Blog

Last week I shared my views on a question posed by Robert Mitchell – who should lead BPM? As I’ve contended many times before, I’m of the opinion that a business user should ultimately make the final decisions and maintain executive oversight over BPM projects. To my surprise (and delight), this initial commentary sparked a spirited discussion of the roles played and resources offered by both IT and business/finance sides of an organization in regards to BPM. Several people chimed in to agree with the stance I had taken, while just as many disagreed and put forth compelling arguments to make their case.

Robert Mitchell himself wrote a follow-up piece for Computerworld deconstructing some of the points I’d brought up in an intelligent, thoughtful manner. We had a back and forth written conversation that I feel left us both with some food for thought. Robert expressed suspicion that a BPM project could succeed without any input from IT at all, which is a point I did not clearly address in my last post. I’d like to add some supplementary analysis to my earlier comments about the difference between “providing input” and “owning.”

Below are the opinions I shared with Robert as our discussion on BPM ownership evolved:

I have a huge amount of respect for the IT function and everything they can do to make every business better. My point on the subject of who should lead a BPM project is pretty clear. As you outlined in your article, “Troubled BPM Project at Chiquita International,” IT did not appear to even have an active role in the project. In my response I said “I absolutely disagree with the notion that IT should be relegated to simply providing data and possibly hosting systems.” In fact, IT’s role and active involvement in any large scale BPM system is critical for a successful implementation. As I further said “You are right, without a collaborative effort and active involvement from cross functional and business experts the project will fail or certainly be sub-optimized.”

I do disagree with co-led projects. In my experience, jointly led projects don’t work. Someone, one person, needs to be the single ultimate decision maker. It does not mean they are the one person that knows everything (that person doesn’t exist). It needs to be the person that is responsible for ensuring that all the right people are involved, that the important contributions of each area of expertise are seriously considered and included in the decision and implementation process.

In the Chiquita example, Finance is the owner of the system, the process and is accountable for the final outcome. Finance, in this example, should have been the single leader of this project and implementation. It is also clear to me, based on your story, that IT should have played a much bigger role in the decision process and implementation. Leading a project is not the same as playing a central (and very critical) role.

Robert then asked me how, in my role as CEO of PerfectForms, a solutions vendor, I’d approached IT users at companies interested in the PerfectForms Web form and workflow automation tool (which is admittedly designed specifically for business users). This got me thinking even more:

It is critical that every business and functional leader have a good, solid working relationship with their IT counterparts. Good long term decisions (technology related or not) are not made with an attitude of “just give me the data and get out of my way”. Unfortunately this behavior is prevalent and does result in project delays, cost over runs and in many cases failure to meet the objective.

At PerfectForms we are initially contacted by people with pretty specific problems that they are trying to solve. These people are from all areas of the business – people from sales or marketing, HR or operations and yes also IT. The problems run the gamut – from simple feedback forms for training that need to be routed around a training department, to very complex workflow applications that need to be used offline by agents in the field to collect customer information that is then uploaded (when connected to the internet) and ultimately integrated with a back end ERP system.

The first example can easily be designed, developed and fully deployed with PerfectForms by anyone in the training department. For these types of applications we rarely speak to anyone in IT, nor do we encourage IT involvement. Most of these customers come to us because their existing IT resources are busy managing existing systems and/or developing more mission critical applications. Not to mention the technology cost for this is $360 a year and the training department can manage, report on, and modify the system themselves. In the second example we are working directly with the IT department to get the installation integrated and running. We absolutely could not, nor would we attempt to do an integrated enterprise installation without working directly with IT.

We do see all kinds of unusual behaviors based on politics and protectionism. We see business people purchasing a cloud solution to avoid an increase in the allocated cost they get from IT. We were told by one IT professional, “If I recommended PerfectForms, what would I do?” I’m sure it’s a common concern for any IT professional that sees a solution like ours, but the truth is, a solution that helps business users help themselves, while providing the oversight that IT requires, improves relationships between the two groups (and can free-up IT’s time to work on more important tasks). On the other hand, when IT is necessary for a successful implementation, we outline the reasons for their involvement and then attempt to directly engage with them.

