USINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT FOR - … · In May 2004, the ownership of the document was given to Tech Mahindra Limited (formerly Mahindra-British Telecom Limited). Although the original

UNDERSTANDING BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT FOR COMMUNICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS

Understanding BPM

Preface The original document was written by Andy Hooper and Jeremy Wright of TIBCO and has been reviewed by many TMF members. In May 2004, the ownership of the document was given to Tech Mahindra Limited (formerly Mahindra-British Telecom Limited). Although the original idea and structure of this document has been maintained throughout, there are some conceptual changes in the way Business Process Management is viewed. Main Contributors Andy Hooper, TIBCO Jeremy Wright, TIBCO Revised Version & Changes Tech Mahindra Limited Reviewing Contributors David Bradbury, Ericsson Rob Davis, BT Exact Steve Harknett, COLT Telecom Jenny Huang, AT&T Martin Huddleston, QinetiQ Nicholas Webb, QinetiQ Veli Kokkonen, TeliaSonera Artur Uzieblo, Redrock Communications Peter Wischnewski, Vodafone D2 Jose Ricardo Formagio Bueno, CPqD

2 © 2007 Tech Mahindra Limited Whitepaper

www.techmahindra.com

Understanding BPM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................................6

1.1. ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT............................................................................................................................6 1.2. TARGET AUDIENCE ...................................................................................................................................6

2. BPM OVERVIEW ..........................................................................................................................................7

2.1. BACKGROUND...........................................................................................................................................7 2.2. BUSINESS DRIVERS FOR BPM .....................................................................................................................7 2.3. WHAT IS BPM? ........................................................................................................................................7 2.4. ANALYST COMMENTS ...............................................................................................................................10

3. BPM & EXISTING FRAMEWORKS............................................................................................................11

3.1. BPM & E-TOM .....................................................................................................................................11 3.2. BPM & SID ...........................................................................................................................................11 3.3. BPM & SERVICE-ORIENTED ARCHITECTURES (SOA) .................................................................................12

4. BPM IN CONTEXT WITH OTHER TECHNOLOGIES ..............................................................................14

4.1. BPM & ENTERPRISE APPLICATION INTEGRATION (EAI) .............................................................................14 4.2. TECHNOLOGY NEUTRAL ARCHITECTURE – WEB SERVICES ...........................................................................15 4.3. BPM & POLICY (OR RULES) MANAGEMENT...............................................................................................15 4.4. BPM & WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT .........................................................................................................15 4.5. BPM & WORKFLOW ...............................................................................................................................16

5. BPM STANDARDS & LANGUAGES ..........................................................................................................17

5.1. BUSINESS PROCESS MODELLING LANGUAGE (BPML) .................................................................................17 5.2. BUSINESS PROCESS QUERY LANGUAGE (BPQL) ........................................................................................17 5.3. BUSINESS PROCESS EXECUTION LANGUAGE (BPEL)...................................................................................18 5.4. BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT NOTATIONS (BPMN).............................................................................18

6. BPM SOLUTION OVERVIEW ....................................................................................................................19

6.1. WHAT IS BPM SOLUTION?.......................................................................................................................19 6.2. ELEMENTS OF BPM SOLUTION .................................................................................................................19

6.2.1 Six Functional Elements of BPM Solution............................................................................19 6.2.2 Six Technical Elements of BPM Solution..............................................................................20

7. IMPLEMENTING BPM ................................................................................................................................21

7.1. THE BPM IMPLEMENTATION METHODOLOGY .............................................................................................21 7.2. BPM IMPLEMENTATION LIFE CYCLE..........................................................................................................21

8. CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................................................24

APPENDIX A - FURTHER INFORMATION AND REFERENCES .....................................................................25

A.1. BPM STANDARDS INITIATIVES ...............................................................................................................25

A.2. BPM ON THE INTERNET ..........................................................................................................................25

A.3. BPM VENDORS ..........................................................................................................................................25

A.4. BPM BOOKS ...............................................................................................................................................25



Understanding BPM

APPENDIX B - BPM IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS ..........................................................................................26

B.1. DETAILED EXAMPLE ................................................................................................................................26

B.2. APPLICATIONS OF BPM...........................................................................................................................27

APPENDIX C - ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................................................................29



Understanding BPM

TABLE OF FIGURES

Figure 1 - How BPM can fit?....................................................................................... 9

Figure 2 - BPM – SID Relations ...................................................................................12

Figure 3 - BPM and SOA...........................................................................................12

Figure 4 - Evaluation of BPM.....................................................................................16

Figure 5 – BPM Implementation Methodology ................................................................21

Figure 6 - BPM Implementation Detail Life Cycle ...........................................................22



Understanding BPM

1. Introduction

1.1. About this Document

Business Process Management (BPM) is a concept that attempts to align business strategy with technology to achieve interoperability between them. It represents a holistic business-system view that will play an essential role in the transformation of Communication Service Providers (CSPs) into ‘lean operators’.

A Business Process Management Solution encompasses the BPM methodology, toolsets and systems orchestrated together to give an environment, which help operations to deploy processes effectively.

This introductory paper serves to introduce BPM and ‘BPM Solution’ to a wider audience of TM Forum member companies, with the aim of building interest in ongoing BPM and related activities.

1.2. Target Audience

This document could be of use to anyone involved in telecommunications and seeking to learn more about the increasingly important subject of BPM. It should also be disseminated as widely as possible within the TM Forum to ensure a common understanding of this area for further discussions.



Understanding BPM

2. BPM Overview

2.1. Background

The challenges of today’s business world are now forcing many organizations to focus explicitly on processes and their practical implementation. Improving customer service, bringing new products to market, cutting out cost inefficiencies, and conforming to new regulations push business processes and their effective management to the top of the priority list.

Processes are often implicit within an organization, buried in the network of people and systems that has evolved over the years. As such, these processes are often hard to formally observe and define. It is often difficult for many organizations to understand exactly how their processes work today and even harder to work out how to implement better processes.

One aspect of the response to these problems has been a change in the way that companies are looking to approach process management. Increasingly, companies are looking for a different way of improving business processes, leveraging dedicated software to capture, design and implement processes across the organisation.

