Business Making Progress

Merry Christmas...unless Santa ordered your gifts from an online retailer

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become just as much a part of the Christmas holidays as stockings, midnight mass, a large man with a white beard in a red suit, candycanes and packed malls. North American retailers look to this season as their...well...Christmas. A time when they will push their finances into positive territory, make profits and fill coffers with cash for the upcoming year. We have all read about the horror stories that are also linked with this shopping season: stock outs, long lines, unruly clients and the list goes on.

Of course now you can avoid these hazards of leaving the safety of your home to do Christmas shopping and instead tackle your entire shopping list in the comfort of your home, while you are at work (take advantage of that high speed connection...I sure hope my boss isn't reading this) and even via your smartphone or tablet. It is so easy - use Google or Bing to find your items, do some price shopping, look for any deals on shipping or discounts, enter your credit card, hit "buy" and voila...your shiny new train set, book, tv, hand knit sweater, box of chocolates, lego city police station, iPad etc etc...will be dispatched to you. Most sites are now so kind as to tell you when is the absolute LAST moment you can order so that Santa will ensure you receive your desired items by Xmas.

But wait, it is not as simple as that. While the user experience has become much easier and truly allows a wide array of choices and prices, the fulfillment that empowers this process is only becoming more complicated. Bah humbug is what is usually muttered from the supply chains that have to fulfill these orders. Retailers start planning early in the year and are positioning inventories, in some cases, as early as August. Warehouses, transportation and store shelves assets have to be planned well in advance: what items will be in high demand, in what geographic locations, at what price...add to this the fact retailers are dealing with multiple suppliers who themselves have...you guessed it...multiple suppliers. Never mind the supply chain processes needed to build an Xbox, or packaging all the pieces for the Lego City Police station, determining the right combination of size and color for the Paul Smith shirt collection, and the list goes on. All these factors render the fulfilment process for all those holiday goodies a challenge to even the best of retailers and supply chains.

So no surprise that certain retailers are not able to fulfull their online orders, companies like Best Buy are finding themselves in a pinch. Looking to aleviate the strain on their brick and mortor stores (as well as push inventory back into distribution centers) they sought to push consumers online for their holiday shopping, however poor visibility and a lack of connection between their plans and execution led them to where they are today: not being able to fulfill client orders! Ouch. Best Buy, themselves, admitted that there were orders from as far back as November that could not be fulfilled.

As I thought about this I remembered a piece done by SC Digest in the spirit of the holiday, click here. The point of this "supply chain christmas carol" is the need for great connectivity between systems and suppliers and improved visibility into your channels. Do you have the inventory in your system but it is in the wrong location? Are demand and POS data showing you that an item you thought might be a good seller is becoming a red-hot item (think of the Furbies or Wii crazes from Xmas past) or is an item you thought would be a hit with 10 year olds a dud? 

During many conversations I have had this year, I get some looks like "I don't need that level of visibilty" when I talk about gaining real time visibility, but as the Best Buy case demonstrates if you are measuring visibilty "success" in terms of months maybe that is not the answer either.

Happy Holidays to all! And if Santa or whomever is bringing you a gift is a few days late, you can always blame their supply chain.

 

5 Signs You Need a Business Process-Enabled Application

As I have mentioned many times before in various forums, next generation business applications need to be able to quickly adapt to business changes. The old, traditional way of hard-coding workflows is just not acceptable anymore. There is a need to drive continuous change and process improvement even within pre-existing business applications.