At its core, I’m not sure this is really a vendor problem – we try not to get involved in internal debates and politics — but Vendors can play a role in the interest of a project’s successful outcome. Through the technology we develop, or through our words and actions, we can encourage more Business leaders and Functional leaders (HR, Finance, Legal, Operations) to work more closely with CIO’s and other IT leaders and find more productive ways to grow and support customers, employees and shareholders. We live in a virtual business world that is evolving quickly.

Hopefully the healthy exchange of ideas over the subject of business-IT relations and BPM ownership will spur continued conversations in which professionals from both sides of the equation share their experiences and best practices for management success.

“Who should lead a business performance management project: IT, finance or both?” Robert Mitchell of Computerworld asked this question in a recent article, entitled “Who Should Lead BPM?” In the piece, Mitchell asks several IT and finance tech company pros how they’d define ownership of BPM – is it a business practice or an IT practice?

This is an argument that we’ve seen debated for ages and our answer has always been the same: business owns BPM, not IT. While IT’s role is to facilitate the creation and maintenance of a company’s software and hardware infrastructure, BPM stands for business process management, and it’s the business users who create, manage, benefit from or suffer from the way these processes work.

In Mitchell’s piece, a financial planning and analysis director says flat out that business/finance should lead BPM efforts, while a senior VP at a systems integrator feels that IT should take care of initial setup and then let the business side handle all aspects of BPM from then on. Ironically, however, the CIO of the aforementioned financial group thinks BPM projects should be “jointly led, because neither finance nor IT will get it right on its own.”

While it may seem endearing to accuse both IT and finance of not being perfect, from the vantage point of IT workers having to get a BPM system up and running and then answering questions about potential technical snafus all-day every day is a nightmare. Some people say that IT relishes having control over all technological elements of a group’s operations, but as someone who worked in the trenches of IT for many years, I can tell you this is far from the truth. What IT wants is to have the freedom to focus on things that actually interest them – programming, design, communication and planning. IT won’t get a chance to directly use the data and insights that result from an automated business process – why should they be tasked with managing it?

To this same point, forcing business users to take a backseat and rely on IT’s schedule and priorities is both patronizing and wildly inefficient. BPM has advanced to a point at which it yields nearly real-time, actionable insights that can be used to improve customer relationships, flag and correct cost overruns and process bottlenecks and make entire departments and companies run more smoothly. There simply isn’t any reason for IT to swoop in and save timid business users from their own jobs or for business and IT to have to work together on something that’s totally one-sided.

If we really want IT and business to get along, let’s start by giving each their own responsibilities and control over what affects them.

As most of us have figured out by now, SaaS is here to stay. Just in case you had any doubts, both IDC and Gartner issued reports this week chronicling the recent double-digit gains in the marketplace that we’ll continue to see for the foreseeable future.

ReadWriteWeb does a good job of wrapping-up the reports, but here are some of the more interesting findings from IDC:

• The SaaS market had worldwide revenues of $13.1 billion in 2009; these revenues will reach $40.5 billion by 2014.
• In 2010, worldwide license revenues will drop by $7 billion.
• By 2012, about 85% of new software to the market will be delivered as a service.
• By 2014, revenues from SaaS services will account for nearly 26% of net new growth in the software market.

..And from Gartner:

• Worldwide SaaS revenue within the enterprise application software market is forecast to surpass $8.5 billion in 2010, up 14.1 percent from 2009 revenue of $7.5 billion.
• There will be a shift in total SaaS revenue from just over 10 percent of the enterprise software market in 2009, to more than 16 percent of the market in 2014.
• SaaS is forecast to account for 26 percent of CRM market total revenue in 2010.