This new approach has been labelled as Business Process Management (BPM).

2.2. Business Drivers for BPM

The convergence of IT and telecommunications is unleashing new services to customers. New business models & processes are being designed to keep pace with the changing customer requirements, competition & technology advances. At the same time ‘Time-to-market’ pressures have resulted in a major impact on the way system development is carried out within the Service Provider’s enterprise.

This has resulted into disjoint business processes & technologies, which affect operational flexibility & efficiency, resulting into customer dissatisfaction, revenue leakage and unstable processes. Businesses must deliver more products and services at lesser costs, which can only be accomplished by automating its processes. There is also an increasing need for businesses to be able to make instant changes in the way they operate. This includes changes in the organisation, processes and supporting systems.

For many years technology has been a key enabler in achieving business strategic goals. However, the reality of IT and business is very different. To some extent technology has helped to reduce costs but as a total enabler to reduce the gap within the business, it has fallen short of expectations. It is necessary for businesses to decentralise responsibilities for specific tasks and sub-processes as well as make it possible for customers and involved participants to keep track of the order process. Furthermore, this should be possible across departments within a company as well as across various businesses involved in a process. This emphasises the importance of breaking down processes into well-defined units and reusing these units in as many processes as possible.

BPM attempts to reduce the disjoint between technology and businesses by creating a holistic view of a standard process framework to drive process definitions, design, execution and eventually monitoring.

2.3. What is BPM?

A collaborative approach: As opposed to re-engineering

Ten years ago, many companies, using incremental improvement techniques, tried to make their business processes more manageable. In the late 90’s dramatic improvement techniques lead the companies towards Business Process Reengineering (BPR). BPR, then typically meant designing a new process, and implementing it through a one-time systems and organizational change program. These efforts were more about redesigning processes than about making those processes easy to change.



Understanding BPM

With increase in new and cheaper technologies, companies have constantly been involved in implementing new solutions both at business and technical levels in an ad-hoc manner. This has led to the creation of ‘island technologies’ like home-grown legacy systems, CRM, SCM, and UNIX based systems. The need to tie up these island systems led to the rise of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). It was successful to some extent but could not achieve the interoperability between the system and the business.

BPM attempts to address the above problem in a more effective way by working in collaboration. It serves as a bridge between business and technical users. It allows them to work together by creating more collaborative environments leveraging existing standards, middleware, and applications. Readers familiar with BPR projects will recognise that this is a less disruptive approach than integrating new technology.

Organisations today need to be able to participate in each other’s processes and to create services across organisational boundaries. BPM lies at the intersection of inside and outside. It does not distinguish between process management within the organisation and between partners. BPM represents visibility, understanding, and control over processes that reside anywhere within the organisation. It is the capability to discover, design, deploy, execute, interact with, operate, optimise, and analyse end-to-end processes. This needs to be done at a business design level rather than a technical implementation level.

An inside-out approach: From within the organisation to across organisation

In today’s competitive world, organisations need to work in coordination with each other. For this it becomes imperative for them to share each other’s processes and to create shared services across organisational boundaries. Many applications today have processes embedded within them preventing them to be visible to process owners. Processes need to be ‘externalised’ to a common boundary between the organisation where a standard and shared process environment can be created. This process of externalisation is called the ‘inside-out’ approach. A BPM solution enables businesses to design and deploy end-to-end processes by enabling collaboration with different processes at various levels.

A process centric approach: externalisation to an independent process layer

IT architectures look somewhat different than for other disciplines such as Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). This is because the BPM-focussed architect seeks to limit the amount of processes embedded within functional applications, and to externalise as much as possible into the process platform.

Of course, for most businesses there is no blank canvas on which to start. BPM tools therefore seek to ease the integration of the BPM approach into an existing architecture over an extended period of time, in order to limit the impact on current operations.

For example, a business process for delivering service to a customer involves a CRM system, a billing system, and an activation system. Changing the process involves making software changes in one or more of these systems, with long lead times and a consequent lack of business agility. The BPM approach externalises and represents that process in a single application, which calls on the services of the other three applications for specific tasks. Coupled with rapid process definition tools, this makes the task of changing the process significantly easier.

It involves a fundamental change in the way we think about the structure of IT systems, applications, and infrastructure. In essence, BPM promotes a ‘process centric’ view of IT where the management of end-to-end processes is separated from the underlying applications, their connections, and data. It involves the creation of an ‘Independent Process Layer’.

This layer contains a complete view of all the activities necessary to execute a particular business process. It can manage the flow of these activities whether they involve different applications, people, or a combination of both. An essential aspect of BPM is that this Independent Process Layer complements existing (and future) investments in applications, content repositories, and data integration tools.

The Independent Process Layer



Understanding BPM

Customer Care

Finance

HR

Procurement

InternalSystems

Customers

Billing

Activation

Network

BSS

OSSInventory

ManagementFault

ManagementWorkforce

Management

Independent Process Layer EAI

Figure 1 - How BPM can fit?

The process centric approach overcomes two key obstacles that impede the ability of IT to respond to business needs. Firstly, packaged applications represent a ‘hard-wired’ set of process elements, which are sometimes configurable (for example by leveraging workflow technology), but generally difficult to change in the context of a process that spans applications. This makes the implementation of applications often slow, expensive, and inflexible to subsequent alteration. The alternative of developing your own application, has the advantage of being tailored to your initial requirements, but is often more expensive, probably slower, and just as inflexible.

Secondly, a complete process for, say, fulfilling a customer’s order is rarely captured within a single application. Typically, many applications (and groups of people) are involved. This has led to the addition of integration connections between these different systems. Unfortunately, these tend to further embed processes into the infrastructure, increasing the rigidity of the overall IT environment.

By separating the management of processes out into an independent process layer, BPM provides a number of advantages. Firstly, it allows an organization to quickly improve the degree to which processes are automated. Also, existing systems can be linked together, and the gaps between systems that have been previously difficult to automate and manage can be filled. Often this is because certain process elements cannot be easily handled by systems and require human intervention. In contrast to earlier integration efforts, these linkages are often made in a ‘loosely coupled’ manner to support faster change to the integrated applications.

