Business Making Progress

What is RPM?

This week Progress Software end users and partners worldwide gathered in Boston to get some actionable insights that will help them lower costs, raise efficiency, improve customer experiences, and drive revenue. Our attendees have the ability to chose from over 100 sessions designed specifically for business and IT professionals. One of our breakouts is dedicated to Responsive Process Management (RPM) which is a topic we’ve been talking about a lot over the past year. The introduction of RPM has stimulated discussions around our hallways and within the industry on what RPM exactly is…

• Is RPM the Next-generation BPM?
• Is RPM a totally new and different concept?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Below are two articles written by Daniel Schlosky. Dan is a technology writer with more than two decades of experience writing for companies like Sun Microsystems, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Western Digital. He’s also written for publications such as Datamation, Silicon Strategies, and in-house publications for Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments.

Take a minute to look at both perspectives and TELL US WHAT YOU THINK!

To share your thoughts, click the Comments link below.

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BPM Is Still Evolving

In the early 1990s, the first Business Process Management (BPM) systems could track processes with only limited scaling and relatively few users. Adequate for tracking accounting or claims processes, they were not yet up to handling an entire company’s purchasing system that services tens of thousands of people. Since then, BPM has evolved into much more powerful and mature systems. They all now include process engines, process modeling, asset repositories, etc. Current large, robust enterprise BPM systems have great complexity and functionality, while web-based departmental BPM systems are usually simpler but still highly proficient.

Today’s BPM systems are extremely powerful and capable. They focus mainly on cutting costs by making companies more efficient through iterative, continuously improving processes. While BPM systems have come quite far, they are still advancing. Several new trends are making them even more powerful and useful.  

One new trend that goes beyond cost cutting is finding new revenue sources. For example, Progress BPM enabled an airline to expand its revenue stream by building an application to connect to alliance partner airlines. The customer, after paying a small insurance fee, is assured that if a flight cancellation occurs, the airline will automatically rebook him/her on the next alliance partner’s flight. It would also automatically change hotel reservations, cancel and rebook rental cars, etc. Happy customers are now saved from the hassle of rescheduling everything themselves – and the airline adds to its bottom line.

A second important trend is including complex event processing in BPM systems. With this capability, managers can monitor streams of activities such as stock market transactions, airline scheduling, and communications ordering systems. One basically searches for patterns and anomalies within those patterns. Although some other BPM systems may also deal with events, Progress BPM, when combined with the company’s Apama business event processing (BEP) platform, sets it apart in both power and performance.

A third new trend is the mobility enablement of BPM systems. These systems can now interconnect with intelligent handheld devices to speed up handling tasks with greater user convenience. For a BPMS process tracking purchase requests and approvals, managers can now actually respond to them on their iPods or blackberries without having to fully log onto financial applications on their laptops. This new mobile capability both simplifies the approval process and saves time.

Yet another significant new trend is enabling greater collaboration, especially in process modeling. Coupled with the new mobility, this is an even stronger improvement. The objective is to have managers in different locations review and provide input for the process model and simulation. Having this collaborative capability in the process planning stages is a major benefit.

These four innovations of the latest BPM systems – finding new revenue sources, events processing, enabling mobility and facilitating collaboration – are the leading new trends in the ongoing evolution of BPM. 

 

The Progress® RPM Suite – Is It Really About BPM?

What exactly is Responsive Process Management (RPM)? Is it a natural extension of BPM, or a totally new and different concept? Analysts and customers generally agree that RPM is an evolution of high-end BPM Gartner talks about Intelligent Business Operations as a development from BPM for responsive operations. Forrester refers to Business Transformation and IDC to Decision Management as expansions of BPM. Others, mainly business rather than technology professionals, see RPM as a completely new domain, one with greater ROI and faster time to value.

A recent Vanson Bourne independent research study found that most businesses are unable to respond to market or customer changes quickly enough to be competitive. RPM triumphs over this challenge with a very high level of operational responsiveness – the ability to sense and respond to changing conditions and customer interactions as they occur. If not totally new, RPM raises its responses to a whole new level of power and possibility. Savvion BPM is an integral part of Progress’ RPM Suite, but so are the company’s Apama business event processing (BEP) platform and Actional business transaction management (BTM) solution. To cap these three systems, the Suite adds its new groundbreaking Progress Control Tower, a first-of-its kind interactive business control panel that ties the three systems together for unprecedented responsiveness capabilities.