Despite the fact that the IT industry is clearly moving in the direction of software-as-a-service, it’s important to remember that we’re not there yet. Issues ranging from bandwidth, to uptime, to security concerns are rightfully giving enterprise IT managers pause before adopting an all-out SaaS strategy. These issues will likely be resolved over time, allowing most, if not all systems to be hosted in the cloud. But for now, it’s important to remember that you have options. Think carefully, and do what’s right for you and your business.

Jon Brodkin recently wrote a thought-provoking, if controversial, piece in Network World highlighting the common misconceptions surrounding cloud computing. Even though it seems like cloud computing and cloud applications affect every aspect of our business lives (which I don’t feel is a bad thing), there appears to be a lot of confusion out there amongst business users as to what the cloud actually provides. And oddly enough, I wouldn’t be surprised to find some IT users that are stumped as well – not by what the cloud can do, per se, but by what it can’t do…which according to Brodkin includes: replacing MS Office, pre-determining legal ownership of IP, and always being cheap.

Jon’s article is less of a celebration of cloud computing and more of a myth-busting “gotcha” segment. I agree that the more information we can share about the intricacies of the cloud and how it compares to traditional on-premise deployments the better, but there is one point in particular with which I take issue, and one point with which I totally agree.

Disagree: Brodkin says cloud computing isn’t as affordable as people think. He uses the example of some cloud apps offering attractive subscription prices and then requiring Internet bandwidth upgrades or bizarre contracts. While it’s up to a customer to read through the contracts they sign (and as a cloud provider I can tell you that no one I know puts out shady EULAs), the Internet bandwidth argument is a little questionable. While bandwidth upgrades can cost upwards of $10,000, it isn’t difficult to find out how much you’ll need for any given cloud app. That’s part of due diligence, and there are thousands upon thousands of cloud applications that will not hog your bandwidth.

Agree: The article’s first contention is that cloud computing will not put IT professionals out of a job and/or make them obsolete. I wish that more IT staffers would absorb this reality and stop worrying that the cloud above their heads is planning to rain all over their careers. “Moving to the cloud” does not need to be followed by IT losing their jobs, and very rarely is. While companies that have been forced to lay off workers due to tough economic times can work more efficiently with collaborative cloud-based BPM solutions (increase productivity, decrease cost) – there will always be a need for management, supervision and technical liaison with cloud vendors. As Brodkin notes, certain skill sets might eventually become less relevant, but employing people with technical knowledge will never fall out of fashion.

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) will undoubtedly improve care once we navigate the long and winding road of how to implement them. One way to make the journey easier is to realize that there will be workflows at medical practices, hospitals and labs that simply will not fit into stringent EHR systems.

Don Fluckinger, a writer at SearchHealthIT.com, does a great job at pointing this out in an article (Moving paper EHR processes to electronic medical forms) where he cites PerfectForms customer, the State of Oregon’s Office of Long Term Care Ombudsman, as a great example.

Fluckinger writes: “Every office workflow has its quirks (read: nonstandard processes). These include intake; discharge; billing information handoff; personal health record, or PHR, request; reporting; specialist patient referral — or some other real-world information-routing scenario a vendor cannot anticipate when it programs an EHR system. To solve those quirks, electronic medical forms can provide on-ramps for EHR processes into the EHR system for data presently typed or transcribed in.”

Oregon’s Long Term Care office is doing exactly that. Bill Bard, a Certified Ombudsman who volunteers to advocate on behalf of the state’s elderly, used PerfectForms to completely revamp how the agency collects and reports data. He transformed a paper-based process – where forms would be completed by hand, passed to office staff, and manually keyed into a database – into a streamlined, automated process. If one man volunteering his time can have such a positive impact on an organization, possibilities abound for other healthcare organizations as they realize the power of easy-to-use online forms.

(For more information about Bill Bard and Oregon’s Office of Long Term Care, see the PerfectForms press release issue on May 6, 2010.)

Check out the recent post by Tom Allanson, PerfectForms CEO, on the CIO blog.