Secondly, it enables a more disciplined approach to process management. Externalised representation of processes means they can be more clearly defined, actively controlled and executed by the BPM layer, and better measured at every step. Best practice processes, and the knowledge that underpins them, can be deployed across the whole business, not just where more skilled individuals are involved. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, processes can be easily changed, and those changes made operational far more quickly and inexpensively. So, BPM is not just about automating existing processes better, but is also an effective environment for continuously improving the processes themselves.

The Independent Process Layer therefore allows more value to be extracted from existing investments in applications, data integration and people. It also enables the IT organization to be far more responsive to the business at a lower cost. But the bottom line is that well-deployed BPM technology enables faster, easier and cheaper process improvement for a company once the functional building blocks of IT architecture are in place. As you can see, the problems that BPM solves are not fundamentally new, but BPM provides a new and exciting approach to solving them.



Understanding BPM

2.4. Analyst comments

From the Aberdeen Group: BPM is about the reality that business processes are complex, dynamic and intertwined throughout an organization – and, beyond the firewall, to its partners and customers. To effectively automate and manage cross-functional processes, a new approach is required with supporting tools that reflect this reality – BPM is that approach. BPM allows processes to be modelled and then dynamically maintained as business requirements are refined or modified, in the light of new information on how users work or changing business needs.

Business Process Management (BPM) is a change management and system implementation methodology to aid the continuous comprehension and management of business processes that interact with people and systems, both within and across organizations.

From the Delphi Group: “The notion of cross-functional processes inevitably brings to mind application integration, which is no doubt responsible for much of the confusion between BPM and EAI. [..] However, the market [today] shows a clear and appropriate bias towards the independence of BPM from EAI or data-centric integration software.

While the market seems clear on this distinction, BPM has nonetheless been pigeonholed by many analyst firms as merely a subgroup of EAI. To do so, however, is to miss the point of BPM’s fundamental value to the enterprise.

BPM is not about linking applications, per se, nor about defining the transformation logic involved in extracting data from applications. This may be a subset of what a BPM solution offers; yet the real value of BPM is the ability to define and execute business processes independent of applications and infrastructure. While EAI and integration capabilities offer an important resource to BPM environments, integration software typically lacks the ability to address the user-facing side of business processes. This is consistent with the fact that EAI is concerned foremost with app-to-app exchange of data, not user activity or interaction.”



Understanding BPM

3. BPM & Existing Frameworks

3.1. BPM & e-TOM

The eTOM process framework has evolved over the last couple of years from the basic Telecom Operations Map (TOM), which focussed only on the operational processes within the telecommunication industry. With valuable feedback from various CSPs, the eTOM has now translated into a process framework that identifies necessary process elements encompassing the entire enterprise rather than concentrating only on the Fulfilment-Assurance-Billing (FAB) processes. The need for this was felt as every support process impacted the FAB processes in one-way or the other and vice-versa. In other words, the FAB processes could not be looked at in isolation.

In this lies the intrinsic strength of adopting eTOM as the basis of the process framework for coming up with a BPM Solution. Though the eTOM does not give the exact inter-relationship between various process components, it provides a CSP with all the information to arrive at one for the organisation. Hence, the process definition stage in a BPM Solution becomes complete, as it is easy to envisage and define the inter-process relationship in the initial stage rather than addressing the situation as and when it arrives. This leads to flexible and agile business processes.

For example, based on an e-TOM influenced framework, a strategic decision to launch a new product/service by a CSP can easily be associated with the CSP’s Infrastructure Life Cycle processes. Simultaneously, change in a CSP’s infrastructure would impact the Operational Support & Readiness processes that support the core FAB processes. Conversely, FAB process performance measures identified in the definition stage would trigger the Infrastructure Life Cycle processes leading to capacity augmentation and so on.

3.2. BPM & SID

BPM and NGOSS are responsible for the integration between various application systems as process flows. The role of Shared Information & Data (SID) is to build a library of business entities, which are the actual drivers of integration between various systems.

Shared Information & Data (SID)

Different application systems identify business entities differently. Hence, one of the major pain areas for organisations in the phase of integration is to map various business entities used across different application systems against each other. Therefore identifying common business objects and mapping them is a mammoth task for the integration team.

BPM helps in identifying the common business entities from the business processes defined in the e-TOM framework. In the process definition phase, process components can be taken from the e-TOM framework and linked to build the end-to-end business process string for any particular product or service. BPM also helps in ‘externalising’ the business processes and business rules from the existing Operations Support Systems (OSS). This helps the integration team to arrive at common business entities across the organisation.

Implementation of BPM will help telecom operators in eventually moving towards the NGOSS (New Generation OSS) Framework. NGOSS is a comprehensive, integrated framework for developing, procuring and deploying operational and business support systems. Development of the NGOSS framework is essential for building and managing the processes that are e-TOM compliant and dynamic in nature. It helps in aligning system architecture and business processes. NGOSS separates the business process map from business component operations, where the process flows from one point to the other. Component operations provide details of tasks at lower levels.

SID addresses the information and communication industry’s need of having shared information and data for business entities, which are used across the enterprise. It is the framework that helps in standardising information/data vocabulary across all OSS systems within an enterprise. SID provides an “entity” view of “thing” of interest to the business, where as the attributes of that business entity are the facts that further describe it. SID, therefore, is a companion to eTOM, where eTOM provides a process view of operations and SID provides an entity view of the business entities required to complete that operation.



Understanding BPM

eTOM Level 0

BPM

eTOM Level 2

Figure 2 - BPM – SID Relations

Compliance to the SID framework ensures the entire domain coverage as defined in eTOM. It also helps in defining business entities in a standardised manner across the organisation. This brings a commonality in the terminology used to define business entities. This definition makes business entities OSS neutral and drives the reusability of entities within the organisation, thus resulting in the speedy implementation of changes.