The Control Tower is the central RPM control point for

• Modeling and simulating processes
• Automatic documenting of processes
• Drilling down and analyzing information
• Cross-collaborating with team members
• Taking corrective steps as needed
• Continuously improving processes
• Reducing risk

So with all this said, which is it – a natural evolution of BPM or a totally new concept? Convincing arguments can be made for each view. If it’s an extension of BPM, it goes much further by adding real-time, end-to-end visibility into events and applications; enabling immediate response to situations when they arise; allowing users to capitalize on opportunities; and empowering business users with greater control for continuous business improvement.

What do you think? To share your thoughts, click the Comments link below.

 

Do you know Dr. John Bates?

If you don’t, get to know him. Though not a native of Massachusetts, it’s safe to say, “he’s wicked smaaht”. Not only is he smart, he’s really a genuine, nice person.  Recently, Dr. John Bates was named as one of the Top 10 Innovators of the Decade for Capital Markets, in which he has an extensive background. He helped pioneer new techniques in algorithmic and high frequency trading, real-time risk, and market surveillance. He was also a co-founder of Apama, a complex event processing (CEP) technology provider that Progress Software acquired in 2005.

Last year John became a member of the newly established Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) for the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The CFTC is an independent agency with the mandate to regulate commodity futures and options markets in the United States. Most recently, he joined the blog roll over at the Huffington Post – his most recent post is From Icebergs to Autos, Effects of the Japan Earthquake Are Long-Lasting.

If you haven’t already, get to know John. I promise you, he’s a man worth knowing professionally, and if you are lucky, personally.

• Follow him on Twitter (@drjohnbates)
• See if he’ll confirm you as a friend on Facebook
• Watch him on YouTube
• Read what he has to say on our Apama and Business Making Progress blogs
• Listen to his CNBC interview Is a 'Splash Crash' Next?
• Check out his Executive Profile on Boston Business Journal

Forrester Recognizes Progress Sonic As A Leader in the ESB Market

Did you know that Progress® Sonic® was the industry's first Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)? It was, however, introduced in 2002 by Sonic Software which was an independent operating company of Progress Software Corporation.

In April independent research firm Forrester Research, Inc. named Progress Software as a leader in “The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Service Bus, Q2 2011” report. In this detailed review of Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) providers, Progress Sonic ESB was recognized with particularly high scores for its ESB architecture, orchestration as well as change and control capabilities. The report also gave Sonic ESB high scores for product strategy and strategic alliances, while also scoring the product highly for its large customer install base.

Strategic businesses worldwide have made Sonic ESB a core component to their service-oriented architecture (SOA). A few of these companies include British Airways, Royal Dirkzwager, AutoTrader, and most recently UK-based PD Ports. Why did they choose Progress? Because Sonic ESB delivers the best overall combination of architecture, orchestration, mediation, connection as well as change and control features. It helps them achieve the business and operational responsiveness they need to be successful.

Cruise past your competition and make sure your integrated infrastructure is powered by the 1st and best ESB... Sonic ESB. If you are interested in the report, click here. It will be available FREE FROM REGISTRATION for the next five business days only. What a deal! ;-)

Feel free to also share your ESB integration and deployment experiences here.

An Algorithmic Trading and Market Surveillance Wrap Up

Our Capital Markets and Progress Apama teams have been BUSY! Today many of them are recovering from a busy week at the SIFMA Financial Services Technology Expo in New York City.

In addition to lots of greeting and Tweeting, Dan Hubscher even had some time to post a couple blog posts:

• Tickets Please: Technology to Keep You on the Train
• Keeping the Train on Track

And while Dan helped man the floor, our VP of Corporate Communications, John Stewart, worked to get 3 press releases out onto the BusinessWire, including:

• Progress Software and Activ Financial Introduce New Market Data Adapter for Apama Capital Markets Foundation
• Progress Software Survey Reveals the Realities of Regulation, Monitoring and Algorithms on the OTC Derivatives Market
• Progress Software Launches Enhanced Market Surveillance and Monitoring Solution

Not only that, our own Dr. John Bates was tagged by Wall Street & Technology as one of our "Top 10 Innovators of the Decade for Capital Markets”.

