Welcome! My name is John Morris and this website is all about a business revolution enabled by technology, including especially technology around "BPO", "BPM", "data services" and "presentation".
Using journalism as my model, I want to share what I learn about the potential, the successes, the reality and the dysfunctions of this new technology-enabled business world. And luckily, my role as a front-line sales person and evangelist for business technology-based projects gives me a great perspective "at the rock face". In addition to that bottom-up perspective, I'm also able to attend both industry and academic conferences, which along with wide reading and conversation provides the theory that helps make sense of daily practice.Narrative, Ontologies-of-the-Personal, Hot Topics, BPM, Simulation
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Both big data and jelly fish can be very beautiful. But if not treated with respect, you might get stung. And how you get stung, at least where data is concerned, relates to the other similarity between jellyfish and big data, which is a lack of bones, or structure. To be in any way useful, big data needs to be used alongside an interpretive structure or model – the “bones” if you will, without which big data is as amorphous and useless as a jellyfish. The necessity of having this model is a critical challenge for any organization seeking to derive benefit from big data. Let's prove the point about the necessity of interpretive structure with the simplest possible model. Consider the results of a query on a joined accounts receivable table. You may have columns representing company names, owed amounts and due dates. And the meaning of the table is completely clear, but only because you know the column headers and table name, which comprise a simple "model" providing the meta-data meaning of the table. Without this "interpretive model" the table could just as easily imply accounts payables as account receivables! . . . read more |
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What is it helpful to think of big data as "like a jelly fish"?
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Lost business. The phrase strikes a chill into any CEO or line-of-business ("LOB") executive.
A short answer is this: "In a competitive world, and for both technical and economic reasons, BPM is likely to play an increasingly important role in customer experience". This blog entry explores this proposition in more detail. But first let's qualify our short answer above by defining the terms "customer experience" and "BPM". (For the purposes of this discussion, we'll focus on BPM as "technology" or "software" and on customer experience as "customer experience system"). . . . read more |
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On his popular
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No business person really cares about technology except insofar as that technology helps get the job done. But there's one technology that's different.
Asking this question is audacious. But important. Here's the short answer: BPM projects fail at a rate higher than tolerable (thus the question) because BPM projects, being fundamentally different than all other IT projects, are not yet sufficiently supported culturally, organizationally and economically. In particular, a BPM projects puts pressure on business executives for detailed process leadership, a time-based pressure without precedent and for which many or even most executives are not ready. The first response to ebizQ's question, from Emiel Kelly, alludes to these issues with the statement that BPM is seen as "a project, not as daily business". Subsequent comments by other contributors elaborate in worthwhile ways. But it's worth making Kelly's "not as daily business" explanation more explicit. Specifically, from the original answer above, what does it mean that BPM projects are "fundamentally different", and why is this difference important? And what is "cultural, organizational and economic" support?
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On his
Note that that your host is not making any assumption that corporate size is necessarily a bad thing. Although it's a separate topic, and acknowledging that there are clearly many downsides to large organizations, there are all also examples, supported by research, showing that large organzations can also have many positive attributes, and that by
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Geoffrey Moore of "
In the context of several recent banking debacles, a question on the definition of system robustness is a good question. It's a good question because at least one of the UK banking failures appear to have happen at the intersection of technology, business process outsourcing and business process management. The failure was very high profile because thousands of customers were reported to have been locked out of their accounts for extended periods of time. (This failure was not the same issue which was the trigger for the ebizQ thread; however interestingly, both issues conceivably involve business process.) Why is "robustness" a good question in the circumstances? Because the ostensible failure of consumer banking services could correctly be characterized as a situation where the system "lacked robustness under conditions of outsourcing." The statement "conditions of outsourcing" gets to the formal definition of robustness. |
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On his
There are in fact very significant differences between best-in-class and laggard organizations concerning how contingent work is managed. Best-in-class managers get much better results (over 50% higher reporting program objectives achieved), better contingent workforce cost control and most important, significantly better overall organizational efficiency. This last benefit gets to the heart of the whole contingent workforce business case. Why bother with all the effort and management time to organize contingent workforce scaling if your organization does enjoy overall improved efficiency as a result? In a world of intense competition, contingent workforce scaling makes intuitive sense, and it's not surprising the Aberdeen Group has identified characteristics of the organizations that "do contingent" better. But why highlight these insights in this Decision Models forum on business process management technology?
