time it takes to deploy a compliant solution. Many of our customers come to us because of our successful track record in deploying compliant solutions. Our experienced team of consultants and dedicated practices are peerless.

BM. What factors should companies take into consideration when choosing software and providers – for example, time and implementation constraints, security issues, support? What are the pitfalls that should be avoided?

JL. Change is difficult, and BPM is more of a corporate strategy than a software solution. There are numerous niche vendors; my sense is that enterprise companies will be far more successful by partnering with a multinational vendor that has sufficient girth and resources to sustain a long-term commitment. Processes often span systems and resources, but sometimes they span continents and languages. It’s not enough to have software that bridges the many layers of security common in a typical enterprise. Rather, you need training, support and domain experts to help guide your organization to adopt BPM as a corporate strategy.

BM. As IT and business practices evolve, how is BPM likely to develop over the next few years and what new technologies are in the pipeline to facilitate this? What are you getting excited about?

JL. We’re excited to see the convergence of “collaboration” and “process management,” and we’re rapidly rolling out products to unite three of the most valuable enterprise assets: people, process and knowledge. Web 2.0 technologies – especially tools enabling users to create and share their own applications, processes, and content – will further push an integration of BPM and collaborative tools, while increasing the need for more IT governance. Today, many BPM solutions are deployed on structured, paper-based processes and for well-defined roles: loan processing, financial accounting, customer support, etc. However, we see tremendous growth and opportunity in optimizing unstructured ad-hoc processes for marketing managers, options traders, legal secretaries, property managers, etc. BPM is very hot right now. But we’re forecasting increasing temperatures as Web 2.0 empowers “knowledge workers” to better collaborate and manage their tasks.