Example RFP Development Guide

Business Process Management Solution

RFP Development Guide

V E R S I O N 1 . 0M A R C H 7 , 2 0 0 7

SUBMITTED TO: [VENDOR]

BY: [YOUR COMPANY]

Business Process Management Solution RFP Development Guide

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS...............................................................................................................................2

PURPOSE.......................................................................................................................................................3

1. OVERVIEW............................................................................................................................................3

2. WHY A BPM PROJECT?.....................................................................................................................3

3. DERIVING VALUE FROM BPM PROJECTS..................................................................................4

DEVELOPING THE RFP FOR A BPM PROJECT OR ENTERPRISE SOLUTION..........................5

1. BUSINESS USE CASE—CLIENT/PROJECT BACKGROUND......................................................5

2. RFP VENDOR INFORMATION..........................................................................................................6

2.1 COMPANY OVERVIEW/PROFILE..........................................................................................................62.2 FINANCIAL VIABILITY........................................................................................................................62.3 PARTNERSHIPS....................................................................................................................................62.4 INSTALLED SITES AND REFERENCES..................................................................................................6

3. BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT SOLUTION REQUIREMENTS.....................................7

3.1 GENERAL PRODUCT INFORMATION....................................................................................................73.2 COMPONENTS.....................................................................................................................................73.3 FEATURES...........................................................................................................................................73.4 SYSTEM INTEGRATION........................................................................................................................83.5 BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT....................................................................................................93.6 RULES MANAGEMENT......................................................................................................................103.7 HUMAN TASK SUPPORT....................................................................................................................113.8 BUSINESS PROCESS ANALYSIS, MODELING AND SIMULATION........................................................11

4. VENDOR SUPPORT SERVICES.......................................................................................................12

4.1 IMPLEMENTATION/INSTALLATION....................................................................................................124.2 TRAINING AND DOCUMENTATION....................................................................................................134.3 MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT..........................................................................................................13

5. Solution Investment Information............................................................................................................13

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PURPOSE

The purpose of this document is to present and describe the type of information and questions to consider when defining Business Process Management project solution.

[Note: a quick way to do a minor customization of this document in order to present it as an RFI/RFP to a specific vendor is to do a ‘Search/Replace’ of the word ‘Vendor’ with the ‘Name of the Vendor’ to whom you are submitting this document. And then also delete this note before sending this Guide out to vendors.]

1. OVERVIEW

Every business is essentially a collection of processes - some strategic, some tactical, but all necessary. And today's processes are increasingly complex, full of deeper interactions across systems and dependent on more collaborative activities between users. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) promises to usher in a new era of business agility. But that agility depends as much on supporting new efficiencies for people as it does on liberating access to systems and services. This is the role of Business Process Management in the world of SOA, helping today's leading businesses attain a competitive edge through repeatable and predictable process and compliance execution involving people and systems.

Business Process Management requires software that integrates the modeling, implementation, execution and monitoring of end-to-end business processes to support continuous optimization of the entire business process lifecycle. A Business Process Management solution should move beyond the limitations of traditional human workflow and process technology and augment the power and extensibility of system-to-system enterprise application integration software by bridging the two to support the complex, collaborative business processes of today's heterogeneous enterprise. This type of business process involves all the elements of BPM plus collaboration and knowledge management that a portal-based composite application delivers.

Companies require the quickest time to deployment.

A business process management product suite that integrates the modeling, implementation, execution and monitoring of end-to-end business processes to support continuous optimization of the entire business process lifecycle.

A portal and user interaction framework to deliver a volume and variety of composite applications that assemble services and integrate content from across the enterprise.

An integrated collaboration platform that allows users to share and manage documents and project information, engage in online discussions, and coordinate through notifications and synchronized calendars.

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These general business objectives are further refined by a company’s specific industry, market and business requirements. To this end, companies and their leaders seek the ability to automate business processes, readily access enterprise resources, and swiftly adapt information systems to dynamic business requirements. Most often this starts with meeting a specific objective or objectives by providing new IT capabilities through a BPM project.