3.3. BPM & Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) SOA is currently being touted as the ‘next wave’ of enterprise integration. SOA, at the simplest level, can be thought of as EAI with standards based integration between systems. In addition, systems are broken down into more atomic functional components (each offered as a ‘service’) rather than being opaque collections of functionality with proprietary integration points. The result, according to the proponents of SOA, is enhanced business agility and flexibility.

Legacy App 1

EAI LINKING LEGACY APPS BPM AND SOA

Legacy App 4

Legacy App 5 Legacy

App 3

Legacy App 2

EAI Platform

AdapterAdapter

Adapter

Adapter

Adapter

Tightly Coupled

Integration

Service 1a

Service 1b

Service 2a

Service 2b

Service 1c

Service 3a

Service 3b

Service 4a

Service 4b

Service 5a

Service 5b

Service 5c

BPM Platform

Loosely Coupled

Integration, Standards

based interfaces

Figure 3 - BPM and SOA

Decomposition NGOSS

Detailed Business SystemData Architecture

SID

Process Model Architecture



Understanding BPM

One of the fundamental pillars of SOA is the idea that calls to these services should not be performed outside the context of a business process. From a technical perspective, this therefore translates into a requirement for BPM solutions at the heart of a service-oriented architecture. BPM and SOA together form the offering and the architecture, which provides business agility and flexibility. This will be further explored in a subsequent TM Forum document.



Understanding BPM

4. BPM in Context with other technologies So far this document has described BPM in isolation. In order to complete the picture, it is important to understand the linkages, overlap and differences between BPM and a wider set of enterprise technologies.

4.1. BPM & Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)

EAI has arguably been the driving force behind the enterprise software market in the last 5 years. Driven by an increasing need to integrate front and back office systems in the web enabled world, EAI offered standards-based or proprietary methods of integrating enterprise systems. The principal justification for EAI was the risk of an exponential growth in systems connections that were required as more and more systems were integrated; the correct way to proceed, it was argued, was to apply a ‘hub and spoke’ approach with EAI as the hub. In this manner, adding a sixth system to an environment of existing five systems would require integration only to the hub, rather than to all the other systems. The total number of connections would thus reduce from 26=64, to 12.

EAI solves technical problems of data integration. ‘Adapters’ or ‘connectors’ link enterprise systems to the EAI hub, and data changes in (for example) the CRM system are propagated to all other systems in the architecture as appropriate. In this way, companies attempt to ensure that the data in their systems is in synch.

EAI can be said to have had mixed success. The levels of capital expenditure required were initially high, and the costs of system integration were significant (although certainly lower than would have been required by integrating each system independently). Nevertheless there is a sense of disappointment or disillusionment amongst enterprise buyers as the results and benefits that were promised did not materialise on the expected level.

After 5 years of EAI deployment, it is now possible to analyse what has caused this difference in expectations against results. There is a large body of thought, which says that whilst integration in itself is a laudable goal, it is not one, which can produce bottom line results. It is more important to have a clear view on the business processes which cause the data to be changed in the first place, and to direct the changing of data in the context of a business process. In other words, to leverage all of the excellent integration work that has been performed and get real value from those integrated enterprise applications. This is where the relationship between EAI and BPM starts to become clear. BPM is required to manage business processes, and EAI is required to ensure efficient data integration between the systems involved in those processes.

Of course, individual vendor offerings tend to blur this distinction. EAI vendors add process management capabilities to their systems, and BPM vendors add integration capability to theirs. The fundamental point though is still the same – BPM and EAI are perfectly compatible and indeed mutually reinforce each other in an enterprise software environment. With the current state of offerings no EAI vendor offers BPM with enough capability to justify selecting EAI alone, and the opposite is true of BPM vendors.

It is therefore essential that going forward enterprise software architecture decisions take account of both disciplines and drive vendors of each to mutually reinforce their offerings, potentially in strategic partnerships with each other.



Understanding BPM

4.2. Technology Neutral Architecture – Web Services

One of the key drivers in this new process-centric view in the IT market place is the ‘Web services’ technology. It essentially acts as a modern form of data exchange, except that it is an electronic application interchange. The beauty of the technology is that it is sensitive to the process in which it participates and does not require intimate knowledge of the encapsulated application.

The basic definition of Web Services (WS) is the building of composite applications using a standard set of network services to find and link loosely coupled software components. At a more granular level, a Web service is an XML object comprised of content, application code, process logic, or any combination of these, that can be accessed over any TCP/IP network using the SOAP standard for integration, the WSDL standard for self-description, and the UDDI standard for registry and discovery within a public or private directory. Today, an enterprise can choose between J2EE and .NET frameworks.

Web Services undoubtedly make integration between systems simple, quick and easy. However no organization would consider deploying the WS technology outside the firewall unless it is part of a well-defined and managed process. BPM is therefore complementary to web services. In fact the adoption of web services will fuel the need for BPM.

4.3. BPM & Policy (or Rules) Management

Policy or Rules Management is a discipline, which has exciting synergies with Business Process Management. The central idea is that there are a number of basic decisions that a business makes during the course of executing a business process, and it makes sense to abstract these away from the definitions of business processes wherever possible. One benefit is increased business flexibility as rules can then be changed independently of processes, and applied wherever they touch a process.

For example, consider a credit rating decision made by a telecommunications business, whereby a number of parameters describing each customer are analysed and a decision made to continue with the order or refer the customer to an external credit checking agency. The functional systems architecture for supporting this logic can be shown evolving over recent years:

Phase Description Comments

1 Business-rules logic ‘hard coded’ into individual applications

Changes to business rules require re-coding and systems development; business lacks responsiveness

2 Business rules logic represented by logical constructs on a business process map in a BPM system

Business processes are easier to change in configurable process tools, but rules may be configured in many places rather than just one. Process maps become unwieldy as a lot of the process logic has to be taken up by rule evaluation.

3 Business processes described in process maps; business rules described in rules engines

Rules can be changed independent of processes; one rule, one definition (improves consistency); process maps describe business processes only (aiding process maintenance); greatly increased business agility

BPM vendors have recognised the added value that rules engines can have with respect to their process offerings. Indeed, it could be argued that as part of a BPM evaluation, potential customers should pay particular attention to the quality of the rules offering and how well it integrates with the core BPM engine.