But how can you tell whether or not your application is in need of an update? Here are five signs that you need a business process-enabled application:

1. You have more menu items then puzzle pieces.
   While using an application, users want to seamlessly get through their work with as few detours as possible. Unfortunately some applications make customers feel like they are putting together a puzzle – lots of pieces and no guidance as to where to begin. A business process-enabled application can guide users through the application with a customizable wizard-like interface, creating a much friendlier and better user experience.
2. Your workflows are set in stone.
   Hard-coding workflows into your application may have worked in the past, but today’s dynamic applications shouldn’t force users to follow a path that might not be correct and/or efficient. Today’s customers demand more flexibility and continuous process improvement, and business process-enabled applications allow you to tailor processes as needed.
3. Your customers are NOT all created equal.
   Ford used to say you can have your Model T in any color you like, as long as it’s black. Unfortunately, the same goes for many applications these days. A company will tell its customers or users that they can use the application to get the job done as long as they do X then Y then Z. That specific process might not make sense for each customer or user. They want to be able customize the workflow to work best for them, and by providing business process-enabled apps, you can provide the right solution for each specific need all with a single application.
4. Your IT team makes your business decisions.
   Business decisions should address customer and market demands, not what works best for the IT department. Yet many applications are updated based on what the IT department thinks is best. By adding business process management (BPM) capabilities to your existing application, you can drive better decisions that are acceptable to the business folks, all while adjusting quickly and easily to market changes.
5. Your application picture is worth a thousand lines of code.
   Many companies will collaborate with their customers or users to determine what processes and workflows should be included in an application and then capture them in some form (e.g. paper, whiteboard, graphical diagramming tool like Microsoft® Visio®). Next, they hand over the results to the developers and tell them to “build the application.” Ultimately, this means the work is done twice as the developers try to figure out how to code what they see. Business process-enabled applications let you quickly capture the process or workflow graphically and simply “plug it in” to the business logic of the application and you are off and running. Think Visio on steroids. That graphical “picture” is now worth much more than the 1000s of “words” or lines of code. It means you only do the work once and also gain better visibility into how the application functions without requiring a master’s degree in computer science. Plus, the business folks can stay engaged.

In summary, if any of these points resonate with you, maybe it's time to think about business process-enabling YOUR business application.

Thanks and, as always, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.

What I Learned from Bank CMOs

 

 

 

Earlier this month I attended American Banker’s Financial Services Marketing Symposium in New York. There were a variety of sessions that covered topics such as customer centricity, the role of social media and mobile channels and how to create a differentiated customer experience. All were informative and interesting.

 

As everyone in the industry knows, banks are feeling the (sometimes conflicting) pressures of regulatory requirements and having to differentiate themselves in a highly commoditized market. Mark Hendrix, SVP, Director of Marketing at Fifth Third Bank echoed recent regulatory requirements including Durbin, Reg E, Card Reform, and Dodd-Frank amendment – which alone has 1200 provisions written into it.  

 

According to Hendrix, banks are reaching the end of the golden era, they need to change the playing field by embracing the consideration of customer engagement, including all processes, services and events impacting their banking activity. He's right: they need to be more operationally responsive. And on the flight home, one of the points I continued to think about was his sentiment that what is driving the balance sheet is the interaction with the customer.... giving them the right answer in the right moment.

 

This encapsulates what banks need to do to stay competitive, increase customer loyalty, and grow revenue.  Just as our customers know, Progress can help.  

 

The Internet of Things Expands

A friend of mine recently told me he was surprised by an experience he had with some of his Apple products. He had downloaded a couple of games for his iPhone from the App Store.

The next time he opened his iPad, the games were already there, even though he hadn’t taken any action to sync them up. His two devices and the app-store cloud had gone off and talked amongst themselves and done whatever needed to be done.

Most of us simply accept the wonders of the Apple ecosystem without trying to figure out what’s behind it.  But my friend's experience is just one example of the growing value in empowering the “Internet of things” to drive business processes.

An increasing variety of non-electronic systems are starting to be transformed by inter-machine communications. Those communications control business processes that are becoming faster and more automatic. 

W. Brian Arthur, a visiting researcher with the Intelligent System Lab at the Palo Alto Research Center, recently wrote an article in McKinsey Quarterly, pointing out that underpinning the real world is a second, digital world that is growing exponentially. It is, in fact, controlling more and more of the real world.

Arthur uses the example of a package of machine parts being shipped into Rotterdam. Its arrival on a pallet is registered by RFID; typically the information is then forwarded to the freight terminal that will receive it next and the trucker who needs to carry it and the factory that is awaiting it.  All that information drives human activity, but the commands didn’t come from humans, they came from automated communications between machines. 