Visalia School District discusses how they are using PerfectForms in an article, by Bridget McCrea, that explores IT trends in education. 

 What’s on the K-12 IT Agenda?

With so much technology being thrown at it, the K-12 set has some choices to make this year. Budgets are tight; IT is evolving quickly; and administrators, teachers, and students alike are embracing new tools and software like never before. Balancing these three factors can be a challenge for the most tech-savvy school districts, all of which are being pulled into the technology age at an unprecedented rate.

Automating Administrative Tasks
So what’s on those K-12 agendas right now, you ask? At Visalia Unified School District in Visalia, CA, Al Foytek, director for business information systems, oversees the business, human resources, and work order systems technology for the 34-school district. In that position, Foytek said his top priority this year is using automation to reduce both costs and time involved with certain functions.

“We want to be able to improve staff efficiency, and even [eliminate] jobs where possible,” said Foytek. Recently, for example, the district combined Microsoft Excel and Visual Basic to create an automated data entry system for student absence log entries.

Right now the district is implementing PerfectForms, a program that allows users to design, develop, and use browser-based applications without having to learn computer code. “This is an ambitious project for us,” said Foytek, “but we really want to be able to automate our forms.” The district’s administrative forms are already automated, he added, and soon teachers will also be able to take advantage of the system. “When we relieve teachers of the paper burden, they’ll be able to spend more time with their students.”

The move will also save money for the district, whose central duplicating department processes 10,000 to 15,000 forms (including accident forms, W-4 tax forms, and so forth) annually at a cost of $0.80 per piece. “Just getting rid of a few forms can give a staff member extra time to do his or her job and to be more efficient,” said Foytek, who pointed out that many of the district’s IT projects for 2010 fall under the broader category of “workflow automation.”

In keeping with that larger goal, Visalia Unified School District is getting set up with an online portal that will allow it to purchase goods and services through a centralized, Internet-based utility. Using the system, the district can access catalogs from resellers, create a requisition, and then have its general ledger adjusted and the funds encumbered on the spot. “This service fits well with our automated forms processing,” said Foytek.

Web-Based Learning Resources
Classroom technology is also on the K-12 agenda this year. Robert Miller, a fifth grade teacher at Port Orange Elementary in DeLand, FL, said the instructors at the 380-student school have embraced the Web as a source of effective, affordable IT tools. Teachers recently started using IT tools like Safari Montage (for media management and distribution) and BrainPOP (an animated educational site for students) in their classrooms, he said, and are looking to implement more online tools this year.

“We pretty much just reach outside of the classroom and use the IT resources that are out there,” said Miller, who began using Edmodo, an application that connects teachers with free online educational tools, a few months ago. Using the system, he said students can keep up in real-time with assignments while out of school, “rather than waiting to get back to class to get their makeup work.” Taking that concept a step further, this year Miller wants to replace his 4-year-old “static” classroom Web site with a more dynamic online presence that will serve as an “anchor for class collaboration.”

Because many of Miller’s IT projects are either free or affordable and involve no heavy installation or training, he said, putting them into use has been fairly simple, despite the budgetary constraints that all districts are facing right now. “A lot of companies are offering free services or educator pricing that makes the IT much more attainable,” said Miller.

Putting Classroom Tools to Use
Day Rosenberg, director of upper school at Far Hills Country Day School in Far Hills, NJ, also wants to add to his school’s IT toolbox this year. With 125 students in grades 6 through 8, the school has a number of technology projects in the works for 2010 and several more on the agenda. He said the institution is making the transition from being a “gatherer of IT equipment” to actually using the tools in the classroom.

“Now that we have the gear, we have to make sure the teachers know how to use it in the classroom,” said Rosenberg. That means ensuring that those Smart boards, laptops, and projectors that the school bought last year are put into action this year, and not left to gather dust in the corner of the classroom as educators go about teaching in their traditional ways.