4.4. BPM & Workforce Management



Understanding BPM

A key part of BPM is the routing of work to human participants in a business process. It is therefore attractive to consider that BPM should replace applications with a traditionally high level of human involvement such as workforce management (WFM), whereby the work of teams of technicians, installers and engineers is managed and scheduled.

In fact, WFM continues to have a significant role to play in a BPM environment. Though the BPM system may direct a significant amount of human work in a business process, there are some specialist scheduling applications, which require key systems to be used, and WFM is one of them.

The reasons for this are that some scheduling activities are specialist in nature. In case of WFM, advanced statistical and route scheduling / calculation algorithms may be required to ascertain the best team to do a particular job, and the best route to take for a particular team. BPM solutions do not typically include this level of advanced mathematical support.

Thus, WFM can be considered as a specialist decision service available to BPM to ensure the ongoing validity of job scheduling. Once the BPM system has decided (as part of a business process) that an appointment is required, it will route the job request to the WFM system. The system will respond either with a confirmation that the work is complete, or with details of the appointment / job details selected in order to be further managed as part of the business process.

4.5. BPM & Workflow

Workflow is the term for a set of technologies that were abundant in the 90’s as a means of transferring work between workgroups and teams, typically within the context of a departmental workflow process. Workflow provides the underpinnings for many of today’s BPM systems, but BPM expands these concepts further in some fundamental ways:

Workflow solutions rarely spanned a business, whereas BPM typically tackles end-to-end enterprise process flows

Workflow solutions offered only limited design, analysis and monitoring of processes in comparison to BPM offerings

Workflow solutions typically had no support for high availability, high performance environments, in contrast to BPM

The complexity of processes that can be managed is much higher with BPM than it was with workflow.

24x7 OperationsPeople and SystemsScalable ArchitectureEnterprise Integration

More DynamicProcess Need

More Static

Dynamic BPMBPMWorkflow

Process Component ArchitectureReactive Processes

Scalable Enterprise Process ManagementSimulation, Prediction and Learning

PeopleSimple Processes

Document ManagementCollaboration

Some enterprise processes

Departmental Processes

Majority of enterprise processes

Process Types

Figure 4 - Evolution of BPM



Understanding BPM

5. BPM Standards & Languages

The key requirement of BPM is the ability to collaborate with other business functions within and across the organisation. There is an increasing need to develop a language, which is capable of describing complex business processes. The language should allow various systems, applications and business functions to share the information within and across the organisation. At the same time it should be able to support rich semantics for expressing business logic, rules and information flows.

In today’s heterogeneous and distributed operating and business environment, there should be a business language, which helps in interoperability between OSS and BPM Solutions. It should also build a platform to coherently work across wide range of process applications.

Many vendors have come up with such common business languages. Some examples are –

1. Business Process Modelling Language (BPML) developed by BPMI.org

2. Business Process Query Language (BPQL)

3. Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and

4. Business Process Management Notation (BPMN)

5.1. Business Process Modelling Language (BPML)

BPML is a meta-language for the modelling of business processes, just as XML is a meta-language for the modelling of business data. BPML provides an abstracted execution model for collaborative & transactional business processes based on the concept of a transactional finite-state machine. BPML processes can be described in a specific business process modelling language layered on top of the extensible BPML XML Schema. BPML represents business processes as the interleaving of control flow, data flow, and event flow, while adding orthogonal design capabilities for business rules, security roles, and transaction contexts.

BPML is a business-oriented language designed for top-down deployment in a process management infrastructure that leverages existing enterprise and B2B-convergent standards. It supports dynamic collaboration among partners, and is more expressive than process modelling supported by traditional software engineering paradigms.

Key features of BPML

BPML processes span multiple applications and business partners, behind the firewall and over the Internet.

BPML brings together middleware capabilities that are developed separately, such as Teleprocessing Monitors, Remote Procedure Calls/Object Request Brokers, Publish and Subscribe, and Message Queues.

BPML can handle participants of different kinds – back-office systems (such as database management systems), software components (such as EJB components), users (such as a Purchase Manager) and partners (such as suppliers and customers).

BPML can define both business transactions (such as the fulfilment of a purchase order) and system transactions (such as one processed on a database table) by a process. Business transactions usually involve two or more parties (a sale, for example), while system transactions can involve multiple back-office systems (distributed transactions)

The unification of dual notions of business processes and technical processes was a key goal in the definition of BPML.

5.2. Business Process Query Language (BPQL)

BPQL is a management interface to a business process management infrastructure that includes a process execution facility (Process Server) and a process deployment facility (Process Repository). The BPQL interface to a Process Server enables business analysts to query the state and control the execution of process instances managed by the Process Server. This interface is based on the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The BPQL interface to a Process Repository enables business analysts to manage the deployment of process models managed by the Process Repository.



Understanding BPM

Process models managed by the Process Repository through the BPQL interface can be exposed as UDDI services for process registration, advertising, and discovery purposes.

5.3. Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) BPEL has become the de facto standard for managing Web-based processes. BPM tools can also incorporate BPEL to provide a standard BPM engine and to provide an open description of processes for execution.

5.4. Business Process Management Notations (BPMN) The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) has developed a standard Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN).The primary goal of the BPMN effort was to provide a notation that is readily understandable by all business users, from the business analysts that create the initial drafts of processes, to the technical developers responsible for implementing the technology that will perform those processes, and finally, to the business people who will manage and monitor those processes. Thus, BPMN creates a standardized bridge for the gap between business process design and process implementation.



Understanding BPM

6. BPM Solution Overview

BPM was discussed in context with other technologies and frameworks in the earlier sections. BPM Solution makes use of these frameworks, techniques and applications that effectively track and orchestrate business processes. BPM Solution manages processes, allows manual intervention, extracts transaction information from multiple systems and manages the dynamics of the business all at the same time.

6.1. What is BPM Solution?

Business Process Management Solution enables a business to define, design, and deploy end-to-end processes, not by imposing a common process but by enabling co-ordination and co-operation among the distinct processes at various levels - applications, systems, business units and enterprise.