Across the pond and beyond, Dr. Richard Bentley was quoted in the Bobsguide article “Suspect movements in share price fall to an eight-year low”. Dr. Giles Nelson traveled to India to promote Progress’ business in Capital Markets. He shared his thoughts on our complex event processing (apama.typepad.com) blog:

• The rise of algo trading in Asia - first stop Mumbai
• Still big room for growth in Japan

Phew! And, just in case you missed it, we wrapped up posting a 4 Part video series on Financial Regulation and Market Surveillance. Here are the blog posts that provide a brief overview and link to the videos:

• PLUS Stock Exchange Making Progress Around Regulation
• Using technology to prepare for regulatory change: how can market surveillance technologies help?
• Preparing for changes in the regulatory approach
• Cutting through the confusion of financial regulation

 

Dr. Ketabchi Reveals Secret Sauce of BPM

Are you a business or IT person who wants to... Reduce costs? Improve quality? Manage exceptions? Increase revenue? Most likely, it's all of the above.

Dr. M.A. Ketabchi, Chief Strategist at Progress Software, presented at the Gartner BPM Summit in March on how you can increase your business operations IQ.  He explains how you can run your operations more intelligently, and he reveals:

• The “secret sauce” of business process management
• Well-known companies that have benefitted from BPM, and how they did so
• How business event processing (often referred to as Complex Event Processing (CEP)) enhances BPM
• Typical business challenges that require a combination of BPM and BEP
• How Progress® Responsive Process Management (RPM) brings it all together

If you are interested in the replay, click here. It will be available FREE FROM REGISTRATION for the next five business days only. What a deal! ;-)

Hope you enjoy it. And, as always, make sure to share your feedback and comments here.

Business Process Improvement vs People

Do you think we can actually improve business processes if people are involved? I think the answer is yes… at least I hope so. Back in May 2010 I completed the introduction of a single sign-on (SSO) project that I had been working on for over a year. I admit it, it was painful. During the planning and execution phase, I experienced, firsthand, the difference between the goals of the business and the needs of IT.  It wasn’t the first time but it made me realize what I wasn’t missing… CONFLICT.

Well, two months following the implementation we saw a huge drop in leads. Why? Because people didn’t want to “join our group”. They just wanted a simple white paper or archived webinar. This is what I would call “people process intelligence”. In this case, the process intelligence that we instituted for our visitors wasn’t really wrong or broken, it was wrong because we based the new process on how we “thought” our people would interact or respond to SSO. I have no doubt that SSO still makes our customers, partners and employees happy because with a single UID and password they can access public website assets, Community assets, updates & downloads, and even technical support apps, but from a prospecting point of view, it doesn’t make sense.

For most businesses, their processes (or business events) are much more complex, but I would wager a bet that anyone owning a critical process still needs to bring together business goals and the technology requirements imposed by IT.   As I embark on Phase II, I find myself being a bit of a bully about certain things, like whether we include a Progress ID image or not (NOT). I also find myself annoyed because what I hoped would be a “short form” for guests is now 8 fields.  However, as annoyed as I am, those “extra” fields are critical to our being able to properly route and nurture a lead. It’s justified so I’ll zip my lip on that. What else am I doing? I’m getting to know my Omniture tracking powerhouse a little better. Once we go live, I want to clearly understand how my people are interacting with my form(s). I want to know when they are abandoning it (perhaps that 8^th question bummed them out), and what happens after they click Submit. Do they register for additional assets via the pre-filled form?  Do they come back at a later date and take advantage of the pre-filled form? Do they decide to “join our group”? Is anyone really sad we got rid of the big green Progress ID image? Basically, I want metrics to lead the process, not our opinions.

The fact of the matter is that people will always be involved in business process improvement. They’ll be part of planning and deployment, optimization and reporting, and ultimately “a people” could very well determine if your process is a successful one. Now, Progress Software can’t do much about "a people", but we can help improve process intelligence by giving you some of the tools you’ll need to be successful. We provide solutions for business process management (BPM), complex event processing (CEP), and application performance management (APM), just to  name a few.

Give us a call. We welcome the opportunity of telling you how we’re helping our customers bridge the gap between the business and IT, and improve operational  performance.