Realizing the power and allure of the Internet for students, Far Hills Country Day School is beginning to use student blogs this year. In the history class that Rosenberg teaches, for example, students just started using those blogs to develop paragraph structures, conduct research, and upload maps and charts that support their theses. “We’re using blogs to do all of that right now,” said Rosenberg. “The kids love it.”

Looking ahead, Rosenberg said he’d like to see more screen technology (like Web-based cameras) and Internet communications (like Skype) being used in the classroom. Ultimately, he said, it’s up to the individual teacher to actually use the tools, and to integrate them into the classroom. “When it comes to IT, professional development is essential,” said Rosenberg. “You have to make sure your teachers are experts in technology the same way they are experts in the subject matter that they’re teaching.”

About the Author
Bridget McCrea is a business and technology writer in Clearwater, FL. She can be reached at bridgetmc@earthlink.net.

I recently came across an interesting opinion piece by analyst and consultant Allen Bonde on SearchCRM (part of TechTarget’s publication network, which now includes eBizQ as well). Bonde made some very reasoned, topical arguments acknowledging the prominent role of “social CRM” in the enterprise and cautioning companies to wait a minute before diving in. I wholeheartedly agree.

As Bonde points out, there are three major ideological questions around the concept of a “social business strategy” that must be answered to ensure that we’re adopting social media for the right reasons – not because the bandwagon beckons. First of all, will social methods of operation really improve our products’ market prospects or adoption? Second, is going from “social media to Enterprise 2.0″ really a clean transition? And finally, here’s the question that really piqued my interest – are we prioritizing style over substance when it comes to balancing what’s best for the business with what’s hot for consumers?

Obviously this is a point of lively debate and so long as traditionalists and experimentalists continue to work alongside each other, it won’t be resolved. Nonetheless, I can’t help but see the “old school” and “new school” attitudes as two faces of the same coin. To argue that social media and “Enterprise 2.0″ are the folly of over-stimulated twenty-somethings is to dismiss a fundamental change in our business environment for fear of embracing progress. Conversely, putting up a Facebook page for one’s middleware solutions company and expecting to have 100,000 IT executives fawning and fanning over it is equally ludicrous.

In the business world we’re all too eager to co-opt any successful trend as our own creation. It’s as though we simply must use popular social networks because ignoring them will show our age and creative limitations. What we’re conveniently forgetting is the reason such communities were started – not for the purposes of sharing product updates and podcasts, but as a haven for checking up on friends – a repository of fond memories. That’s why I’m hesitant to barge ahead and force my company to assume an identity in a social space that is still tremendously successful at facilitating college romances.

That’s not to say that I’m a traditionalist, either. As I’ve discussed in the past, we’re moving towards a communications renaissance through which we can connect with others across the globe face-to-face, and shunning that incredible potential for fear of looking silly is a disservice to your customers, to your employees and to yourself. The key is to incorporate not just the most popular of consumer social media elements, but those that actually directly involve one’s target audience. There are so many places on the Web where IT executives, business executives, purchasing managers and any number of specific groups congregate, and these places don’t just pay lip service to our commonalities – they exist because of them.

Social media is not defined by a single application like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Posterous. Forcing a square peg into a round hole doesn’t make us fashionable and hip; it reduces us to drones. The Internet is nearly limitless and filled with opportunities for every company to customize, create and hone their social business experience; to mingle with the right contacts; to learn from customers and grow in maturity and influence. I assure you – engaging one’s true followers, loyal customers and trusted friends, through genuine conversations and caring, thoughtful interactions will never go out of style.

Numerous articles have been written over the past several months on the critical role that collaboration and “social” elements will play in helping companies move forward post-recession. The idea that rendering a process or even an entire organization accessible via a public or private network is taking the enterprise community by storm. The premise of bringing people together – especially those who would otherwise not communicate closely with another group – is long overdue. In essence, we’ve gone full circle in how we view collaboration as a business productivity tool.