The communications among the machines make the whole process highly responsive.  People get involved only when they’re needed for tasks like driving the truck, or opening the loading dock door.

In the real world of airline delays, responsive process management is playing a growing role. New regulations fine airlines up to $27,000 per passenger for keeping passengers trapped in planes on the tarmac for more than three hours, even in cases of unavoidable storm delays. That has forced airlines to develop automated processes that recognize when a plane is within 30 minutes of that limit and start taking needed steps. If all gates are occupied, the airline must find a gate that is about to board, and delay that flight so the first one can return to the gate. It has to try to assemble a new crew to make sure flight-time limits aren’t exceeded. It has to start rebooking passengers with connections and identifying preferred fliers for special treatment. This kind of responsiveness demands electronic processes that tell humans what to do. 

Cisco estimates that by 2020, there will be 50 billion devices connected to the Internet. While many people will have more than one device they use to reach the Internet, most Internet-connected devices won’t be human-interface tools. They will be machines that will communicate with other machines in processes that only occasionally reach out for human intervention.

These tools promise to make our world work a lot better. In some cases they will improve efficiency, reduce pollution, cut costs and boost profits. In others they will amuse us, entertain us or monitor us.

The reality is that the tools themselves will mostly be useful by communicating with each other. Those communications will initiate processes. Businesses can’t rely on humans being able to absorb the growing amount of information and quickly respond to changing events. They need to use modern software technology to design responsive processes that will take the right actions. 

 

Consulting our crystal ball: IT Predictions for 2012

With the New Year just around the corner, many are busy thinking up unattainable diet and fitness resolutions, but we here at Progress have instead spent our time collaborating on more realistic forecasts for the coming year.

The team here at Progress put our heads together to produce our top predictions on how the role of IT within the business will change in 2012. An increased emphasis on cloud development, data security and social integration are all issues we expect organizations to prioritize over the next twelve months, but the list doesn’t stop there. Here’s a quick look at where we see business IT going in the coming year:

1. Cloud on the move. Organizations will increase deployment of the public cloud, escalating demand for cloud-enabled systems and applications.
2. Cost control evolves to efficiency. While cost was the main driver of cloud adoption in the past, the focus will now expand to include system efficiencies and time to market.
3. Data security starts with secure access. Who will have access to the data? How will it be encrypted? Who is the core owner? A strong driver that runs on a stable and tested data interface like ODBC is the best line of defense as application stacks continue to grow.
4. RIP: Non web-based applications. Approximately 80% of business apps will be web-based, and they need to be business process enabled, web-based and cloud-deployed.
5. IT border control. More than half of all content and functionality will be out of your organization’s control … in the hands of outsourcers, supply chain partners and external community databases. How will it be protected is the question du jour.
6. What’s in the fire hose? While we may see companies promoting fancy strategies for managing “fire hose data,” only those focused on responsive analytics will make meaning from the massive deluge.  
7. Limitations of freeware. This year, we will see greater support for ODBC and investment in data connectivity as companies look for dependable, robust ODBC drivers to handle financial transactions securely and quickly.
8. All hail the social enterprise. Social collaboration apps will dominate as employees look for ways to more effectively share and innovate across regions and lines of business; in fact, users will begin to expect these capabilities to be offered as standard, embedded features in business applications. 

And there they are: Progress’ IT predictions for 2012… how do they stack up to what you have in mind? We welcome comments below or on Twitter at @DrJohnBates or @ProgressSW

The top 10...or make that the top 12 thoughts for supply chain in 2012

Happy Holidays to all! I always enjoyed reading predictions for industries and technologies this time of the year, some times it is even more entertaining to read them years later when we can gasp in awe at our predictions or wonder what were we thinking...so here are some predictions for the supply chain space for 2012. I started writing these as a top 10 which became a top 12, a nice number for the year 2012.I really did not intend to have that many, I guess I was just feeling very "predictive."

