Category Archives: SOA

Demand Manager @ PV Group

From January 1st 2017 until Sept 15th 2017, I worked as “IT Demand Excellence Manager” at PVGroup.

I managed a team of about 5 Enterprise IT architects and 5 Domain Experts (Non-Life, Life, Claims, Employee Benefits and Front).

This was a very good team to aim at the description of the complete Enterprise Architecture : from Business Processes to Technical Infrastructure.

Together we developed an interesting “Enterprise Architecture” process with several activities:

  • Intake
  • Production
  • Review
  • Validation
  • Harvesting

This was the ITDEME  (IT Demand Excellence) process.

In addition we were busy with building some new digital foundations : ESB, ECM, IAM……

Classify your business processes and focus on the most valuable ones

(Original post : in 2007 I think since I was working at IBM…)
What to do with a Business Process Management Platform ?

IBM’s Software Portfolio contains Business Process Management Tools. When and how you should use a BPM platform such as WebSphere Business Process Manager depends on the type of Business Process that you want to automate.

Types of Business Processes

I classify 4 types of Business Processes in a 2 dimensional table – 1 is not enough and 3 is too much for marketing :-).

BPTypes

The horizontal axis is the differentiation axis:

  • Differentiating : You have business processes which are truly differentiating : your company is the only one to make it that way, or produces that type of products or services.
  • Non-Differentiating : Those business processes are just standard business processes. You do the same as the competition in that domain.

The vertical axis is the “core business” axis:

  • Core business processes : those business processes are core to your company. Example : Credit or Payment processes in a Bank.
  • Non Core business processes : those business processes aren’t really linked to your company but you need to have them. Example : Payroll, Company Cars, Building Maintenance and Security…

 

Good Boys

For two cases, it really makes sense to master a BPM platform in house :

  • “Non-Differntiating” and “Core Business” Business Processes. Those business processes just belong to your industry and so you need to have them. For instance, in the Pharma industry, you need to communicate with the FDA in order to commercialize drugs. In that case, it’s a good idea to try to automate the business processes in order to reduce cost to a maximise. I qualify this zone as “OPTIMIZE” business processes.
  • Differentiating and Core Business : those business processes is your battle field. It’s the place to win new customers by being faster, smarter and offer more than the competition. Those processes are in the INNOVATE zone. It’s the place where you can innovate. Working with a strong BPM and SOA platform can help you achieve your goals faster by providing IT agility.

Bad Boys

For the two other cases, it’s less obvious why you’d need a BPM platform. However:

  • Non-Differentiatng and Non-Core Business : in this case you run business processes which are not really important for you and that will not help you to win market share. This kind of processes should be outsourced to other companies : I put them in the OUTSOURCE zone. Example : outsourcing of Company Cars Pool Management to external companies like ?LeasePlan. If you absolutely want to keep those processes in-house, you’d better manage them right in order to avoid hidden costs and benchmark them. A BPM platform is a plus in that case only.
  • Differentiating and Non-Core Businesses : the first question is to know WHY you are doing this. You have diversified your company with differentiating processes which are non-core. You have two options to handle this : make them core business by adapting the strategy – adding a business unit- or stop doing them by selling or outsourcing them to someone who wants to make them strategic. If they can’t be dropped or promoted to the strategy, you’ll need to manage them you can take advantage of the BPM platform you have bought for your core-processes. Just keep them independant such that you can sell them at any time.

Which Core Business Processes would benefit the most from a BPM platform ?

It depends. You can jump into the “Winning the Customer Battle” by providing better services but you can also cut down prices and/or increase margins by optimizing . IBM wants to help companies to Innovate by becoming the Innovator’s Innovator (Seehttp://www.ibm.com/innovation/guide/conclusion.shtml) and after all optimization sometimes requires innovation….

Next question : How does processes stability play a role ?

What is a SOA Solution ?

The Open Group SOA Governance Reference Model (SGRM) uses the term “SOA Solution” for governed processes : SOA Solution Portfolio Management and SOA Solution Lifecycle Management.

But it doesn’t provide a definition od a SOA Solution.

Here is my definition of a SOA Solution :

“Any ICT solution that consumes or provides one or more SOA services”.

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Category: SOA

From SOA Governance to Information Governance

Recently I have started working on Information Governance.

I have been used to work on SOA governance for several years and I find information governance seems at first sight to be  much more complex. To have an idea, look at at Mike2.0’s section on Information Strategy, Architecture and Governance offerings.

But I just had an idea. What if I substitute “Service” by “Information” in my typical SOA governance framework ?

Would it give a easy to understand and to apply Information Governance ?

To be continued…

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