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According to the analysts at
BPM software advocates need look no further than the regular reports from the analysts at Aberdeen Group for terrific examples of BPM in action. The latest example, by Analyst William Jan, is AP Invoice Management in a Networked Economy (you can acquire this report without charge for a limited time via the embedded URL; registration is required). The world of business process is about the processes at the core of any business. And for this reason unless you are an insider in any given function or vertical market, it's difficult to acquire in-depth knowledge about business processes in real life. Organizations tend to be reticent about revealing the secrets about how they do business; and as well, in any given function the processes reflect the complexity of corporate life and one is not likely to master that complexity over night. So, for these reasons, the work by Aberdeen Group is very welcome. Their analysis work focuses especially on identifying best practices in various corporate functions, such as sales, accounts payables, inventory management, and so on. And although Aberdeen Group includes technology in its analyses, their work is refreshingly "business first". The case of Accounts Payable is a nice example of an end-to-end process analysis of an important corporate function. Using A/P practices as a measure, and compared to "laggards", best-in-class organizations manage their A/P to deliver much better cash flow, which can have a huge impact on bottom lines.
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On his ebizQ blog, Peter Schooff asked an important question (June 2012): "Has social BPM fallen short of expectations so far?" If you are exploring the promise of social BPM, the answers to Peter's questions are worth reading. Your host believes there are two key challenges before we will realize the promise of social BPM: (1) a technology challenge and (2) a governance challenge. Here are your host's comments, mirrored from ebizQ: Some of the challenge around social BPM is associated with expectations and hype contrasted with the immaturity of social BPM software technology. There is a huge amount of research around "work", "narrative", "story" and "annotation", but that research has not truly been engineered yet into social BPM products. The result is that most current social products are not built on a solid model of how narrative works in the human mind and as communication transactions between actors. And typically, a model of "work", i.e. what should be the subject of conversation, is also missing. But, over time we should see these challenges addressed, and surely the result will be very exciting. However, I believe there's another challenge beyond technology, which may be more difficult to solve. This is the challenge of "social technology governance".
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Your host started his IT career at IDC, in the previous millennium. Working for IDC gives one a perspective on analyst relations with vendors and end-users. Analysts are little bit like movie reviewers -- they like technology as much as movie reviewers like movies. And the economics of the technology analysis business is such that it's difficult for analysts not to be cheerleaders for technology, in the same way that movie reviewers find it difficult not to be cheerleaders for movies, or, considering the subject of this website, cheerleading for BPM software.
And thereby submit that enterprise to the will of executive leadership? John Zachman, well-known evangelist for enterprise architecture and originator of the Zachman “Framework for Enterprise Architecture”, says “yes”. Canada’s DAMA affiliate IRMAC scored a coup last week by hosting Mr. Zachman on his road show for an update of the famous Zachman Framework. Mr. Zachman gave a comprehensive tour of the Framework, the reasoning behind it and the advantages that adopting organizations might enjoy. Mr. Zachman’s key message was that the application of normalization and ontological modeling to low-order, high-entropy organizations – i.e. organizations which are failing due to high cost structures and sclerotic inflexibility -- would reverse that state. The sciences of organizational normalization and ontological modeling, defined by the Zachman Framework, unlock enormous benefits for organizational stakeholders. |
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The promise of BPM technology is only realized within the context of traditional management skills and discipline. Ironically, it is an erroneous common pattern of “magical thinking” that impedes success in both traditional- and new "BPM technology"-enabled management environments. Intervention Warning Against Overselling BPM Technology
On a discussion hosted by the BP Group on LinkedIn, member Mr. Ajit Kapoor has made an excellent intervention in this discussion. Our root discussion concerns an “experimental BPM technology sales pitch” which posited that “for the first time in history, we have a technology that is explicitly about taking your vision about how your business operates, and building tools that directly make it possible to run your business, according to that vision." Specifically Mr. Kapoor has articulated a powerful position that new technologies such as BPM software should not be pitched as "nirvana". And his riposte comes with powerful credibility based on his achievements and career. |
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On the LinkedIn BP Group, in response to your host's item
Below is a draft BPM sales pitch which is also an inventory of BPM concepts. It's all about business motivation, and revealing the power of BPM. Is this how you see BPM? If not, why not? BPM Provides The Tools For The Job, Now Business process management is about the technology of the work you do. For the first time in history, we have a technology that is explicitly about taking your vision about how your business operates, and building tools that directly make it possible to run your business, according to your vision. All other technology is really mostly about technology and bits and bytes and machines talking to machines.
