Ultimus再获美国《KMWorld》杂志年度大奖(1.4)

AMTeam.org消息：Business process management (BPM) is proving to be a versatile and valuable solution for companies across many sectors. Its use can grow incrementally, and eventually interconnect multiple functional areas.
 
O.C. Tanner is in the business of employee recognition, through products and services that help companies acknowledge the contributions of their workers. The goal of O.C. Tanner is not just to supply awards and certificates, but also to support organizations in developing a culture of appreciation that creates a sense of value on the part of employees. With more than 10,000 clients, the company faced challenges in establishing, tracking and maintaining its highly customized recognition programs. Growth of its management systems had not kept pace with its increasing business base--the company was getting by with a mix of Microsoft Access databases, Excel spreadsheets, manila folders and a custom Visual Basic workflow application.

Wanting a more robust system for its process management than was provided by the Visual Basic application, O.C. Tanner began exploring BPM solutions.

"When we started out, we did not know what BPM was," says David Berg, senior VP and CIO of O.C. Tanner. "We ended up evaluating 21 companies against our set of criteria." Based on the company's specific needs, the evaluation team found that Fuego was the best match. Consultants from Fuego advised the company to start with a simple process, but O.C. Tanner opted to tackle the new account setup process, a complex but critical part of the business.

In the course of defining its processes, O.C. Tanner also simplified them, in one case reducing a 50-step list to just four steps. The time to get a new customer on-stream dropped from 12 days to seven, and the process became completely visible, as well as more accurate. Next on tap for Fuego at O.C. Tanner is the processing of administrative files, such as lists of employees who are scheduled to get awards at a particular time.

"Developing a BPM system needs to be a collaborative effort," says Berg. "You can't just write specs and throw them over the wall. You need to sit with the businesspeople on a daily basis and learn their processes." He also points out that considerable development effort is required to make the most of a rich functional environment.

BPM fills an important gap in enterprise applications. "We do not address the same needs that ERP, content management or collaboration applications do," says Rick Mattock, VP of product strategy at Fuego, "but we touch all of them." Often, a problem emerges because those applications do not talk with each other, and BPM can help them work together.

Compliance and more

Blue Rhino sought out a BPM solution to support its financial compliance initiative. The company sells propane in tanks for barbequing, and also designs and markets outdoor appliances such as grills and heaters. Its tank exchange program is widely available throughout the United States. Relying on a relatively small IT staff, Blue Rhino wanted to document, implement and test a set of formalized controls in its financial department. For example, bank deposits needed to be verified by several individuals, and the routing needed to be visible. After reviewing a variety of options, the company selected e-Work from Metastorm, a product that has since been rebranded as Metastorm BPM.

Automation was a significant shift for Blue Rhino, which promotes a corporate culture based on trust and interpersonal relationships. In order to make the transition easier for employees, the controls imposed by the system were introduced gradually. At first, deadlines for responses were matched to existing habits, and then they were tightened as employees got used to the process.

In addition to achieving the day-to-day control over financial transactions that Blue Rhino wanted, e-Work has reduced the time requirements for the IT department during audits. The auditor is seated at the e-Work application and can view the routing and dates of various financial transactions.

"Compliance was made easy for Blue Rhino," says Tamria Zertuche, senior director of information systems at Blue Rhino, "because the system offers both visibility and self-documentation." The new compliance system has been well accepted in the financial department, and now other departments are interested in automating their processes. Examples include replacing two paper and fax systems, one for ordering materials used in point of purchase and installation for customers, and another for incident reporting.

Keeps train moving
 

One of the valuable but less obvious functions of BPM is its ability to serve as a de facto integration tool that connects processes throughout the enterprise, as each new one is automated.

"Moving the work along requires that various systems be accessed in a seamless, transparent way," says Paul Roth, VP of integration at Metastorm. In the past, integration with other applications required considerable effort, but today's service-oriented architecture makes it easier. Existing systems can be more readily leveraged, which is less disruptive to companies.

"Organizations don't want to stop the train to change wheels," says Roth. "They want to keep moving, and BPM allows them to use what they have in a much more efficient way, without having to revamp all their other systems."

