Global 360 introduces 'persona-based BPM'

Business process management software vendor Global 360 has released a new version of its Process360 suite, which takes the approach of process management in a new direction.

With BPM software successfully targeted at improving paper-intensive business processes, the Process360 10.0 solution is the industry's first, based on what Global 360 calls a 'persona-based' BPM approach.

This adds to the traditional process view by intensifying attention to the people working within the process. The overall result is a substantially improved value derived from business process automation.

The introduction of the solution comes on the back of two years of customer research conducted by user- and interaction-design experts. The research showed that while BPM systems have delivered on their promise of substantially improving paper-based processes through automation, more could be done.

Tim Stanley, Global 360 Regional Sales Director - Africa, explains: “These systems don't adequately address the needs of all of the people involved in a business process, and especially neglect process participants. The users are all but ignored.”

The persona-based BPM solution represents a dramatic shift in the typical approach of the BPM industry to process improvement initiatives. “Most efforts focus primarily on the productivity of the system developer, delivering tools that optimise the design and execution of process models. While this is an essential step in process automation, our research shows that the real benefit of a BPM system is related to how productive it makes process participants,” Stanley explains.

“Observing and interacting with our customers helped us pinpoint why BPM systems hit a wall in delivering on expectations for user productivity gains,” he continues. “Our industry has focused on process automation - how work moves through an organisation - at the expense of people productivity. And it is through people productivity that the work gets done.”

Stanley says the approach introduced by Global 360 puts the empowerment of the people who use the system at the forefront. “Persona-based BPM allows organisations to meet the specific needs of process participants and bring the entire productivity equation back into balance,” he notes.

An April 2009 survey of 781 business, government and IT managers revealed that just 24.3% of users are 'very involved' in process improvement and BPM system design. In addition, just 15% of survey respondents in organisations that have implemented BPM systems said process participant productivity increased more than 50%. The survey also showed that 84.7% of process participants 'often' or 'occasionally' design their own workarounds to their organisation's BPM systems to get their work done.

In short, this research shows that BPM initiatives are not achieving their full potential.

The persona-based approach starts with detailed models of what each type of user in a process needs to accomplish. With Global 360's approach, each user is provided with unique 'views' that include information, tasks and tools that support established patterns of behaviour, goals and motives.

Stanley explains that Global 360 set out to fundamentally change the economics of process improvement initiatives - and it believes it has achieved this goal.