2. WHY A BPM PROJECT?

The role of technology in the organization has grown from providing specific functionality to becoming part of (or a facilitator of) organizational strategic initiatives. The packaged applications and custom built solutions to solve a specific business problem now need to seamlessly collaborate. Unfortunately, in many cases, these projects were originally completed in isolation or “silos” and an overall, consistent approach (platform) was not used to roll out the different projects and solutions. Typical pain points include:

High cost of business operations because of manual processing, errors and redundanciesHigh total cost of ownership—lack support of standards among diverse internal and external technology systems; requirement of specialty skills to support IT infrastructure

Disconnected business processes—redundant processes span multiple internal systems and Inability to get a clear view of their own customers and processes, making it impossible to respond in a timely manner—meaning bad customer service and poor decision-making

Inability to execute on strategic initiatives—constant challenge for IT fill the gap to support the changing business initiatives (operational, marketing, customer service, HR, etc.) in a timely and effective manner

Inability to get a clear view of the company’s customers and processes, making it impossible to respond in a timely manner—that means bad customer service and poor decision making

Employee productivity and satisfaction deficiencies

Making change is costly, resource intensive, and time-consuming …overall very hard to do

3. DERIVING VALUE FROM BPM PROJECTS

Your BPM solution should provide the following key benefits to your constituents:

A new era of business agility that helps enable new workplace efficiencies and liberating access to systems and services.

Transcend the boundaries of traditional BPM products by providing market leading support for collaborative business processes.

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Improve productivity of employees and their business processes

Allow employees to work as their requirements dictate, not how IT dictates

Give LOB users control of their business processes

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DEVELOPING THE RFP FOR A BPM PROJECT OR

ENTERPRISE SOLUTION

1. BUSINESS USE CASE—CLIENT/PROJECT BACKGROUND

The first and hardest step for any company considering investing in a BPM and SOA project is evaluating all the facets and defining what is important to meet both immediate goals as well as long-term corporate goals. It is common for a basic BPM project to become a phase of a larger SOA solution. It is thus very important that the project is well thought out in order to provide the best foundation in the most cost effective manner.

The following bulleted items list information to think about and include the appropriate information in the RFI/RFP in order to obtain accurate, comprehensive responses that best address your specific requirements for a more relevant evaluation.

Describe your current situation as it relates to your BPM and SOA project in detail. What systems/applications and infrastructure currently exist? What do you do now? What are your relevant processes? Where are the bottlenecks?

Describe your company’s goals. What are the specific goals/expectations for this BPM and SOA project? What are the key factors and priorities for this project? What specific business initiatives are associated with the RFP? What problems do you expect to solve? What phases or steps do you expect to go through in the transformation from disparate parts (applications, systems) to unified platform?

Describe the current architecture. What are your company’s plans over the next 3 years?

Who are your internal (and external) customers and suppliers for this project? What is important to them?

Evaluation of in-house IT staffing skills—What level of control/role does your company want to have over the BPM and SOA project for implementation of project and ongoing development/support? For example, some clients use vendors to provide the majority of the implementation with the client receiving enough training to maintain the system but engage vendor resources for future development; some clients have vendor provide guidance and best practices to internal development teams that are responsible for building future projects; and some client outsource hosting and development.

What are your measures for determining the success of this project?

This information helps define the priorities your business is facing in BPM and SOA and helps the vendor provide the best options for your current and future needs.

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2. RFP VENDOR INFORMATION

2.1 Company Overview/Profile

Typical information that is relevant to your organization for the decision making process.

Provide a brief company history and overview.

Where is Vendor headquartered? How many additional offices does Vendor have and where are the offices located?

What market solution(s) does Vendor’s product(s)/service(s) serve such as EAI (enterprise application integration), BPM (Business Process Management), Application Server, Portal, SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) Solution, etc?

Which industry boards, standards bodies, councils, and working groups does Vendor have representation on that are specifically related to this market?

List any industry awards or recognition received in last 12 months.

Is Vendor an existing supplier for our company?

2.2 Financial Viability

Please provide financial summary for past three years. Provide a link or electronic files of the past two annual reports and most recent financial filing (if public company).

How much does Vendor spend on Research and Development annually?

How many employees does Vendor have and how are they distributed: number of employees in R&D/development; Customer Support; Professional Services; Training; Sales & Marketing; and Operations?