SOA. It’s back… but it’s got more sparkle.

I’ve been working in high-tech marketing roles for over 20 years now and every time some new marketing collateral comes across my desk and “I get it”, I get excited. As a matter of fact, my first job in a high tech company was as a marketing assistant to an R&D group at BBN Systems and Technologies. They were introducing a very innovative product called BBN Slate which was a multi-media editor for Unix. Because my previous jobs involved word processing (Wang), spreadsheet analysis (Lotus), and creating pretty charts (DEC/VMS – yes, really), “I got it” and I was committed to championing it. I loved every minute of it. Well, in 2007 I was tasked to optimize the Progress Software website for SOA. We already had great traction for the enterprise service bus (ESB), but not specifically for service-oriented architecture (SOA). Well, “I got it”, got going and started optimizing for SOA Infrastructure – a popular long tail term at the time - less than two months later. As a matter of fact, this blog was once the SOA Infrastructure blog.

In January of 2009, Anne Thomas Manes of the Burton group published the blog post SOA is Dead; Long Live Services. The industry had a lot of fun with that. Now, I don’t know if it was a coincidence, but suddenly Progress stopped talking about SOA and they asked me to change the name of this blog. I was sad, I admit it.

This responsive business integration diagram was taken from a presentation by Hub Vandervoort, CTO, Enterprise Infrastructure. Listen to the archive.

Well yesterday I saw some sparkle. We announced our new Responsive Business Integration (RBI) suite. Truth be told, I’ve known about it for a few months because I had to post the content and work on my SEO plan. I know it’s not nice to play favorites, but I was delighted to see my favorite Progress technology/products back in the game – Actional, DataXtend SI and Sonic. And, I’ve concluded that the RBI suite is SOA pimped up! It’s taking the existing service and application foundation most enterprises already have (or are building) and it’s enhancing it with semantics, policy management and mediation. The Progress RBI suite is going to allow businesses to decouple systems which will give them improved visibility, agility and the ability to change.

Read more about Progress Responsive Business Integration. And check out a great presentation by Progress customer Southern Union Company. They built their enterprise integration strategy around RBI and didn't even know it.

For the lack of a better term, do you think RBI it is our next-generation SOA? Give us your comments!

Real-time Visibility Will Help You Make Better Decisions

Decision management expert James Taylor believes it’s really very simple… to succeed, you need to sense and respond to what’s going on in your business, in your systems, and all around you. He’s right. In my job, I need to be alerted immediately when the website is down. Now, we aren’t saving lives here at Progress Software (although I’d like to think that applications using our software and technology are) but our website is core to our business. If our site goes down, it will result in poor customer or visitor experiences which translates to lost revenue. What I need, IT are you listening?, is a notification service that alerts me the SECOND the site fails. If I had that, I could respond quicker and make sure that IT was working to get it back up. If I had that, I could also plan and make decisions on how I would respond to my frantic boss, the irritated visitor, and the customer support rep who just lost his/her web app right in the middle of a troubleshooting session or order process.

Anyone else know my pain?

Now, we all know that my wish is doable because it’s relatively simple, but for many businesses, their business events and processes are much more complex and the consequences of process failure are much more severe. I think it’s pretty clear that in order for us to make fast decisions, we need to begin by gaining visibility into our business processes. The Progress Responsive Process Management (RPM) suite is all about giving you the operational tools and business control panels you need to be responsive to changing conditions.

So, what's the next logical step for you? Learn a bit more about the first component to building the responsive enterprise that lets you make smarter decisions - achieving real-time visibility. Listen to James Taylor’s 3-minute visibility podcast – the 1st in a series of 4 podcasts. Not only will you hear how you can achieve real-time visibility but you’ll learn how the Progress® Responsive Process Management (RPM) suite can help.

If you are interested in reading more, register to download the companion white paper Building Responsive Enterprises: One Decision at a Time.

Episode1: Visibility

Or listen via player:

Take Control of Your Business with RPM

Achieving the ability to gain real-time visibility, immediately sense and respond, and continuously improve business processes are the core benefits of responsive process management, but what makes the Progress® Responsive Process Management (RPM) suite so powerful is the Progress Control Tower™ - a unified, interactive business control panel that gives users the tools they need to view what is happening within their business and the ability to improve it.