Here are my predictions for supply chain in 2012, if you are interested in the more detailed article feel free to drop me a note:

 

1. Planning is dead. Long live planning. Even with the sophisticated planning tools available today, the best supply chain plans yield less than 50% accuracy. While the advances in planning brought the industry some remarkable promises it also proved how difficult it was to predict the future by simply relying on historical data. However, without going through the planning exercise, businesses and their supply chains cannot determine an end goal and path to get them there. So planning is not dead, but organisations should use it for the purpose it serves – setting the end goals and determining the direction in which to head.
2. Bidirectional elasticity a must. For many years the supply chain world has been ‘flat’ and materials are sourced from all corners of the world as organisations chase low cost manufacturing. However, some sacrifice lower costs to be closer to their customers and reduce time to market – for example, manufacturers moving plants from Asia to Mexico to speed the time from the production floor to the shelf in the North American market. Additionally, many of these “low cost” countries have themselves become the end client. To accommodate these changes, supply chains will have to demonstrate a level of bidirectional elasticity to address both the wide reach of production, as well as the growing mix of customers.
3. Floods, earthquakes and war force companies to rethink their supplier strategy, but at what cost? The Thai floods and tsunami in Japan have made organisations recognise the sensitivity and level of risk exposure supply chains have when reliant on a small number of vendors, especially those located in volatile environments. Organisations will attempt to avert risk by on-boarding new suppliers, however this will be a challenge as relationships and business trust are not developed overnight.
4. Predictive time horizons will shorten. With leaner supply chains, being able to understand and react to changing circumstances quickly is vital. Organisations will try to add short window predictive analytics for real-time event processing. Business Intelligence solutions promised the ability to take data, analyse it, understand correlations and provide the user with a deeper understanding of the cause and effect within the business, all that is important, however the speed at which it is done is crucial.
5. Desperately seeking centralised command and control.  The ability to have a seamless view of what is happening across the entire supply chain network will determine the success of organisations, and in 2012 supply chains will continue to seek a centralised system of command and control. Although technology is evolving to make a single view of the supply chain possible, the challenge of disparate parts and siloed systems remains.
6. Successful Companies will build a ‘Touchless’ supply chain. Rather than actually touch the product, large brands will simply orchestrate all the moving parts that comprise their supply chain. Apple is a great example, the company manages all the moving parts of its supply chain without actually “touching” the product at every stage. Companies will continue to gravitate towards this model, with some even outsourcing the management of the supply chain itself.
7. Logistics providers will evolve into information and management hubs. As supply chain managers continue to feel the pressure of a leaner supply chain, they will rely on logistics firms to do more with the information they hold. Logistics providers will be seen as the perfect outsourcer for the supply chain, as they are able to see the movement of inventory at every stage of the supply chain.
8. Finance will become increasingly involved in the supply chain. With the uncertain economic climate it is no surprise that the CFO’s office will become increasingly interested in the day-to-day activities of the supply chain function and interactions between these departments will intensify. Supply chains, at their core, are manipulating and managing inventory or better said – working capital. In many cases they have their foot on the accelerator, and the brake, that controls the velocity of free cash flows.
9. Discrete manufacturers will tackle the service side of the supply chain.  Parties in the supply chain network will continue to clear out carrying costs and leverage service as a competitive advantage. More and more companies, especially high technology manufacturers, are recognising the importance of better managing their services. Organisations will maximise the opportunity by managing inventory and human capital while orchestrating the service level agreements held with the client base. Smart companies will continue to push the knowledge they gain from this end of their supply chain all the way back to the beginning – and enable better forethought and planning.
10. Businesses will be able to tackle the ‘C-A’ in ‘P-D-C-A’ (Plan, Do, Check, Act).  The success of enterprises and their partners across an extended supply chain will depend even more on a manager’s ability to gain even more visibility across their supply chain.  In the iterative four-step ‘PDCA’ (plan-do-check-act) management process used in business for the control and continuous improvement of process and products, this enhanced visibility is only useful if these managers can act instantly on events as they occur. The ability to tackle the ‘checking’ - both on the events themselves and the correlating impact these events have across the supply chain - and to act almost simultaneously on these events will become even more important in 2012.You can read more about my thoughts on the evolution of PDCA in a prior post - click here.

