BPM gets flexible

The next step will be to establish an unstructured process within the hiring process. That will allow reviewers to assess the benefits of permitting employees with access to the chemical formulas (or to other sensitive financial or personnel information) and help make a decision. “Depending on the situation, a new employee might require approval from a number of reviewers, or just from one,” Coronado says. “Using Process Director will let authorized users set up a workflow to handle each case when additional review is required.”

“It is easy to move into and out of an ad hoc process using Process Director,” says Scott Menter, VP for business solutions at BP Logix. “For example, users can check out a document, make revisions and return it to the structured workflow. In addition, the product itself is easy to install and use. About half the purchasers of Process Director are business users rather than IT departments, because they can configure it themselves rather than waiting in the IT queue.”

More flexibility than you think

Traditional BPM is not necessarily rigid. “It is something of a myth that everything in BPM has to be modeled,” says Greg Carter, CTO of Metastorm, which offers the Metastorm BPM platform and related products including Metastorm M3 for cloud-based enterprise modeling. “Even for structured steps, the system needs to have collaborative and dynamic interactions where there is no process model.” 

Case management for insurance is a good example, wherein an overall process is defined but the investigator might need to visit a scene, take a deposition and talk to a number of people, which cannot be predicted ahead of time. “A lot of that dynamic BPM goes on and then the case goes back into a structured process,” Carter explains. “Dynamic BPM” is a frequently used term for the concept in which the case takes a side trip and then returns to the main process.

Although case management is not new, it has received more attention recently because of its flexibility and value to knowledge workers. “The most important aspect of case management is its ability to incorporate the unpredictable,” says Emily Burns, senior product manager for case management at Pegasystems. “It can also have structure, but you can define the structure as you go. Some work might start out as unstructured and then as you understand the process, you can migrate to some rules and formal processes.”

Pegasystems’ SmartBPM is designed to allow business users to model processes and create applications. Within SmartBPM is a case management module that allows for adaptive case management to handle unexpected requirements. The case management function provides a “design by doing” approach that allows users to save new processes as a template, rather than treat them as an exception.

Companies have numerous ways of achieving flexibility in business process management, says Forrester’s Richardson. “Solutions need to be built to support a specific problem,” he says, “but they should be designed for change. Dynamic BPM and case management provide a framework for flexibility, where the emerging standards do not mandate a predefined sequence.”

Forrester sees the increased focus on customer service and regulatory compliance—both requiring maximum flexibility and adaptability—as key drivers for BPM adoption for the foreseeable future.

DNA Offender Tracking System (DOTS)

In 2004, California passed a regulation that law enforcement officials must take DNA samples from individuals convicted of certain crimes, and in 2009, the law was expanded to include those arrested or charged with any felony. Los Angeles County, which has a population of more than 10 million people, processes 1,200 criminal arrests each day. The system needed to handle large volumes of information, operate on a complex set of rules that determined which suspects needed to provide DNA samples, ensure compliance with regulations and share information with other agencies.

“We were looking for a platform that was on one hand sophisticated enough to meet our business needs, but did not require us to write a custom application,” says Ali Farahani, director of integration services at the LA County Information Systems Advisory Body (ISAB).

ISAB found that Case360 from Global 360 provided most of the needed functionality right out of the box and, as a Java-based product, was flexible enough to allow any degree of customization that was required. The county implemented the DNA Offender Tracking System (DOTS) and has improved accuracy and reduced time for processing samples. For example, in the past, officers had to log into the criminal tracking system, get the record of arrest and prosecution (RAP) sheet, and read it to find out if

DNA should be taken. Now, DOTS retrieves information from the criminal history reporting system and populates the DOTS data sheet automatically. Officers know immediately if the individual in custody is eligible for DNA testing.

Global 360 offers both Case360, which has a case management emphasis, and Process360, which focuses more on process. “Because Global 360 has a strong heritage in process and
 document management,” says Jennifer Troxell, VP of marketing at Global 360, “we have rich capabilities in both areas and can support the continuum of ad hoc to highly structured processes.” Case360 is designed to be adaptive, supporting unstructured workflows, while Process360 is primarily model-based with some case management functionality.