Dr. John Bates, Chief Technology Officer at Progress Software

In Part 7 of our 7 part video series, Take Control of Your Business, John talks briefly about the how the Progress Control Tower not only gives our customers visibility into their complex events but it also allows them to set up business rules and alerts so that they can continually change and evolve how their business processes operate. Click here to learn more about Progress Control Tower.

Interested in hearing what industry analysts are saying about operational responsiveness? Watch the 3-minute teaser, Gain Efficiency. Avoid Risk. Seize Opportunity, by Gartner analyst Roy Schulte, and then download the entire video. You may also be interested in the paper Building Responsive Enterprises: One Decision at a Time written by industry analyst James Taylor.

Enjoy past videos of this seven part series:

What Is Operational Responsiveness?
Why Is Operational Responsiveness So Hard To Achieve?
Delivering Operational Responsiveness
Four Types of Business Process Visibility
Immediate Sense and Respond
Continuous Process Improvement

The Best of Progress Software 2010 Resources

I admit it... I'm not a big fan new years. Not only does it remind me that I have two to three months of dark days and blistering cold to contend with (I'm a New Englander) but I'm always a little apprehensive about what the new year will bring. One of the things I do like are all the "year in reviews" and "best of" stuff  - music countdowns, celebrity best & worst dressed, sports action highlights, etc. So in the spirit of the new year, I've put together my list of the Progress Software resources our website visitors found most interesting... or in most casese viewed the most. ;-)

LIMITED TIME OFFER! Enjoy most of the resources below without registration until January 15th. That's right, all you have to do is click.

• #1 downloaded white paper: Guide to Process Rules
  This white paper compares the conventional business rule techniques with the process-centric business rule paradigm. Included is a breakdown of an example business rule. You'll also get a detailed description of the three inter-related categories of business rules.
• #1 viewed article: Keeping a Watchful Eye on the Markets
  This article presents thoughts on how nosiness and surveillance can pay off but the fix may not be more rules and regulations. This article was written by Dr. Giles Nelson and published by TABBFORUM.
• Most viewed YouTube video: Credit card and fraud detection. Agent O has it covered!
  It may seem like just another day at the banking operations center, but Agent O senses trouble and is alerted of unusual patterns of credit card activity. Can the Progress® Responsive Process Management (RPM) suite help him stop the crime in time? Watch this YouTube video.
• #1 replayed webinar: Introducing the DataXtend SID Model Browser
  This webinar provides an overview and tutorial of the major features of the SID Model Browser, including a live demo of the software. You will learn how to explore the domains and classes of the SID, understand the SID model hierarchy, search the SID model, and generate HTML reports in support of OSS/BSS integration projects that are using the SID.
• Most read blog post: It's About Quality... End-to-End Process Quality
  Read this blog post and learn more about our launch of our Progress® RPM suite.
• #1 downloaded E-book (or primer): Complex Event Processing
  Read the abridged version of a new book co-authored by K. Mani Chandy & W. Roy Schulte, and learn how you can improve situational awareness & adapt quickly to consumer demands.
• Most popular Analyst Report: Gartner MQ 2010 - Application Performance Monitoring (sorry you need to register for this one)
  Download this analyst report and see how vendors stack up. You'll also get access to an Infographic (created by Progress) that shows what makes our performance monitoring approach unique and effective.
• #1 software download: Sonic Evaluation (sorry you need to register for this one)
  Download an evaluation of the industries first and most popular enterprise service bus (ESB).
• #1 downloaded data sheet: Sonic ESB
  Learn more about our messaging-based enterprise service bus that simplifies the integration and re-use of business applications within a service-oriented architecture (SOA).
• Most popular brochure: Responsive Process Management (RPM) Brochure
  Operational responsiveness enables businesses like yours to achieve a higher level of business performance. This brochure provides an in-depth description of the features and benefits of the Progress® Responsive Process Management (RPM) suite.

If you'd like to learn more or download other resources, visit www.progress.com, and please don't hesitate to contact us any time.

BPM is good. Continuous Process Improvement is even better.