Two more predictions to make it a dozen! 

11. Greater usage of unstructured data, think of social media will act as one of your leading indicators. Much like what AMR Research coined a few years ago – the Demand Driven Supply Chain will creep closer to reality as supply chains leverage increased access to unstructured data coupled with their existing understanding of how to maximize information from structured data. This combination will allow companies such as Best Buy to monitor in real time and anticipate which products will sell, allowing demand to drive their supply chain. The obvious first movers will be retail and CPG companies, but others like Dell and Verizon will continue to leverage these signals to manage the service side of their supply chain. Even life science companies will gravitate to usage of unstructured data as they can look to anticipate where flu breakouts or colds or rashes of sun burn will rise through unstructured data mining. Of course this will only increase the wave of Big Data that will only continue to grow.

12. Finally, that iPad, iPhone, Droid or even yes Blackberry are not just for Angry Bird, eMail and Netflix but will integrate into supply chain. We are all mobile now, whether you choose to embrace it or not. A September report from Forrester Research states that over 50% of all workers today are working either at multiple locations or only remotely. This spills over into the supply chain space.  Mobility will impact supply chains in two ways. First the growth of tablets and smartphones will make the number of nodes where decisions can be made and executed that much greater. The person loading a truck at the receiving dock can instantly update via a tablet, the factory worker can monitor the through put of her assembly line via a smart phone, the person doing inventory in the hospital will be able to scan with an QR code reader from their smart phone and the list goes on. Second, the explosion of mobility will add to the glut of data that can be had. Whether it is communicating directly with clients or positional data, the rise of mobile devices will continue to infuse more data into our systems.

 

What do you think? What do you see for the supply chain space in 2012?

If you like reading these, look for an upcoming podcast series where I sit down with Bruce Richardson, former AMR Research Chief Research Officer, to discuss his views on supply chain trends for 2012 and beyond.

Supply Chain Management in 140 Characters (or less)

A few weeks ago, I took part in a lively Twitter Q&A with our official Twitter feed, @ProgressSW. If you missed out on the real-time action, you can check out the discussion below. Looking forward to doing more of these and, as always, I welcome your thoughts on #scm topics, questions and issues to discuss in the future!

@progresssw
@gcourtin

1. What is supply chain responsiveness? #SCM
1.1.The ability to re-sequence your supply chain in a timely fashion - where timeliness is defined by the customer demand. #SCM

2. What are the pillars of a responsive supply chain? #SCM
2.1.PDCA - Plan, Do, Check, Act. Or having a closed loop process, monitoring and taking appropriate corrective actionswhen necessary. #scm

3. How does being able to predict and react quickly to shifts in the biz environment improve org performance? #SCM
3.1.You can stay ahead of competitors and are more responsive to your clients - leading to greater market share. #SCM

4. What are the simplest and best practices we can put into place to improve supply chain responsiveness?
4.1. A couple of levels
4.2.Simplest: gain end-to-end visibility. #scm
4.3.Best: Get a clear understanding of the impacts and be able to act. #SCM
4.4.One thing that cannot be overlooked is the change management side, your people must be of the mind set of wanting to improve. #SCM

5. What advantages can businesses achieve by improving supply chain visibility? #SCM
5.1. If you cannot see it or measure it, you cannot correct it. Cliché yes, but it's the reality. #SCM
5.2. second - 5. As supply chains get more lean and extended, ability to improve visibility is paramount. #SCM

6. What risks are companies facing if they don’t focus on improving supply chain visibility? #SCM
6.1. First – Relying too heavily on historical data to drive forward means you are flying looking backwards.
6.2. W/o full visibility you're at greater risk for misplaced inventory, unmet client needs, inability to properly meet SLAs. #SCM

7. Can you give some examples of companies that have successfully improved their supply chain processes to great biz benefit? #SCM
7.1. Of course the one we all think about - #Dell and #Apple who are constantly working on gaining thru their SC #SCM
7.2. But also the likes of #BestBuy, #Panasonic and manufactures like #Jabil. #scm