How many customers do you have? What are the primary industries of Vendor client base (i.e. Manufacturing, Financial Services, Retail, etc.)?

2.3 Partnerships

Describe Vendor partner strategy with other vendors: technology platform, software infrastructure, packaged applications, systems integrators, etc.

What partners do you recommend for the solution you are proposing? If any.

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2.4 Installed Sites and References

How many clients do you have using this product/solution? How many new clients?

Detail where the proposed solution has been installed at other sites with short summary of project/solution.

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3. BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT SOLUTION REQUIREMENTS

3.1 General Product Information

How long has the software been on the market? (Please include date first version or release of software was released, as well as the date the current version or release went to market)

Describe the overall product capabilities in reference to our requirements. What additional product capabilities are relevant to our business requirements?

Describe the key strengths and differentiators of Vendor solution.

3.2 Components

An Integrated Dashboard (such as a Portal) with access to all the applications/ tools/ information that the user may need at any point of the process.

A Business rules engine integrated with the workflow of the Administration system to enable rule execution on manual, systematic and scheduled triggers/ events.

A Business Process Management component to facilitate automation, integration, and optimization of processes across the different components from the Platform to achieve business objectives and enable agile improvements.

3.3 Features

A single sign on access to all integrated applications that can be accessed from the user’s Dashboard

The Administration system should be available to the user via a Web-based, thin client.

Ability to customize the components that should get displayed on the Dashboard based on user role.

Ability for flexible placement and resizing of the panels within the Dashboard, while still allowing the administrator to lock the presentation view at individual user level.

An easy to use UI allowing for creation, maintenance and testing of the business rules.

Centralized control for Administrative users for creation, configuration and control of Metadata tables:

Business Metadata related to workflow and other

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Presentation Metadata to control and configure the user’s experience with the Integrated Dashboard

Administration Metadata to manage the roles, users, components and features of the system

Workflow management to promote the agility of the system in order to remain in compliance with changing business processes.

Ability for all users to use the email and fax correspondence functionality from the Integrated Dashboard

System Administration capabilities to administer the security of various applications from the platform, manage the creation, configuration and maintenance of roles, users and system resources and to control the access rights, enabling of features, logging etc.

Performance management features for activities such as monitoring the system’s access by users, capturing of usage and error trends, providing guidance and alerts to users, viewing of performance statistics real time, online help /consultation for the user etc.

Rules-based or user-determined reports generation feature for different levels of audience, both real time and in batch mode

3.4 System Integration

Please describe your preferred and supported integration strategy/methods with external/enterprise systems?

Please describe how your product handles various messaging semantics, such as point-to- point, publish and subscribe, message oriented middleware, etc.

What pre-built adapters do you have to support 3rd party applications?

What formats does your proposed solution accept and send messages to/from other systems?

How does your proposed solution handle secure/encrypted communications between applications?

How does your proposed solution handle message routing?

Please describe in detail your solution’s ability to integrate with following enterprise-wide technologies:

Portal systems

Bespoke Java and Cobol-based systems

Document Management Systems

Content Management Systems

CRM systems

Business Intelligence Systems

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Data Warehouse

Please describe in detail how your system integrates with external business rules engines? Please list the external Business Rules Engines that you have successfully integrated with in live systems. Provide details of your largest rule volume base and associated performance metrics achieved.

Please describe the robustness of your proposed solutions runtime integration environment in terms of high performance, reliability, and scalability?

Please describe in detail your solution’s ability to support orchestrating services, composites and sub-flows in execution mode.

Please provide in detail how your solution can provide capabilities to interact real time with other external applications.

3.5 Business Process Management

Please describe in detail the different components of your product suite and the salient features of each. How do these features integrate to provide enterprise wide BPM capabilities?

Please describe in detail the IDE capabilities provided by your solution to allow the business administrator to design, create, save and maintain business process. Please describe in detail the process and user interface that the system provides for testing, simulation and analysis of the business processes.

Please describe the capabilities of your system to provide a real time dashboard for functions such as process monitoring, process orchestration, real time process management etc.

What features are provided by the system to assist the users in integrating processes with external applications and databases?

Please describe the system’s ability to provide an integrated Version control functionality for users? How does the system integrate with an external Version control system and which systems can it support?