As businesses strive to achieve operational responsiveness, they need to make sure that business stakeholders and IT have the ability to collectively define business processes and deploy those processes as applications accessible via the Internet. That’s where business process management (BPM) comes in. BPM is core to achieving operational efficiency but it doesn’t just stop at defining and deploying processes, it means continuously improving how those processes are operating. It’s about having the ability to continuously adjust to changes in your business operating environment and community, and to proactively act on changes in government regulations, performance requirements, and technology.

Dr. John Bates, Chief Technology Officer at Progress Software

In Part 6 of our 7 part video series, Continuous Process Improvement, John talks about the how business process management allows businesses to easily replace and/or automate existing – possibly manual – processes. With responsive process management (RPM), however, you can dynamically improve processes and apply event-driven rules that will allow you to respond to potential problems before they occur.

Interested in hearing what industry analysts are saying about operational responsiveness? Read a recent blog post by industry analyst Mike Gualtieri entitled "Java Is A Dead-End For Enterprise App Development". In it he writes, "Progress Software’s responsive process management (RPM) combines the best of BPM and business events to help businesses respond to real-time events and change business processes. This is just a small sampling of the next generation of business application development tools." You may also be interested in the on-demand webinar Building Responsive Enterprises: One Decision at a Time presented by industry analyst James Taylor.

Enjoy past videos in this seven part series:

What Is Operational Responsiveness?
Why Is Operational Responsiveness So Hard To Achieve?
Delivering Operational Responsiveness
Four Types of Business Process Visibility
Immediate Sense and Respond

 

Sense and Respond to Event Streams in Real Time

Last week we introduced one of the key benefits of  responsive process management (RPM) - real time visibility. We've heard what it means to be operationally responsiveness, why it's so hard to achieve and how we deliver it through the Progress RPM® suite. Today we'll look at another key benefit of RPM – the ability to immediately sense and respond to business events so that you can quickly reveal opportunities, threats or inefficiencies, and take action.

Dr. John Bates, Chief Technology Officer at Progress Software

In Part 5 of our 7 part video series, Immediate Sense and Respond, John talks about the how one of today’s smart technologies, complex event processing (CEP), allows businesses to process event feeds and have the ability to sense and respond to the opportunities, or threats, that occur in real time. A good example of how CEP benefits companies is in fraud prevention.

The best part? You drive. A business control panel will give you the ability to gain real-time visibility into business events, immediately sense and respond to changing conditions, and achieve continuous process improvement. Learn how Agent O applies RPM to tackle credit card fraud in real time.

Interested in hearing what industry analysts are saying about operational responsiveness? Watch the 3-minute teaser, Gain Efficiency. Avoid Risk. Seize Opportunity, by Gartner analyst Roy Schulte, and then download the entire video. You may also be interested in the paper Building Responsive Enterprises: One Decision at a Time written by industry analyst James Taylor.

Enjoy past videos of this seven part series:

What Is Operational Responsiveness?
Why Is Operational Responsiveness So Hard To Achieve?
Delivering Operational Responsiveness
Four Types of Business Process Visibility

 

Four Types of Business Process Visibility

So far we’ve learned that operational responsiveness is more than agility and business process optimization, it’s about plugging decision makers into business events and giving them the tools and information they need to respond to the unexpected, thereby allowing them to capitalize on opportunities, drive greater efficiencies, and reduce risk. We've also learned why it's so hard to achieve and how we deliver it through the Progress® Responsive Process Management (RPM) suite. Now let’s look at one of the key benefits of RPM – the ability to gain real-time visibility across your business.

Dr. John Bates, Chief Technology Officer at Progress Software

In Part 4 of our 7 part video series, Four Types of Business Process Visibility, John talks about the four different types of visibility that many companies may (or may not) have. These include visibility into: 1) modeled processes (business process management), 2)  un-modeled processes (usually legacy processes), 3) outside processes, and 4) the interaction between processes.

What’s great is that the Progress Control Tower™ gives business and operations managers the ability to see how all these different types of processes are performing – thereby giving you real-time visibility into ALL your business events.

Interested in hearing what industry analysts are saying about operational responsiveness? Watch the 3-minute teaser, Gain Efficiency. Avoid Risk. Seize Opportunity, by Gartner analyst Roy Schulte, and then download the entire video. You may also be interested in the paper Building Responsive Enterprises: One Decision at a Time written by industry analyst James Taylor.