BPM Solution not only aids in executing processes efficiently, it also provides tools to allow the measurement of performance and identify opportunities to improve processes.

BPM Solution aligns business processes within and across organisational boundaries. It takes a holistic view of an organisation and its operations. In implementing a BPM Solution, business processes are evaluated and analysed, integrating people and applications for the tasks contained in these processes. BPM abstracts the integration effort up to the business process layer and by doing so decreases the complexity of integration, while increasing the overall manageability. This new layer (See Figure 1) effectively separates the business processes from the application layer and confers a supervisory role for the processes to manage the automated enterprise.

In simple terms, when implementing a BPM solution organizations perform the following four steps –

Analyse identified business processes with respect to who is involved, what applications are utilised and what data sources are required

Model processes graphically using process modelling tools

Automate processes and dynamically manage them

Improve processes by effective monitoring and post-execution analysis

6.2. Elements of BPM Solution

6.2.1 Six Functional Elements of BPM Solution

BPM Solution comprises of creating a platform consisting of systems and techniques that needs to have the following six functional elements to provide a comprehensive Independent Process Layer.

1. Defining Processes

A non-technical business user must be able to define business processes in terms of graphical models of the process that are then executed by the process engine.

2. Running Processes

The heart of a BPM platform is the process engine that executes the business process as they have been defined. This engine tracks the state of the process at any given time and ensures that the correct sequence of process steps are followed as defined by the business.

3. Managing Processes



Understanding BPM

Measurement of the processes as they execute, provides the information necessary to understand how each element of a business process is performing, and how it could be improved. Technical or systems level monitoring and management of platform is also provided.

4. Integrating People, Processes, and Applications

The BPM platform needs to be able to communicate with the underlying applications and people who will perform the tasks necessary at each step of the process. This integration layer ensures that a wide range of different applications and EAI technologies can be integrated quickly and easily with the BPM platform.

5. Connecting Users to Processes

People play a vital role in most business processes. The BPM platform should provide a rich environment for the user to play his part in the process and efficiently complete the work items necessary for the process to progress.

6. Industry Specific Process Frameworks

A BPM platform, as described in the five functional elements mentioned earlier, can add value to the management of any process that is fragmented across multiple systems and groups of people. Process Frameworks provide specific ‘template’ processes, which can be used, as a start point to model organization specific process needs.

6.2.2 Six Technical Elements of BPM Solution

The technical elements of BPM Solution include:

1. Process Modelling: Modelling business processes that can be imported into workflow and process automation software (can be a simple flow chart or something that can capture and generate code)

2. EAI (Enterprise Application Integration): Automating the exchange of data between internal applications

3. Process Automation: Automating and managing the flow of integration processes (this is the engine that uses the information from process modelling)

4. Trading Partner Management: Automating the linking of internal business processes with those of key trading partners

5. Business Activity Monitoring: Providing monitoring and analysis of active business processes (e.g. management dashboards to monitor important operations)

6. Repository: Including stored information and data.



Understanding BPM

7. Implementing BPM

7.1. The BPM Implementation Methodology

Process Definition

Process Execution

Process Analysis

Process Monitoring

Business Goals

Figure 5 – BPM Implementation Methodology

Structured approach of BPM Implementation includes the following main stages:

Process Definition

Process Execution

Process Monitoring and

Process Analysis

Each of the above stages, represent the requirements of implementing BPM effectively -

Processes are defined / modelled (preferably in a graphical manner) using a software tool. This enables the capture of processes by skilled business analysts instead of software engineers.

Those process definitions automatically flow into a process execution environment where instances of the process run.

A monitoring layer analyses the executed processes to provide management reports, status updates, what-if analysis etc.

The results of the analysis are fed into the next cycle of process design improvement.

Responsibilities are allocated unambiguously, including responsibility of the process itself, process related data and process documentation.

The above mentioned BPM Implementation Methodology is presented below to understand in detail various stages involved in the BPM Implementation Life Cycle.

7.2. BPM Implementation Life Cycle

The factors that impact the implementation life cycle are shown separately in the diagram.



Understanding BPM

OSS / NGOSSRule Engine Process Manager

OSSOSS OSS

EAI SOA

ProcessExecution

Dynamic ProcessManagement

Process ExecutionEngine

Setup & Validation

ExecutableProcess Definition

ProcessTransition

ProcessInstance

Process MonitoringBusiness Activity Monitoring

Process AnalysisProcess Analysis

Repository

Executable Process Repository

Process Model Repository

Business Rules Repository

'As-Is'Process Mapping

Gap Analysis Design 'To-Be'Process

Define PerformanceMeasure (KPI)

Animation /Simulation

Influencing Factors / StandardsOSS

Solution

Existing Process /Business Policies

ExistingOSS BPMN

BusinessDrivers

BenchmarksSIDeTOM

Process Definition

SystemsDevelopment

Figure 6 - BPM Implementation Detail Life Cycle

Influencing Factors: Here the purpose is to factor all influencing agents so that the Process remains in harmonization with reality. The influencing factors are used at different phases in the life cycle. There are certain benchmarks and industry accepted standards like eTOM, which help in analysis as well as gap identification in the existing process. Factors like SID, OSS solution and business drivers play a vital role in defining the ‘to-be’ process.

A) Process Definition Stage

Processes are correctly identified, defined and modelled using an application package. This enables the capture of processes by skilled process designers.

The Process Definition phase includes:

As-Is Process Mapping: The existing process is captured with minute details like existing OSS, business practices and using standard BPMN (Business Process Management Notations). The details and focus of process capture varies with the scope of the process improvement targets.

Gap Analysis: The existing processes that are mapped need to be compared against frameworks and industry accepted standards like eTOM and SID. This helps in gap analysis to identify missing links in the existing process.



Understanding BPM

Design 'To-Be' Process: This stage ensures definition of a standard process that is most effective in terms of business delivery, capability and well attuned with the offered OSS solution. Structured steps need to be defined (once or in phased manner) to align the existing process with defined standard frameworks like SID. Process design will also be aimed at achieving business drivers/measures.