What features are available to the user for searching and leveraging business processes from the process repository? What metadata is saved by the system for the processes in the repository?

Please describe in detail your solution’s capabilities to integrate with and leverage information from a CRM application within the process workflows. What external CRM systems have you integrated with?

Please describe in detail the analytics features provided by your solution.

Please describe the capabilities and features of your system’s process execution engine.

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Please describe the change management capabilities for rules and process management provided in your system. Describe the roll back capabilities provided for any changes made by users.

What workflow types (e.g. Person to person, Person to system, System to system) are supported by your system? Please describe each type with examples. What additional features does your system provide to the user for managing these workflows?

Please describe in detail the solution’s capabilities and methods to incorporate the interaction of human centric processes with automated processes?

Please describe in detail the solution’s capabilities and methods for analyzing process trends, and optimizing and redeploying processes?

Please describe in detail the solution’s capabilities to support maintenance of the process Execution History. What features are available to the users to view and analyze the saved records?

Please provide your solutions ability to provide the following features for the workflow management functionality of your system:

notifications and recommendations for tasks, configurations, rule sets

missed workflow steps for creating processes and/or business rules

ability for manual intervention to handle a special or exceptional scenario in a workflow

modeling of a workflow, or work process, performance recommendations, process concerns, best practices

Please describe in detail how your solution provides the ability to modify in-flight workflows (Update, Suspend or Terminate a running workflow based on observations). Describe the system’s ability to start such modified flows from the previously suspended or an intermediate point.

Please describe in detail how your solution provides the ability to have multiple versions of the same workflow running at once (comparison between the results of incrementally changed versions of the workflow to determine the effect of the change). How is this integrated with the version control component?

Please describe any multiple-language support incorporated into your product.

3.6 Rules Management

Does your solution have a Business Rules engine component? Please describe in detail the capabilities of your solution to support business rule creation and execution.

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Does your system integrate with external business rules engines? What Rules engines have you integrated with your product to date, in live systems? Provide details of the largest volume base in terms of number of rules created/ executed and rate (number of rules per unit time) of rule execution, number of users/systems and performance requirements.

Please describe your solution’s ability to provide an IDE to allow the business administrator to create, save and maintain business rules. Please describe in detail the process and user interface that the system provides for testing of business rules.

Please describe in details the system’s support for different types of business rules execution:

Rules based on system events

Rules based on user’s actions

Rules that execute continuously in the background

Rules that execute based on a pre-defined schedule

Please describe in detail the systems capability to apply business rules that affect the usability and presentation such as the fields/ controls that are displayed in the user interface and the data that is displayed.

Please describe your solution’s ability to trigger rules depending on the information coming in from the communication with an external system or vendor.

Please describe in detail the systems capability to enter a comment based on business rules or data field content. What capabilities does the system have to configure:

Forcing of comments in scenarios where it is deemed mandatory. How can validations be provided for the user entered comments

Automatic comments for specific system or user events. How can these comments pick up run-time information (such as the identification of the current user, event ID)

Please describe in detail your solutions ability to exert control over the rules execution, such as but not restricted to:

have effective and expiration dates for rules and processes

create substitute rules for existing rules

notify the user of the impact a rule change has on more than one rule

3.7 Human Task Support

Please describe in detail how your solution provides organizational model support, including reporting and functional

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unit relationships by creation of a visual view of the organization and its flow, with various functions and their relations.

Please describe in detail how your solution’s modelling tool provides the ability to define human workflow steps, with visual drill-downs and sub-levels to visually depict business functions’ association with a department, function, process, or attribute supported.

Please describe in detail how your solution provides workflow monitoring features such as tracking; alerting and escalation capabilities to address human centric tasks (e.g. delayed work, critical events).

Please describe in detail how your solution provides customisable work lists (modifiable task list that can be used as templates) for human task access. Please describe how these can be used to represent process that alternate between automated processing and human tasks.

Please describe in detail how your solution provides the ability to include processes outside the BPM technology domain (e.g. obtaining information from an external vendor) as part of the process being modelled.

Please describe in detail how your solution provides access to, and management of work queues, depending on user needs.