The very earliest forms of structured organization for the purpose of financial profit consisted of simple business processes – producing a commodity, trading or bartering for another item or service, and a close-knit network of relationships built over years of trust and routine reliability. This is not to say that the earliest forms of incorporation were joyous and peaceful, as the oldest group activity was battle, but each transaction followed a process that was constantly being refined. Business took place face-to-face.

In the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century, we saw the proliferation of technology, specifically for manufacturing and mass production, and the propensity for individuals with a common goal and a variety of skills to pool their resources for potential fame and fortune. It was during this time that businesses began a gradual type of disassociation with collaborative thinking; workers were separate from management, plants were separate from executive offices. International travel was becoming less prohibitive and more efficient, and global operations grew stronger, interpersonal communication got weaker.

Now we’ve voluntarily reversed what seemed to be a permanent fact of business life. We’re talking again. Business and IT departments are starting to collaborate (even if it’s not quite mainstream yet) on business process management initiatives, and solutions like workflow automation are making it possible for employees, who would otherwise be preoccupied with mundane tasks, to join the real human conversation. The communication tools we now have at our disposal – from videoconferencing to social networks to instant messaging – can help us facilitate person-to-person interaction no matter where we are and what we’re doing.

I often hear people express reserve at the idea that our daily activities are becoming so driven by technology that society might eventually feel almost robotic. On the contrary, modern technological solutions are helping us communicate more frequently and more genuinely than ever before. If anything, technology is succeeding in making us more human.

Gartner recently released seven guidelines for business process management (BPM) success, all of them being conceptual priorities and strategies as opposed to technical specifications. The recommendations, led by VP and distinguished analyst Bill Rosser, are designed to help companies determine which BPM projects to pursue.

Of these seven guidelines (summarized here on eBizQ), amongst them “limited scope,” “high value,” “clear alignment to goals,” “the right metrics,” “goal agreement,” “enthusiastic business sponsor” and “business user engagement,” I want to focus my discussion on the last two.

Gaining the support of a “business sponsor” and engaging “business users” is integral to the success of any BPM project, but for reasons beyond those listed in the original press release. An enthusiastic business sponsor shouldn’t just be the senior executive who will benefit from the project – he should play a primary role in authorizing it, allocating budget for it and implementing it. Rather than be a “cheerleader” for the IT team presumably pursuing the BPM project in the first place, the business leader should be, well, leading it.

The second point of contention is the idea of engaging business users for BPM project success. In the press release, Gartner phrases the advantages of this course of action: “getting them on board typically means offering a fresh perspective on how to look at what they do in their jobs, and making a process view easy to understand and intriguing.”

The idea of encouraging IT to see things from a business user’s perspective is commonly advocated by a variety of BPM experts, not just Gartner, and on face it seems like a very civil, collaborative means of moving forward. My issue with IT trying to make things simpler and more “intriguing” for business users, however, is that it elicits at the very least a mild sense of condescension.

Forgive me if I’m examining this from too granular a perspective, but the vision that comes to mind when imagining IT professionals trying to position the jobs of business professionals in an interesting way is that of a big brother guiding his smaller, less experienced sibling and showing him how to tie his shoes (except in this case, the younger brother is 37 with a master’s degree in marketing). Ultimately, the idea of asking IT users to design a process view so that business users – those who directly drive the creation, implementation and successful resolution of business processes (and therefore BPM) – can understand them is patronizing.

This is the counter-productive result of putting one group in charge of addressing the needs of an entirely different group, and by no means is attributable to any one organization or influencer. I have a special appreciation for business users and their needs because I see the level to which they’re disenfranchised; it’s why my company’s focus is on serving the needs of business users by letting them build and automate every process, saving IT from having to pay a house call and letting both groups focus on their own jobs. The presumption that IT should influence BPM in any way is damaging for both IT and business users because it’s convoluted. Those who need the solution should be able to create the solution. IT professionals will welcome the freedom to focus on things that actually affect them.

In implementing BPM or any sort of organization-wide project, please remember that “business users” are simply professionals whose expertise is in a subject other than programming.