Define Performance Measures: There are key process points, which influence the overall process. Performance measures should ensure that the process delivers set business objectives. These bottlenecks are identified separately with respect to business drivers and benchmarks. These Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are then monitored in the next phase to track the process performance. Eventually, these process performance parameters are aggregated to business performance parameters.

Animation / Simulation: This involves simulation and animation of processes using a supporting tool to gauge overall process performance with respect to resources, time, costs and other constraints. This tool aids in pre-implementation analysis of the process to ensure the most feasible process design. It is a highly reiterative activity to verify and validate the 'to-be' process to ensure the completeness of the process with respect to business rules, executable processes and the process model repository.

B) Process Execution Stage

This is an agile and integrated stage to execute business processes with real time management capabilities to address ever emerging business scenarios, in the shortest possible time.

Process execution includes translation of a validated graphical process into an executable process definition. The process is then validated against the systems and business rules. The process execution engine iteratively interacts with OSS/NGOSS during execution.

Here, it is important to clearly identify the critical areas of Service Providers.

Accordingly, the implementation of critical interfaces in a particular domain will gain priority.

The ability to manage state and process logic also allows the Execution Engine to facilitate hand-offs between process participants (person-to-person) and manage interactions between users and applications. In this manner, the Execution Engine allows autonomous execution of individual activities, while maintaining the continuity and integrity of the executed process.

The Execution Engine manages the sequencing and distribution of activities, as well as parameters such as data variables captured or updated, time constraints on activities, and the state of activities. However, the performance of work is left to human workers, not scripted into application code.

C) Process Monitoring Stage

A process is monitored using KPIs. These are compared as against the known standards or expectations defined in the Definition Stage. This also includes Dynamic Process Management and Process Instantiation from the Process Execution phase.

D) Process Analysis Stage

Regular gap analysis is performed to ensure that performance is against predefined measures. This results in the timely identification of mismatches if any. Identified gaps need to be realigned to the standards which can be handled by implementing BPM.

During the Process Execution phase, dynamic process management and process instantiation help in continuous process monitoring. The results obtained help in business activity monitoring.



Understanding BPM

8. Conclusion

The essence of BPM is to enable the business users to reuse, maintain, configure, and fine-tune the business processes with little or no dependence on systems. It enables companies to manage the core activities of their business more readily than using traditional software applications alone.

Today's business processes, consisting of numerous habits, practices, disjoint data models, application logic, workflows, and many other point solutions repeated a hundred times in a hundred silos, need to be rationalized. Companies need the capability to recast all business processes into a standard form that is open to manipulation by familiar tools and skills already in place. To achieve a fundamental shift from process reengineering to ongoing process management, companies are beginning to understand the value of the Business Process Management System.

In the current economic climate, business process flexibility is a key to organizational survival. But the logic of business processes tends to get hard-wired into highly expensive and complex IT systems, thus smothering innovation. However, a Business Process Management System is a new kind of software suite that enables organizations to build flexible, responsive systems with speedy integration into existing software infrastructure.

It is a piece of technology that allows the creation of a process layer that provides a level of process abstraction, and removes processes from the control of applications. In the same way as Middleware provided a data abstraction layer, BPM provides a process abstraction layer – the Independent Process Hub.

With BPM, instead of having each application being in charge of a set of processes, and trying to subjugate adjacent applications top drive its processes, the control of a process is taken away from individual applications, making them equal peers under the control of the BPM layer. This BPM layer drives processes and delegates tasks or activities to the individual applications according to their strengths.

The spotlight on BPM started about five years ago when there was low-level Process Modelling, Workflow, Process Automation, and EAI. This led directly to internally focused BPM solutions. Today BPM has grown significantly with more sophisticated packages that include Business Activity Monitoring, Trading Partner Management, B2B Connectivity, and Security Operations Management (which involves both the internal and external processes).



Understanding BPM

Appendix A Further Information and References

A.1. BPM Standards Initiatives BPEL (OASIS) – http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=wsbpel

(BPEL is the current forerunner in the process standards race)

XPDL (WfMC) - http://www.wfmc.org/standards/docs.htm

BPML (BPMI) - http://www.bpmi.org/specifications.esp

A.2. BPM on the Internet eBizQ BPM Site - http://www.ebizq.net/hot_topics/bpm

Workflow Management Coalition – http://www.wfmc.org

Business Process Management Institute – http://www.bpmi.org

Business Process Trends - http://www.bptrends.com

A.3. BPM Vendors Process Modelling Vendors (Note that there are many Process Modelling vendors, the following were identified as Leaders in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, June 2002)

Casewise http://www.casewise.com

Mega http://www.mega.com

Meta http://www.metasoftware.com

IDS Scheer http://www.ids-scheer.com/

Popkin http://www.popkin.com

Proforma http://www.proformacorp.com

Process Execution Vendors

BEA http://www.bea.com

Intalio http://www.intalio.com

Metastorm http://www.metastorm.com

Savvion http://www.savvion.com

Staffware http://www.staffware.com

TIBCO http://www.tibco.com

Vitria http://www.vitria.com

webMethods http://www.webmethods.com

A.4. BPM Books Business Process Management: The Third Wave (Smith, Fingar):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0929652339/



Understanding BPM

Appendix B BPM In Telecommunications

B.1. Detailed Example A business example is a good way to understand the value that BPM can bring to a telecommunications organisation. Consider the steps that the telecom operator must go through in order to ensure effective order management – perhaps the most challenging process of all.

Consider that a customer subscribed to a data product – ISDN. The customer wishes to upgrade to broadband access. In order to effectively deliver this new service to the customer, the operator must ask itself the following questions:

What is the translation between what I have sold and how I deliver it?

Which aspects of what the customer already has (commercially & technically) can be reused?

What is the technical impact on other aspects of the customer’s total service package?

Do I have the necessary infrastructure in place to deliver the new service?

Does the customer have any other outstanding requests that might impact what I do?

How can I ensure a seamless handover of service from the old to the new?

What do I need to consider to ensure effective billing and revenue collection for the service?

How can I keep the customer informed if things don’t go according to the plan?

How can I ensure that the customer is ultimately satisfied with the service received?