8. How has the role of planning in supply chain changed over the past decade? #SCM
8.1.Planning remains a vital cog in SCM, but it’s fallen short lofty aspirations proclaimed in the late 1990s. #scm
8.2.You need a well crafted plan to provide goals and direction as well as asset need – but its only the 1st step #scm

9. How can we leverage cloud to become more responsive? #SCM
9.1. Cloud impacts all forms of biz, SC being in the middle of this - process, apps and a wide swath of data is accsble #scm

10. How can we leverage #mobility to achieve supply chain responsiveness? #SCM
Mobility is a hot topic across the enterprise and SCM – it does bring a double edge sword #SCM
10.1. 1) a valuable source of real time information (structured and unstructured) #scm
10.2. second - a decision making tool pushed further into the enterprise, empowering a greater swath of the supply chain. #scm

11.What role do flexible applications play in our ability to achieve PDCA?
11.1. Flex and composite apps allow us to gain greater visibility and an ability to act, at a lower cost of ownership. #scm


12. What are the most important trends and shifts in the supply chain environment currently, forecasts for the future? #SCM
12.1. A couple of trends - better closed loop mngmt finally tying in planning and execution – true PDCA #SCM
12.2. Second – an ability to move towards a greater centralization of command and control #SCM
12.3. Finally the infusion of unstructured and structured data. #SCM

13. What are supply chain pros struggling most with today? #SCM
13.1. Lack of other pros! Technology remains a small part of the solution; people and change management is the most important. #SCM

14. What are the key steps we can take to overcomethese obstacles? #SCM
14.1. Education Education Education - Companies must recognize the importance and value of human assets. #scm

15. Why is real-time visibility in supply chains so difficult to achieve? #SCM
15.1. Biz must recognize the value of sharing information, first within their own depts then with partners and sources. #scm
15.2. Technology is only a tool to enable change management. #scm

16. What are the top 5 handles you follow for yoursupply chain news and analysis? #SCM
16.1. @bobferrari, @rwang0, @pjtec, @lcecere, @supplychainNtwk

In the words of Mark Allen, founder of Corticon

Corticon founder Dr. Mark Allen shares the full story behind rules management innovation:  

The idea for Corticon started back in 1995, during my medical training at UCLA.  As a part of government-funded research projects, I built rule-based systems to automate clinical decisions, such as what diagnostic tests to order, or treatments to render.  My research proved that physicians using these systems practiced a much higher quality of care at a lower cost (they ordered more of the appropriate tests and treatments, but far fewer of the inappropriate ones).  And, they were twice as fast in the encounter.  I was sold.  This was the future of medicine.

The problem was that the systems were prohibitively difficult to build and maintain.  Using the best available software development technologies, and a great team of programmers, the systems took years to develop.  Worse still, as soon as we finished development, the guidelines would change.  Even simple changes would take weeks to code, and would often break our systems.  I became very interested in this problem, and how to solve it.

I discovered ways to more easily visualize the logic as sets of interrelated business rules.  This provided a common language between subject matter experts, who defined the business rules, and programmers, who implemented the rules.  Ultimately, this helped accelerate application development and change cycles, and ensure the accuracy of the logic.

I saw the opportunity to transform not just healthcare delivery, but also decision-making within other industries.  In early 2000, I joined forces with Pedram Abrari, an expert in Enterprise Java, XML and AI technologies. He brought deep expertise in developing rule-based systems in financial services and HR applications as well as innovative ideas to incorporate into our product. Our founding team of expert engineers began building the Corticon solution, and today, Corticon products are used to power billions of decisions every day in diverse industries and applications.

Now, as part of Progress’ extensive BPM, BI and CEP offerings, Corticon BRMS has the ability to expand into new areas of decision management and responsive actions. We are excited to begin the next chapter of business agility and responsiveness with Progress Software. 