Enjoy past videos of this seven part series:

What Is Operational Responsiveness?
Why Is Operational Responsiveness So Hard To Achieve?
Delivering Operational Responsiveness

 

Gain Actionable Insight Into Your Operations at Summit 2010

The Progress Software Summit 2010 brings together the visionaries and experts who are applying today’s proven technologies that will help companies achieve operational responsiveness. Learn how applying business solutions such as Responsive Process Management (RPM) will help you gain agility, reduce risk and achieve 20/20 foresight. Transform the way you do business.

At the Progress Software Summit, you will:

• Learn how you can make better business decisions by achieving real-time visibility and actionable insight.
• Connect with your business peers and innovators, and share how you are - or are not - achieving operational responsiveness.
• See the latest innovations in business process management, complex event processing and more.

JOIN US IN A CITY NEAR YOU!

November 2, 2010 HUDSON NEW YORK 356 West 58th Street New York, NY	November 3, 2010 W HOTEL CHICAGO 172 West Adams Street Chicago, IL	November 10, 2010 BENTLY RESERVE 301 Battery Street San Francisco, CA
Our New York event begins at 11:00 am and ends at 5:30 pm, and is followed by a Cocktail Reception. Hear from Progress plus industry expert John Rymer, VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, Inc. Our SPECIAL GUEST at the New York event will be Larry Kudlow: Mr. Kudlow is host of CNBC’s primetime “The Kudlow Report” and co-host of “The Call”. He is also the host of “The Larry Kudlow Show” which broadcasts each Saturday on WABC Radio. He is a nationally syndicated columnist and the author of American Abundance: The New Economic and Moral Prosperity. Learn more >	Our Chicago event begins at 11:30 am and ends at 5:45 pm, and is followed by a Blackhawks game. Hear from Progress plus industry expert John Rymer, VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, Inc. Our SPECIAL GUEST at the Chicago event will be Dan Hampton: A first-round draft pick of the Chicago Bears in 1979, where he continued to play 12 years as a defensive lineman, Dan Hampton is an engaging football Hall of Fame personality who is well-known and liked for his anecdotal and motivational speaking style. Learn more >	Our San Francisco event begins at 11:30 am and ends at 4:40 pm, and is followed by a Yacht Cruise. Hear from Progress plus industry expert John Rymer, VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, Inc. Our SPECIAL GUEST at the New York event will be Richard Karlgaard: Rich Karlgaard has a unique vantage point on the trends driving the business and investment climates. He is the publisher of Forbes magazine, where he writes a bi-weekly column. Mr.Karlgaard is author of the Forbes book, Life 2.0: How People Across America Are Transforming Their Lives by Finding the Where of Their Happiness. Learn more >

Delivering Operational Responsiveness

We've already learned that operational responsiveness is more than agility and business process optimization, it’s about plugging decision makers into business events and giving them the tools and information they need to respond to the unexpected, thereby allowing them to capitalize on opportunities, drive greater efficiencies, and reduce risk. We've also learned why it's so hard to achieve. Now, how do we help deliver it?

Dr. John Bates, Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Corporate Development at Progress Software

Watch Part 3 of our 7 part video series. In this video, Delivering Operational Responsiveness, John explains how we've brought together three proven technologies that help companies achieve operational responsiveness – business transaction assurance, complex event processing (CEP) and business process management (BPM). All these powerful technologies are further enhanced with business rules and analytics.

The best part? You drive. A business control panel will give you the ability to gain real-time visibility into business events, immediately sense and respond to changing conditions, and achieve continuous process improvement.

Read what Wikipedia has to say about Responsive Process Management (RPM) and learn how Agent O applies RPM to tackle credit card fraud in real time. You can also follow Dr. John Bates on Twitter.

Enjoy past videos of this seven part series:

What Is Operational Responsiveness?
Why Is Operational Responsiveness So Hard To Achieve?

 

Why Is Operational Responsiveness So Hard To Achieve?

We've already learned that operational responsiveness is more than agility and business process optimization, it’s about plugging decision makers into business events and giving them the tools and information they need to respond to the unexpected, thereby allowing them to capitalize on opportunities, drive greater efficiencies, and reduce risk. But why is it so hard to achieve?