This set of questions is essentially a business process, which will be extremely fluid over time. The fluidity will manifest itself in various ways:

The way that each question is answered will change as business priorities change

The answer to each question may differ depending on the products and services being delivered. For example, ascertaining whether infrastructure is in place for a particular order may well be an automated call to an inventory system for a high volume consumer service, but may equally be a manual reconciliation exercise for a complex VPN.

In the past, it is likely that business processes of this nature would have been hard coded into silos of application systems, so that the handover from ISDN to ADSL was possible. But what if the customer does not have ISDN, but service X…? In future, such architectures will not be sufficient: the business process must be represented quite distinctly from the underlying functional systems so that process change is possible. This distinct representation, over and above the functional components themselves, is much more disposed to being changed than processes ‘hard wired’ into different functional applications and norms of working.



Understanding BPM

Credit Credit CheckCheck

Approved?

Network Network ElementElement

PreparationPreparationFinish Finish

provisioningprovisioningPrePre--

ProvisionProvision

Delivery Delivery ChannelsChannels

All All OKOK

Set Set InstallationInstallation

DateDate

Site Site VisitVisit

BPM Platform

B.2. Applications of BPM The following applications of BPM in a telecommunications context may help illustrate the potential reach of the technology.

Fulfilment (Order Management & Provisioning)

When a customer makes a request for service from a CSP, the Fulfilment process manages that request and should ensure that the requested products and services are delivered correctly and in a timely manner, through the decomposition of the order into atomic products, services and resources. Successful end-to-end management of the fulfilment process results in satisfied customers. This is crucial as it represents the customer’s most direct contact with the CSP and colours the customer’s opinion of the organisation.

Despite the importance of this process, it is rare to find a CSP who has end-to-end direct process management. Process automation may have been implemented at certain points in the process (most commonly in the front office CRM system and in the back office provisioning process), but not many CSPs can go to a system and discover the exact status of each order in the organisation. This means that the processes are run by multiple systems and people. This often results in a lack of business responsiveness and customer service that leaves a lot to be desired. Moreover, from a business performance measurement perspective the CSP is not able to get a holistic view of the past performance of the process from which to extrapolate future changes.

BPM is the ideal platform on which the end-to-end management of the fulfilment process can be based. Those CSPs who have started on this route are enjoying significant efficiencies and vastly improved customer service. Furthermore, management of those organisations can be performed in the context of exact business performance metrics from the execution of the process in a BPM environment.

Assurance (Service fault management)

The Assurance end-to-end process manages the prevention, identification and resolution of interruptions to service. Assurance processes can be initiated by customers noticing an interruption to their service, by systems monitoring and reacting to the status of the telecommunications network, and by systems raising probabilistic alerts based on forecast traffic levels.

Irrespective of the source of the alert, it is essential that a consistent and repeatable process be in place to resolve the alert as soon as possible after it is raised. This is why BPM is particularly well suited to the Assurance domain, working



Understanding BPM

in partnership with network monitoring and CRM to ensure the efficient management of the end-to-end assurance process.

Some of the benefits gained using BPM to manage assurance processes are:

Assured and repeatable processes

Management of deadlines, escalation and priorities of investigation and resolution tasks, perhaps based on customer parameters

Learning framework – ability to investigate ratios of customer-found vs. automatically discovered trouble instances and improve responses on an ongoing basis

Full audit trail of the end-to-end resolution process in ongoing customer disputes

Ability to manage hierarchies of trouble tickets in (for example) multinational operations

Network Installation & Expansion

The core asset of a telecommunications provider is its telecommunications network. This is an evolving entity, which must be managed continuously to ensure customer service levels are maintained at all times.

A key part of network management is the manner in which changes are handled. Requests for expansion of or change to the network may result from individual customer requests (and therefore link to the Fulfilment process), or they may be part of planned expansion to handle future customer demand. Equally, trouble in the network may result in the need for changes to be made and thus link to the assurance process.

As a result, network change management is ideal for the application of BPM technology and many CSPs are already reaping the benefits. This is particularly true for large, nationwide networks where potentially thousands of field and network engineers need to be managed.

Benefits include:

Homogenisation of responses across geographical regions

Diverse work routing – shifting tasks between regions in response to workload

Multi-skilling – the ability to train engineers on a more diverse range of skills owing to the ability of BPM to route work intelligently

Compliance – specific and accountable control processes for network tasks with regulatory implications

Likely network related applications of BPM include:

Base Station Rollout, which has a complex level of local authority and planning processes to be managed in addition to the physical work

Network capacity change management – the efficient rollout of network capacity in response to changing demand levels

Logical and physical inventory record correction management – the incremental correction of historically inaccurate inventory data as a result of ongoing work on the network.

Customer Retention & Loyalty

One method of attracting new customers is to offer special deals with associated contractual tie-in periods to justify the expense of the offer. This is especially true in the mobile sector where high up-front equipment costs are subsidised with (normally) 12-month contracts. At the end of the contract period, a CSP will often wish to engage in a dialogue with the customers to attempt to dissuade them from leaving and taking up similar offers from competing operators.

The process to be followed for the loyalty campaign is well suited to be managed by BPM. In partnership with CRM (which may initiate the process), BPM can ensure that the business follows a defined and accountable process in attempting to reduce customer churn. CSPs who have engaged on such projects have discovered a significant increase in customer retention and satisfaction rates.



Understanding BPM

Appendix C Abbreviations

BPEL Business Process Execution Language

BPM Business Process Management

BPMI Business Process Management Initiative

BPML Business Process Modelling Language

BPMN Business Process Management Notation

BPQL Business Process Query Language

CSP Communication Service Provider

EAI Enterprise Application Integration

eTOM Enhanced Telecom Operations Map

FAB Fulfillment-Assurance-Billing

KPI Key Performance Indicator

NGOSS New Generation Operations Support System

OSS Operations Support System

SID Shared Information & Data

SOA Service-Oriented Architecture



Documents

USINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT FOR - … · In May 2004, the ownership of the document was given to Tech Mahindra Limited (formerly Mahindra-British Telecom Limited). Although the original