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According to the consulting company, at one representative global firm, 75% of inside sales reps' time was spent not selling! This frustrating sales situation is not uncommon, despite what McKinsey says is "the guiding principle of all sales operations", which is "to maximize time for selling and relationship building". Of course sales people and sales executives, and probably even general management, all know that sales people should be selling. But given that sales people everywhere are facing similar issues, it's helpful to have a spotlight on the situation. As a professional B2B sales person focused on BPM, your host is naturally interested in the subject of the McKinsey article -- and how BPM is one point of leverage for improving sales operations. The McKinsey article also raises larger questions about sales management; your host has now commented on these issues in the letter below. You can read the whole McKinsey Quarterly article and follow up reader comments including your hosts' comment, at the following URL. (Please note you will need to register, although there is no charge.)
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The boffins at McKinsey have just issued a stirring call to "free the reps"!
BPM prospects often ask a question about "simulation". Our standard answer is "simulation is best done by a best-of-breed Why is the BPM business simulation question so frequently asked? The reason is that the question is directly related the two main business cases for BPM. BPM is justified either on efficiency terms or on business model terms. The BPM efficiency business case is the same IT efficiency business case that has driven most IT investments for two generations. Efficiency in the best of situations is about dramatically reducing costs for a given business process; in the worst of situations, it's about "paving the cow path"! |
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business simulation product, outside of BPM". This answer is usually delivered after some qualification to discover what the prospect means by "simulation". Some of the time the prospect is concerned about technical simulations and the regular process of software QA. But the majority of the time the prospect wants to be able to do business what-if simulations to answer questions such as "how many warehouse staff should we have" or "should we add a new warehouse in the Midwest".
You'd expect the BPM-savvy practitioners and evangelists such as found on LinkedIn's "BP Group" to be able to easily come up with a good definition of BPM. A specific and actionable definition. You'd be wrong. In a BP Group forum discussion entitled "Can Anyone Make One Sentence Describing BPM", most of the answers were generic and non-actionable and often sounded like mission statements -- the kind of feel-good mission statements that are ridiculed by cynical business writers -- or worse the statements were self-referential ("BPM is about improving your processes"). In fairness. participants shared many worthwhile insights. It's just that the there was a general and disappointing failure to answer the question in a useful way. Let's look at what would be a good top-level definition of business process management -- and then why a good definition is important. On the forum, Kenneth Beard came the closest to a good description of BPM with his "scientific management of work activity to enable informed decision-making", although I would make the case that final phrase in this definition is outside the scope of a definition of BPM. Your host proposed the that BPM can be simply defined as "the modelling and management of repetitive work", which is certainly not original, but this concise definition emphasizes a fundamental concept, specifically the centrality of the question of work to the definition of BPM. |
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Dynamic BPM, along with Adaptive Case Management, is the name given to a growing body of practical knowledge about building better software for business process. The trouble with much of existing BPM is that poorly done, the implementation of BPM can contribute to a reduction in organizational flexibility. The wags have it as "pouring concrete over your business" -- as if enough concrete wasn't already there from the acquisition of ERP systems. It's fair to say that no one is to blame for this -- and ER
What is the secret to great software for human beings? Not just any secret, but the secret? The qualifier "for human beings" is an important caveat to this dramatic question -- because there is lots of great software which performs work not strictly for human beings. For example, powerful mainframe software manages the insurance contracts for millions of insured people. While the ultimate beneficiaries of such marvellous technology are human beings, the sorting and update and retrieval of these records could better be described as "for the organization". Software "for human beings" implies software that is directly and specifically intended to augment the brain power of an individual human. Examples of software "for human beings" include email clients, contact managers (CRM), personal information managers (PIMS), word processing etc., graphics editors. The secret to great software for human beings is support for narrative. Narrative, which is a more formal way of saying "story telling", is about the meaningful progression of events organized starting from a single point of view. Stories can utlimately weave together many individual stories, but the building block of narrative has to be the story from one person's point of view. . . . read more |
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Almost 10 years ago, your host attended FOIS '01, in Ogunquit, Maine. Having been introduced to the world of software ontologies in conversation with Prof. Graeme Hirst of the University of Toronto, your host developed a serious interest in the world of ontologies, on both a personal and a business level.
Over the course of 10 years it is possible to observe that as a subject of serious ontological engineering research, the autonomous human actor has gone from "invisible" in the years 2000 and 2001 to "slightly more visible" now, in 2010. It's an interesting phenomenon how "the human" is, in most software schemes, what can only be described as "the least privileged subject". It is true that If one removes "autonomous" from the formula "autonomous human actor", the "human actor" at least is privileged, but in your host's view, generally only as a captive agent of the organization. . . . read more |
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His specific interest in ontologies is modelling of the work activities of the "autonomous human actor". A short essay on this interest can be found here: 