3.8 Business Process Analysis, Modeling and Simulation

Please describe in detail how your solution provides easy-to-understand flow and rule modeling standards such as BPMN, UML etc.

Please describe the Business Process Analysis capabilities provided by your solution. If your solution has a separate component/ tool for managing BPA, please describe the features and user interface of the tool. What external BPA tools can your system integrate with?

Please describe the features and user interface of your solution’s Business Activity Monitoring component/tool. What metrics are provided as output from your BAM process?

Please describe in detail how your solution provides metrics and attributes (such as for cost, time, value and risk supported for simulations), to allow the reviews of process/ workflows for analysis and improvement purpose.

Please describe in detail how your solution provides dynamic simulation (discrete and continuous). What metrics are provided as output from the process Simulation?

Please describe in detail how your solution provides a financial and risk analysis component (to support key business metrics for functions such as ROI analysis).

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Please describe in detail how your solution provides critical path analysis (to identify the steps comprising the critical path of the process) and value chain analysis (to identify tasks that could be moved within the process to add more value).

Please describe in detail how your solution provides abilities to determine resource utilization and optimization.

Please describe the Business Intelligence capabilities provided by your solution. What metrics are provided as output from your Business Intelligence reporting? If your solution has a separate component/ tool for managing the Business Intelligence functionality, please describe the features and user interface of the tool. What external BI tools can your system integrate with?

Please describe what devices and metrics are available to support information dissemination (e.g. built-in reports, interfaces for various devices such as printers, plotters etc. with print preview abilities).

Please describe in detail how your solution provides a rich process repository with an extensible process model, model merge and versioning/ locking support.

Please describe in detail how your solution provides a rich graphical process designer with flow animation and auto line drawing with smoothing.

Please describe in detail how your solution provides swim lanes representational approach for visual modelling.

Please describe in detail how your solution provides saved preferences by process modeler / process viewer (e.g. for creation of templates). What features does your solution provide when creating a model so you can review the complete process in the case of large/multi-process workflows (e.g. print preview)?

Please describe in detail how your solution supports or provides a separation and control of features and components of the system based on skill sets (e.g. a "power user" role with professional developer features and wizard-like assists).

Please describe in detail how your solution’s modelling tool provides customisable representations of workflows and inclusion of graphical formats, such as icons, stencils and shape libraries.

Please describe in detail how your solution provides security/ administration features for the assignment of ownership privileges and access to modelling artefacts (templates, icons, stencils). How can the icons and stencils be customized if required, for specific users or roles?

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4. VENDOR SUPPORT SERVICES

4.1 Implementation/Installation

What is the typical installation procedure?

Does Vendor provide implementation services for the solution? What is Vendor’s implementation methodology?

What role would Vendor play in the implementation? What expertise does Vendor provide in installing, configuring, testing, and administering the software associated with the solution?

What is a typical implementation timeframe?

What are the risks associated with these timeframes, and how can the timeframes be adjusted to meet the required objectives?

4.2 Training and Documentation

What are the various types of training programs offered?

What training is recommended or required for this product?

What training is offered at the customer site?

Is customization of the training materials available? What does that cost?

What source code, development tools, and documentation are included in the purchase of Vendor product? How current is the documentation? How often is it revised?

4.3 Maintenance and Support

Describe Vendor support/maintenance packages. Please specify hours of support and whether support is via web, email, or direct phone.

What are Vendor’s response-time standards?

What is the process for critical situations?

Do you provide support for user/developer groups? If so, please describe.

What other support services are provided?

Describe the product release strategy, e.g. version updates, patch releases, platform preference, etc.

What is Vendor’s upgrade policy (for example, how long will you support an older release)? How are product and service upgrades communicated? Delivered?

What processes are in place for customers to report bugs and receive software fixes? What are Vendor policies about notifying customers of known bugs not reported by them?

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5. SOLUTION INVESTMENT INFORMATION

Describe Vendor’s licensing approach. Do you provide the ability to extend the original licensing agreement?

What client, server, or third party licenses are required to run the software?

What are the annual maintenance/support fees on software?

What are training costs? At vendor facility? At client site?

What are typical implementation costs? Provide daily rates for different roles required for implementation.

What are the costs associated with upgrades?

What other potential costs are not listed?

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Example RFP Development Guide