This opportunity ends on March 2nd, so don’t get caught posing  

See the link for all the BPM Summits for 2012 http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2011/12/01/book-the-dates-in-your-diary-for-the-upcoming-bpm-summits/

The Situation:

Imagine an influx of complex work that requires specific advanced skills at specific times. I am ware of several implementations where organizations are faced with the daunting task of keeping the skills up to date in real time while dynamically allocating work based on incoming streams, incoming events, timing based SLAs, and temporary chokepoints.

The Answer:

Several organizations, that I am aware of,  have BPM technology that evaluates the complexity of the work (case) and assigns work to the best person with the skills necessary to complete the case or a portion of the case. When the best resource is not available, the next best resource is selected (maybe just completed training with no experience). When the work is accomplished and the case is judged to be a high quality state, the resource skills inventory is annotated to now include the latest experience for that resource. If a case gets hung up it also goes through the same triage process.

Net; Net:

This is a great use of BPM that leverages data driven allocation and near real time updating. While this is not intelligent business operations, per see, it’s on the road to applying more experience(represented by dynamic data) to work allocation and intelligence.

The above success story has been summarized and made anonymous to get the essence of the success documented quickly. The source of this success story is from two technology providers (Appian and Kofax/Singularity). Each have customers leveraging this approach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdq7q9cVJg&list=UUSNX50LYGXWV_e5UWZGPGbw&index=1&feature=plcp

Managing the Surgical Theaters:

The first step in this intelligent operation revolves around looking forward to the scheduled surgical procedures for the coming day. The first step is to use simulation to schedule the surgical theaters and to make sure the right resources are in the surgical theaters at the precise moment they are needed. Patients and doctors are the primary scheduling components, but there are specialty nurses, attendants and workers that need to be scheduled in sequence. Surgical theaters need to be prepared for each medical procedure and different procedures require different equipment and different sub-procedures. Early every day a simulation is run with resulting charts to show the optimal sequence and overlaps in a time line fashion.

Managing the People Involved:

Each patient, doctor and worker has there individual time line with each staging area and surgical theater shown as a “going in” plan for every individual possible. If everything goes to plan the resulting simulation is the guide for optimal resource utilization with minimal impact on the patient while being cognizant of leveraging the rarest skills the best way for any given day.

Managing the Dynamic Surgical Procedures:

What make this IBO better than those I have seen in the past in the surgical management process is the ability to tag every person with a tracking device to watch the actual movement and completion points (milestones) with visible tracking on top of the original plan. So the state of the patient, doctors, nurses and support staff is know in “real time”. If something happens that takes the plan in an unexpected direction (longer procedure; patient reaction, worker delays and equipment issues), the plan can be re-simulated based on the complications/deviations and project a new plan in “near real time”. 

Net; Net:

This results in a safer and better experience for the patient in tandem with dynamic resource scheduling. Going forward each piece of equipment and it’s state will be known to predict potential unexpected/undesired states. For instance each scalpel will be tracked and it’s state of sterilization and factored into the original plan as well as the “real time” adjustments.

The above success story has been summarized and made anonymous to get the essence of the success documented quickly. The source of this success story is a technology provider named Bosch/Inubit. 

The iBPMS: Really?

With the emergence of social, mobile, presence and the cloud more people intelligence can be mustered to decisions, policies/rules, goals and radical process improvements instead of just polishing the stones (necessary, but not sufficient).  In addition, machine intelligence can be embedded and/or surround processes to assist the humans in a near real time fashion. While both of these trends will be strong for 2012 and beyond, the addition of context sensitivity/pattern recognition will be enhanced to detect expected and unexpected conditions in and around the processes. This will allow businesses to be intelligently reactive and proactive in certain situations.  The iBPMS contains strong aspects of all three, so this will become reality for some in 2012 and many in the up coming future. If you want to read Gartner’s view of the iBPMS see the following blogs and the research note entitled “Selection Criteria Details for Intelligent Business Process Management Suites”, published November 17th, 2011 as G00219274.

Additional reading:

http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=256&mode=2&PageID=2350940&resId=1852115&ref=QuickSearch&sthkw=sinur

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2011/08/08/next-gen-bpm-making-your-processes-smarter/

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2011/08/23/next-gen-bpm-eye-candy-for-all/

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2011/08/15/next-gen-bpm-encouraging-your-processes-to-listen/

Net; Net:

The iBPMS is not for every organization, at the moment, but sooner of later organizations will be pushed to add intelligence to their processes, even if it is adding real time BI. For organizations that are not interested in adding intelligence into their processes, the traditional markets of BPMS, workflow and integration can help organizations to save money and make progress.  Over time the business pressure will drive organizations to the iBPMS.

1. Recovery from some real nasty health issues and back to full steam

2. Sherry and I are at the 13 year mark of our marriage

3. The kids are all gainfully employed and the grandchildren are doing well

4. Andrew took a couple of new contracts as an Art Director in the LA area (animation for games under NDA)

5. Despite a six month forced time off; the art work continues

6. Leading a small group in our home (church related)

7. Won an art accolade and put up my new web site. http://www.james-sinur.com/career/

Paintings:

Digital Art

Andrew hits hard on three basic beliefs, listed below. I would encourage you to read the article as it is crisp and concise besides being worth the read.

Measure what matters to customers,
Forge essential partnerships, and
Promote an enterprise view.

http://tinyurl.com/cog82b7

14 – 15 March, London, UK gartner.com/eu/bpm

People, Politics, Process:  Breaking Down the Barriers to Enterprise Success

For those new to BPM, the Summit will help you to take the first steps, establish the skills required, and identify the right technologies. For those who are more experienced, the Summit will provide visibility into the future, identify the next generation of BPM and help you leverage new approaches such as Social BPM, Pace Layering and Intelligent Business Operations.

Key topics

· Dealing with Politics and Silos

· Organizational Change Management

· BPM and Mobile

· Cloud Impact on BPM

· Intelligent Business Operations

The Summit will help you to advance your BPM projects, improve your own skills and deliver truly transformational BPM to your organization.

Ways to register

Web: gartner.com/eu/bpm Email: emea.registration@gartner.com  Phone: +44 20 8879 2430

Track 1: Setting Out on the Right Path for BPM success

Track 2: The Pragmatist’s Guide to Optimizing Business Outcomes with BPM

Track 3: Next Generation BPM

Track 4: “How To” Track – BPM in Practice: Workshops and Roundtables  

London UK            March 14th – 15th

Baltimore MD      April 25th – 27th

Sydney AU            August 20th – 21st

The details will be forthcoming and may vary slightly from location to location

Net; Net:

I look forward to seeing a number of you, so we can discuss your wins and challenges

BPM Accelerates:

The great points here surround the fact that business professionals can iterate processes to get the maximum benefit balance amongst all the participants of the business process through intelligent application of skills and resources in a near real time fashion. This is particularly true because of the ease of adding new resources dynamically. In addition the development methods leverage incremental “do it, try it, fix it” approaches that lash up well modern development methodologies. The other leverage factor here is that BPM is model driven in that you can model a user interface and process flow quickly and get to executing code in a “New York Minute”.

BPM Innovates:

The great points here surround the fact that business professionals across the value chain can collaborate on differentiating processes for all the organizations participating in the said  value chain. This starts at design time and continues through execution time. In addition, with the advent of mobile, social, cloud,  embedded process  intelligence, complex events processing and policy/rule management organizations can be kept in the sweet spot of leveraging processes for intelligent business operations and reaping maximum benefits over time. This allows organizations to morph and change to shifting needs and goals.

Net; Net:

BPM does both. I can’t wait to see what organizations to with business process management going forward.