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Greeting!
This is the
last newsletter for this year. Thanks for all your support (and not opt-ing out). I hope you found these newsletters helpful. l try to keep you up-to-date on things going on at Ultimus
and other information about BPM I hope you'll find useful. Your comments,
suggestions and stories are always welcome. If you find that my efforts here
aren't useful - please feel free to opt- out.
Special
thanks to Dee Anne for suggesting a new newsletter template that supports
links to articles (so you don't have to scroll). Please continue to send your
suggestions, article ideas, etc. I really appreciate your input.
Quote of the day....
Grave
Thought...
Tom Peters most feared epitaph:
"He
would have done some really cool stuff...but his boss wouldn't let him"
Tom Peters,
Re-Imagine
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New book by Tom
Peters - Re-imagine!
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Tom Peters, of "In Search of Excellence" fame, has
done it again. He swears this will be his last book (tome). And he's
RANTING.
Subtitled,
Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age, Tom says he's "mad as
hell". The premise of his book-"People in enterprise, in
government, are by and large well intentioned. They'd like to get things
done. To be of service to others. But they're thwarted... at every step of
the way... by absurd organizational barriers...and by the egos of petty
tyrants". He offers his thoughts on how to fix these problems.
His
chapters on new business value, business design, and making work matter are
the most closely related to improving business processes. While he doesn't
have specific methods for improving processes, his ideas are intended to
inspire you and give you cause to change the way you're doing business.
This is
an entertaining, a little whiny, thought- provoking book. Its pages (ala
Wired magazine) are bold and strewn with images and crazy colors (mostly
red) are somewhat hard to read. If you've enjoyed his previous books,
you'll surely love this one. Good gift idea too.
Start a "WOW" project & automate it with Ultimus : )
to find out
more.... »
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Gartner predicts
bigger focus on people-to-people process automation
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In Gartner's research note, Jim Sinur
predicts "Agile BPM Suites Are Ready to Take Off" He also states
"Business process management has proved that it can deliver cost
savings."
He
expects "continued pressure from business executives to switch to new,
business-differentiating activities that are being modeled for the next economic
upturn." In addition, enterprises will automate more human-to- human
tasks to drive down their cost of doing business
He sites
the main reasons enterprises consider BPM projects:
· Cost Savings - 38 percent
· Time to Market - 15 percent
· Increase in Quality - 18 percent
· Manage Processes Better - 25 percent
· Regulatory Compliance - 4 percent
Gartner
Research notes are only available to Gartner clients. If you are a Gartner
subscriber, the following note ID's were used for this article:
(Strategic Planning, SPA-21-7111)
(Strategic Planning, SPA-21-7072)
If you have specific questions about the notes please contact me.
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Ultimus 6.0
released!
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Since our last newsletter, Ultimus released version 6.0 of the
workflow automation suite (now called the Ultimus BPM Studio)
The
Ultimus BPM Suite 6.0 ensures every employee involved in a process -- from
the person designing the process to people who will complete specific
process steps-- has the tools they need to do their job. New 6.0 features
that have been incorporated to improve collaboration include:
BPM Studio A collaborative design environment and repository that
simplifies process modelling and development. BPM
Studio enables users to share and reuse process designs, assign individuals
the rights to modify specific processes or process parts, and make dynamic
process changes. With BPM Studio, processes can be developed faster and
changes can be easily managed to ensure security and process integrity.
Expanded Developer Support Extends the design environment of BPM
studio so developers can leverage the best third-party tools to enhance
their processes. All code is conveniently managed in the BPM Studio
repository.
Integrated Web Services Enables users to automatically deploy
workflow processes as Web services. As a result, a process can call a Web
service based on an event condition or form event streamlining the
interoperability of applications and increasing process automation.
Choice of Forms & User Interface Users can incorporate a variety
of forms into their BPM deployments including Ultimus ActiveX forms, Adobe
Acrobat PDF forms, Microsoft InfoPath forms, Ultimus thin forms or custom
forms that support XML.
Advanced Administration Ultimus' advanced administration
capabilities enables organizations to proactively monitor process
execution; reroute, reassign or complete tasks; or perform other
adjustments to keep work moving forward.
.NET & Windows 2003 Server Continuing its nine-year partnership
with Microsoft, the Ultimus BPM Suite 6.0 is one of the first BPM suites to
fully support .NET, Windows 2003 Server and Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004.
As users shift their needs from message-based routing to Internet-based
workflow and BPM, Ultimus 6.0 supports the standards and platforms that
enable it to be deployed across an entire organization.
Full Story... »
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Establish clear
value for your BPM project
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Jack Keen, in December CIO magazine, offers guidance on how to
get your BPM project funded.
When
building your case for the value of your BPM project visible to senior
management you should:
1) Give
them what they care about
2) Hammer home data-to-decision connections
3) Make your message clear and distinct
4) Explain how value forecasts can be measured during implementation.
to read this article »
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The Colorado
Community College System achieves remarkable ROI
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Nucleus Research conducted an independent ROI analysis for the
Colorado Community College System (CCCS). This study analyzed the ROI they
received from their use of Ultimus to automate their absence request
process. The study found an annual return on investment of 90%. An
interesting aspect of this study was that the consulting costs were only
17% of the overall project, a fraction of what is found for most software
projects that generate these type of results.
to read this ROI case study... »
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What's the
difference between workflow & BPM?
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We get asked that a lot. Workflow is a subset of BPM.
BPM
involves all of the tasks, services and infrastructure necessary to
implement workflows.
BPM includes:
process definitions
rules
goals and quality standards
valuation
simulation and modeling
design
integration
testing and user acceptance
documentation
administration
reporting
optimization
If you're
going to be automating business workflows you're going to need a BPM
infrastructure to support your implementation. Ultimus is a COMPLETE BPM
infrastructure.
Penny Lunt, in this month's Transform Magazine, wrote an
article with the same name.
to read Penny's answer.... »
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Check out my BPM
information website
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Since I started this newsletter, I've had a lot of requests
for past articles, white papers, etc. So I created a website (my first) to
store this BPM information.
It's
still a work in progress but I've posted all of the previouse
newsletters, book reviews, links to BPM organizations etc.
Please
stop by from time to time as I'll be adding more information.
Your
thoughts, comments and suggestions are always welcome. Please be kind, I'm
not a webmaster or programmer. The company that provides this service is
1and1.com. It's FREE (for 3 years)! We'll see how it goes.
To
get to my new BPM site.... »
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Quick Links...
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