Business process automation (BPA) is, and has always been, an evolving industry, with the software constantly striving to keep up with the demands of business. Those demands increase regularly too as clients aim for faster cycles and guarantees in terms of service, timely delivery, quicker turnaround times for any given process and general adherence to service level agreements. This is the view of Rainer Gaier, managing director of enterprise business process automation and business intelligence specialist Ovations Technologies.
Gaier says BPA can start off as a small project such as automation of a specific department within a company. "Then a bigger perspective develops, involving the effect on other departments or even the whole organisation. The next step is to look beyond the organisation and ask how BPA affects the other parties involved in the process - clients and suppliers for, example. The true value of BPA can be achieved when there is a total end-to-end solution - from the client and all its processes right through to the processes of the suppliers and counter-parties."
With an appropriate system in place, the process can be tracked at any point for ongoing updates with regards to its progress. A good example is the insurance industry. A customer submits a claim to a broker, who then sends it off to the insurance company. Once approved, information could be forwarded to the panelbeater. This exchange of information can all be done electronically, with automatic feedback, notification of receipt or general update after each step has been completed, eg parts ordered, spray painting completed etc, either via e-mail or even SMS.
A practical alternate option is for the customer to initiate an inquiry via the Internet, access the service provider`s site with appropriate security and a reference number and get an exact status of the progress of the job. "There is no reason why this cannot be achieved," says Gaier. "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has defined standards for all the different interoperability methods required to perform cross-system integration. It is now just a matter of the various suppliers adopting those standards as part of their product sets, thereby enabling users to communicate with the outside world. So the ground rules have been prepared and the foundations are there, companies now need to embrace them and make it happen."
According to Gaier, there are already a number of products that support an externalised model. "Core to the success of an integrated suite, is an enterprise application interface component such as Microsoft`s BiZTalk server," he says. "It forms the hub in the middle of the solution and receives messages from a variety of sources, then, based on the nature of message it makes a decision as to which sub-system that message`s destination really is, transforms the message into the format that the host system requires and sends it on.
"Extensible Markup Language (XML) is the format used for the structure of these messages so systems that are XML-compliant can receive the messages, making for great interoperability between systems. XML defines the message structure as well as the content of the message that is being sent. The industry is rapidly moving towards this method and most of the new solutions will feature XML-compliancy, and many of those legacy systems that do not support the XML standard can be supported by means of XML interface modules or adaptors to transform the messages into their native formats.
"The ultimate goal in business process improvement is end-to-end processing, encompassing the complete value chain, and to achieve this participating companies must be able to process tasks in a predictable and consistent method."
With this goal in mind, Ovations Technologies is working on developing business process implementation methodologies with which aims to fast track BPA solutions for large organisations` unique requirements. "The company is also determined to improve the roll-out successes and speed up the various phases involved in BPA projects," says Gaier. "Our goals include defining, proving, documenting and publishing the new methodology and then finally putting it into practice."
OvaFlo - a suite of business process automation applications with the emphasis on the work management portal, written in-house at Ovations Technologies - has already gone a long way to help achieve rapid deployment. OvaFlo is a high-performance Web-based solution that can be deployed at an enterprise or departmental level; it works in conjunction with various workflow, imaging and document management solutions to speed up the business processes.
"Often our starting point is to educate potential candidates to the benefits and details of business process automation, followed by determining their requirements as accurately as possible to avoid disappointment and even rework at a later stage.
"The acceptance of BPA is picking up as the market now has a better understanding of the solutions on offer as well as the benefits that provide real returns on investment. Companies are always thinking of new ways to provide more value to their customers and therefore BPA solutions need to evolve accordingly."
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