Watch Part 2 of our 7 part video series featuring Dr. John Bates, Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Corporate Development at Progress Software. In this 1 minute, 30 second video, Why Is Operational Responsiveness So Hard To Achieve?, John explains why many companies struggle to achieve operational responsiveness. He points out that the lack of real-time visibility is just one key reasons.

Read what Wikipedia has to say about Responsive Process Management (RPM) and learn how Agent O tackles credit card fraud in real time. Follow Dr. John Bates on Twitter.

Enjoy past videos of this seven part series:

• What Is Operational Responsiveness?

What is Operational Responsiveness?

Wikipedia defines it as “a desirable quality of a business process or supporting IT solution, which indicates its ability to respond to changing conditions and customer interactions as they occur. An operationally responsive business process or IT solution is one that reacts quickly and effectively to a wide range of business events as they occur, and is also one that is managed in such a way as to be rapidly and effectively evolved in response to changes in the business environment itself so as to drive both consistency and value of business outcomes.”

I like that definition but Progress Software expands on it by believing that it is the ability of business processes and systems to respond to changing conditions and customer interactions as they occur - enabling business leaders to capitalize on opportunities, drive greater efficiencies, and reduce risk. Operational responsiveness is more than agility and business process engineering optimization, it’s about plugging decision makers into business events and giving them the ability to respond to the unexpected, thereby effecting change directly.

Watch Part 1 of our 7 part video series featuring Dr. John Bates, Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Corporate Development at Progress Software. In the 50 second video, What is Operational Responsiveness?, John explains what it really means to be truly operationally responsive.

Read what Wikipedia has to say about Responsive Process Management (RPM). You can also follow Dr. John Bates on Twitter.

Just how important are SLAs to BSPs in how they support, retain and win customers?

Progress recently commissioned independent research company Vanson Bourne to find out and here's a link to the results:

Survey Results: SLAS: Lost In The Cloud?

Read about the increasing importance of service-level agreements and the difficulties in achieving them. Whether you're a Business Service Provider (BSP) or a client of a BSP, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) deserve your attention. This report will give you some information about the changing nature of SLAs and how you can use them to your advantage. 

You can also learn more about how Progress® Actional® will help you manage your service-level agreements by enabling companies to meet SLAs and manage services to support business goals. With policy-based alerting tools, users can set service alert thresholds and define service behavior for dynamic IT management. Actional also provides business analytics about runtime operations and controls for changing process behavior, for example, to give high-value customers priority service.

Credit Card Fraud Interrupted My Vacation...

And I learned first hand what responsive process management is all about - to a consumer like me.

I’m on vacation... Citi just called to check on a phone inquiry they just received. Someone was calling for information about my account. I mentioned that I didn’t make the call and then they asked if I’d made a $255 purchase in Burbank, CA at some toy store. Not only am I in NY, but I couldn't even remember the last time I used the card. I immediately looked in my wallet and there the card was. Someone must have gotten my number. Yikes! I’m a pretty big online purchaser so I am bummed. But I am really happy to have Citi on my side because the situation really could have gotten out of hand.

Citi effectively MANAGED the PROCESS and was truly RESPONSIVE. It made me feel great. Is your company operationally responsive? Are you making your customers feel great? Responsive Process Management (RPM) helps companies of all sizes and in varying industries achieve operational responsiveness so that they can retain customers and improve their customer experiences - just as Citi did.

Ironically, we recently posted a YouTube video that introduces Agent O (that's ooohhh). He’s on a mission to prevent bank fraud and is using the Progress RPM suite and Progress Control Tower as his mission control center. Watch the video! It’s fun.

Information Overload? Three Ways Real-time Information is Changing Decision Management

Upcoming webinar: 26-Aug-2010 at 11am ET
More Info and Registration: http://bit.ly/dyCu0c

JOIN US! In a recent survey by Vanson Bourne, 94% of respondents say that responding to information immediately is critical to their business, yet only 8% currently report information in real time. Why? Because many are unable to filter through the enormous deluge of information coming at them from every angle. This web seminar will discuss 3 ways that real-time information and business events affect your decision-making process. Through real-time visibility and immediate sense and respond, you get the right information at the right time. The result is decision management that is “in the moment” and operational responsiveness that meets the speed of your business.

Hope you can attend: http://bit.ly/dyCu0c