9/12/03
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In this issue....
-- Quote of the Month....
-- Using Ultimus Process Designer to justify your project ROI
-- Case study: Prince William County ROI
-- Nucleus Research - unbiased ROI analysis
-- Ultimus v6.0 is soon to be released
-- Book Review...Process Redesign - The Implementation Guide for Managers
-- Come to the Ultimus Annual User Group Conference Oct 20-22
-- New process centric IT vs Old data centric IT
-- A proccess you've GOTTA see
-- Extreme Flobots!
-- ULTIMUS PASSES THE 1000 CUSTOMER MARK
-- Do you know anyone else that may have a need for a BPM automation platform?

Dear Frank,

Sorry for the delay in getting this out. We've been really busy.

l try to help keep you up-to-date on things going on at Ultimus and other information 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.

Quote of the Month....
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"Things want to flow and people want to flow. Most of the time we're tripped up by our own socks" Ed Constantine of Simpler Consulting

From the book - Less is More - by Jason Jennings

to read more about Simpler Consulting.com

Using Ultimus Process Designer to justify your project ROI
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The new process designer module in the Ultimus workflow automation suite is not just for creating process maps.

An entire cost justification case can be created with the design module & excel. At a high level, you create a process map of the 'as-is' state of your process. Model and save the reports. Next, create a number of 'to-be' scenarios, model the scenarios and select the most efficient scenario and save the reports. The cost and time savings minus the investment to automate the process divided by the investment equals the ROI.

to learn more about using Ultimus process designer to justify your investment in workflow automation please contact me at my link at the bottom of this page ....

Case study: Prince William County ROI
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See how Prince William County saved time and money by automating their HR processes with Ultimus

Direct Cost and indirct cost savings included:Reduced processing costs, Reduced errors and delays, improved data access and reduced storage costs. Prince William County saved $1.3mm over the 3 year study.

To read the Nucleus Research ROI analysis....

Nucleus Research - unbiased ROI analysis
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This Business 2.0 article describes how Rebecca Wettemann, chief analyst at the tiny market analysis firm Nucleus Research, became the most hated woman in software. (We at Ultimus don't hate her - see Prince William County article above.)

to read more about Nucleus Research...

Ultimus v6.0 is soon to be released
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We're getting even closer to the relase of version 6.0. Beta program is complete, training materials, documentation, etc is being finalized and the release is scheduled for early Oct.

Ultimus v6.0 will be delivered on a the MS dot net platform and have the following integrated Web Services features: Ultimus Process Web Services Ultimus Step Web Services Ultimus Web Services Flobot Ultimus Events Web Services -ability to call web services from Ultimus Forms and Steps These new features will dramatically simplify x- platform, x-app integration. In addition, Ultimus customers will be able to easily communicate with enterprise applications (SAP, PeopleSoft) through point-and-click interfaces Come to our user conference (see below) and see v6.0 in action.

Book Review...Process Redesign - The Implementation Guide for Managers
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This book, by Arthur Tenner & Irving DeToro is one of a series of book from the engineering Process Improvement Series by Prentice Hall. While it is a text book, it is very readable and easy to understand.

The book is broken up into 3 major sections: Process Management and Improvement, Improving Functional Processes and Special Process Topics and Tools. It also includes a special section on Six Sigma Implementations. Solid book, very practical backgrounder.

To learn more about this book...

Come to the Ultimus Annual User Group Conference Oct 20-22
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I can't believe its already been a year since our last user conference! Don't miss this one. The conference is being held at the Kingston Plantation resort in Myrtle Beach, SC. It's the first time we're not having the conference in Cary. We're planning a golf tournament & there are over 100 golf courses within minutes of the plantation.

In addition, you'll get to meet people that implemented Ultimus and made it happen. Newell Rubbermaid, Spectrasite, Parmalat, Lancaster General Hospital, Microsoft and many others, will deliver presentations that highlight how Ultimus-based BPM solutions have increased efficiency and optimized profits throughout their companies. Don't miss the user conference. It's fun and informative.

To learn more about the Ultimus user confernence...

New process centric IT vs Old data centric IT
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Howard Smith and Peter Fingar, in their article "Rumors Of IT's Demise Are Highly Exaggerated" explain how the role of IT is changing from data processing to business process processing.

The reality is that the future of business automation and its relationship to strategic advantage is about the challenge of making the business process, not data, not the application, the context of IT.

to read this article...

A proccess you've GOTTA see
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Not EVERY process can be modeled in Ultimus. This is a REAL process, used in a marketing campaign by Honda. It took 600+ 'takes' to finally capture the entire process - THERE IS NO TRICK PHOTOGRAPHY, SPLICES, etc. To read an article about this process see: http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Jun/06302003/monday/711 29.asp

This is fun. Take a break - Rube Goldberg would be proud. Check it out.

To SEE this process (requires Quicktime) ....

Extreme Flobots!
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Here's a guy that believes that automation will destroy our entire concept of work. He also thinks that it will happen in the very near future. This is a fairly long article, but extremely thought provoking.

The final paragraph. "The arrival of humanoid robots should be a cause for celebration. With the robots doing most of the work, it should be possible for everyone to go on a perpetual vacation. Instead, robots will displace millions of employees, leaving them unable to find work and therefore destitute. I believe that it is time to start rethinking our economy and understanding how we will allow people to live their lives in a robotic nation."

to read this article...

ULTIMUS PASSES THE 1000 CUSTOMER MARK
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Milestone Marks Nearly Nine Years of Delivering Workflow and Business Process Management Solutions on Microsoft Technologies for Companies Worldwide

On the surface, workflow automation and BPM seem relatively easy, but there is a lot going on that is not always readily apparent," said Ultimus CEO and co- founder Rashid Khan. "Nearly nine years of experience with more than 1000 customers has taught us things about workflow and BPM that can only be learned through experience, and we've built that experience right into our products. Newcomers to the market may be surprised by some of the exceptions and special situations companies face in deploying a workflow and BPM solution, but Ultimus is well equipped to address these challenges

to read this story....

Do you know anyone else that may have a need for a BPM automation platform?
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If you know anyone or any company that could benefit from Ultimus would you please let us know. We'll be glad to help them too. Thanks