If you have questions or comments, feel free to contact me at maallen@progress.com. If you’re an existing Corticon customer, you can continue to use your existing Corticon contacts for support, professional services and sales, and if you’d like more information about our solutions, please contact a Progress/Corticon sales person through www.corticon.com.

 

Exciting news: Progress Software Acquires Corticon

Today, Progress announced the acquisition of Corticon, an industry leader in the Business Rules Management System (BRMS) market. I’m incredibly excited about this acquisition. I want to take a moment to talk about why we made the decision to acquire Corticon and why I’m so thrilled.

As you know, Progress is the “responsive business specialist”. A responsive business is one that can see how effectively it is running right now and over time, that can proactively address opportunities and threats, and can continuously improve the performance of its business operations. One key part of the responsive business is decision management – making decisions in the moment. And that’s what Corticon specializes in. Corticon delivers a business rules engine that automates business decisions, enabling more efficient and responsive operations. So whether it is a complex set of rules to decide if someone qualifies for an insurance policy, or to decide whether fraud is going on, or to decide on whatever business decisions need to be made, Corticon enables that complex decision logic to be defined simply and executed efficiently. Pretty useful stuff!

The really cool thing about Corticon is that it is safe to put in the hands of a pure business user. Corticon offers graphical tools to compose rules that can automatically detect conflicts and loss of integrity in rule sets at design time. This contrasts with having to do comprehensive run-time testing using other rule approaches. With Corticon, you can detect problems before you go live. You have the necessary guard rails to de-risk the system and to improve time-to-value. That fits perfectly into Progress’ vision of empowering the business user alongside the business analyst and IT user.

Corticon will be integrated into Progress’ RPM Suite. This will combine Corticon’s BRMS with Progress’ Business Process Management (BPM), Business Event Processing (BEP), Business Transaction Assurance (BTA) and Business Analytics. Through the Progress Control Tower, the vision is that a single command and control interface can provide visibility and control across your business. As IDC’s Maureen Fleming said, "high quality and comprehensive rules and decision services capabilities are required for a best-of-breed platform." And we believe Corticon is the best rules engine out there. Also the Corticon team are fantastic and we welcome them whole heartedly into the Progress family.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to take a minute to view this video from Dr. Mark Allen, founder of Corticon. You’ll agree, he had remarkable vision in 2000 when he started the company. And by integrating it with our RPM suite, we are now offering customers a comprehensive single vendor solution.

We’re excited to add Mark Allen and the rest of his team at Corticon to the Progress family and are looking forward to offering our customers a better way to manage their businesses in real-time.

Banks Need Transaction-Level Insight Into Mainframe Systems to Meet New Transparency Demands

Recently I participated in the first installment of a webinar series  hosted by Bank Systems and Technology. I was joined by Greg MacSweeney of Bank Systems & Technology and analyst Gareth Lodge of Celent, and we discussed the need for banks to have transaction-level insight into mainframe systems to meet customer, partner and internal demands.

We are living in an increasingly complex world, especially in the financial services space where regulations continue to tighten. Banks must increase analysis to meet this heightened demand for reporting and compliance, and to do this we need real-time access and visibility into all transactional data. As Gareth said during our discussion, “Mark Twain said we can count on two things in life, death and taxes, and now we have a third: regulation.”

In addition to meeting these new requirements, customers are increasingly expecting immediate and detailed response and communication from their bank. However, this type of service requires access to transactional-level data in real-time. This is a multi step process and is not automated, so how do we get it done in a timely matter for the customer especially when this data is hard to find and difficult to interpret?

Many banks still maintain complex system architectures comprised of old and new mainframes- many of which are very difficult to access and navigate. It’s like operating in the dark, where there is very little transparency, creating frustration for IT departments.

In the future, we hope to see banks address some of these challenges with new technology. In order to meet new regulatory demands, banks need access to transactional level data, which will improve responsiveness and ultimately customer service. However, finding transactional level data on the mainframe and being able to act upon it poses quite a challenge from a business and operational perspective.

So how do we do that? Stay tuned for my next post, highlighting second installment of our webinar series. I welcome your comments here, as well.