More accurate admin processes

BPM applications do not need to be complex to be worthwhile. National Grid, a distributor of electricity and natural gas in the Northeast, wanted a more consistent and accurate way of ordering printed materials, including forms used by employees and information sent to customers. The company selected the Ultimus BPM Suite to automate the process. Prior to using Ultimus, employees might submit orders via phone, fax or in person. Larger requests were sent to the warehouse, while smaller ones were fulfilled by an in-house print shop.

Once the Ultimus system was in place, accuracy and timeliness of orders both improved. "We found that requests were no longer falling through the cracks," says Andrew Bort, senior system analyst for the IT department at National Grid. "In addition, we got a quicker turnaround, because orders that had requests to both the print shop and the warehouse were submitted in parallel rather than sequentially."

As is often the case with BPM implementations, another process was automated after Ultimus was available--in this case, an investment recovery initiative that brings about $6 million in revenue per year. National Grid sells items they no longer use, including office equipment, vehicles and materials. In the past, the process for that investment recovery was not well documented or carried out in the most efficient way. A simple workflow to track the sales resulted in a smoother, less error-prone process.

The financial services and insurance industries have been early adopters of BPM, but several other sectors where use is low now could benefit substantially. According to Rashid Khan, CEO of Ultimus, medical service providers and government organizations could both make excellent use of BPM.

"Customer care in the medical business involves a good deal of routing and many processes," says Khan, "but several factors have limited its use so far." He cites the heterogeneity of the IT infrastructure, such as a mix of Macintosh and PCs in office environments, and the complexity of the content, which might include images, charts and other documentation.

In the government sector, the extensive amount of paperwork in many agencies would be aided by automation. However, Khan notes that many of those processes are complex and might be daunting to implement. Unlike some systems, though, BPM can be implemented in stages.

"The beauty of BPM is that you can automate one or two processes, then a few more, and prove it as you go," Khan says. "You don't need to automate an entire department at once, as you would with an ERP system."

Early adopters refine applications

The health insurance industry was an early adopter of BPM in the form of automated claims processing. Over the years, those systems have been enhanced to provide a greater level of sophistication.

HealthNow NY is the parent organization for health insurance payers' BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York and BlueShield of Northeastern New York. The company first installed an OCR product to facilitate data entry of paper claims, and then wanted a software tool with a business rules engine to augment its adjudication system. One goal was to improve the "first-pass" rate, so that claims would be processed immediately upon adjudication and without manual review. Business rule consolidation, processing efficiencies and payment accuracy were additional goals of the HealthNow claims re-engineering initiative.

HealthNow decided Pegasystems was the best match for its needs after examining the product's use in several other Blue Cross/Blue Shields plans. Functions of particular value to HealthNow included the ability to use the product on the back end for pended claims, through intelligent workflow routing and direct interfaces to their claims adjudication system. In addition, an automated interface between Pegasystems and HealthNow's IBM (ibm.com) imaging system allowed authorizers to see claims images without going to another application.

"Based on the Pegasystems workflow automation, pended claims inventory was reduced by 40 percent within the first month," says Michael Kerl, manager of e-commerce for HealthNow, "in part because the reviewers no longer worked from paper reports."

The next phase of HealthNow's Pegasystems implementation focused on a pre-adjudication business rules engine. The pre-adjudication application was developed to improve the first-pass rate by validating the claim before it is processed. For example, a comparison is made between the member ID shown on the claim to the HealthNow's membership system. A Pegasystems business rule then applies the correct "group number" to the claim so it correctly passes through adjudication edits. Those validations are run in batch mode and ensure claims adjudicate accurately with a high first-pass rate, reducing administrative costs.

All-purpose tool

BPM technology is one the most versatile enterprise software products in use today. "It is analogous to a relational database," says Jay Sherry, VP of marketing and solution frameworks at Pegasystems. "It is a cross-industry, general-purpose tool that can be applied in many ways." Because BPM has many potential purposes, customers do not always realize right away that a product bought for one specific use, such as compliance, can be useful for ordering forms. But as organizations gain more experience in using BPM, the opportunities also become more evident, and its presence more widespread.

来源：Ultimus