An Offer You Can’t Refuse!

Not sure about benefits of the cloud? Worried about missing out something by not adopting cloud? Looking for a safe methodology to adopt cloud? The one which you can stop anytime you want and yet benefit from the work done so far?

Well look no Further; we have an amazing One Day offer for you, using our unique consultancy experience to study your enterprise from cloud perspective, with a customised comprehensive report on new practices and how best you can realise them. 

This report will normally take 3-5 days to do, but we are using special methodology to capture the needs quickly to be able to provide you efficient service to see how much you can save in cloud. We will Offer you non-pushy objective advice based on a study of your enterprise on how best to utilise the cloud to beat your competition.

Our Consultants have extremely good understanding of cloud because of his experience in Technology Strategy Board, he is the best qualified person to analyse cloud services and probably the most experienced. His unique approach will shrink study time from 3-4 days to 1-2 days saving you 33%-80% of consultancy costs.

So what are you waiting for? The Offer is Valid until 31/07/11 and you can schedule our services up to 30/09/11

To take advantage of this great offer,  Please don’t hesiatate to visitr our website http://www.carkeansolutions.co.uk/offers, contact us on +44(0)20-3239-2338 or e-mail us on info@carkeansolutions.co.uk.

Thank you for reading, and please feel welcome to leave a comment!

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Building security into the cloud

While increasing digital communication capabilities, is driving corporations to take advantage of virtualisation and better bandwidth capabilities to move their data and applications into private and/or public clouds. They are transitioning desktop users to thin client computing, where users can have global access and share the data they need to conduct their business via commodity desktop and mobile devices across the Internet.

At the same time, malware has taken off to an unprecedented scale, as organised crime has been able to leverage the Internet far quicker than the traditional security vendors can deliver the appropriate counter-measures. It is a well established fact that antivirus solutions are, for example, unable to cope with the evolving malware threat coming at us.

This movement to the cloud is an entrenched trend, and one that has profound implications for security. There has been much publicity around sophisticated attacks, leading business decision makers to believe that not much can be done to secure them.

In fact, the majority of these high profile attacks can be traced to the exploitation of vulnerabilities that could have been easily eliminated or mitigated. Hacking into computer systems is certainly not new, and is typically the result of social engineering or identifying holes in systems and their protection. What has changed is the complexity and scale of the computing environment that needs protection.

As an example, a much publicised issue last year was the theft of credit card data. Today we see the underground market value of stolen credit card information dipping drastically, and cybercrime is moving to more lucrative grounds such as bank account information and healthcare records. This is because the Payment Card Industry (PCI) requirements, along with better fraud detection systems, have made cybercriminals less interested in going after credit card data. As we all know, lower demand generally produces lower prices.

Still, the easiest way for cybercriminals to steal valuable data is to enter through identified or unknown vulnerabilities, and what works in their favour is the huge proliferation of devices and the many ways they interact and exchange information. This makes them exponentially more vulnerable, and harder to protect. As opposed to enterprise computing, which has become highly distributed, heterogeneous and complex to manage, cloud computing technology enables the centralisation of data and the building of a fractal infrastructure. It offers expanded ability to more effectively protect data at a basic level, and streamline the patching and mitigation processes.

This allows a drastic reduction in the cost of securing your infrastructure, because resources can be distributed across thousands, and even millions, of users, and further reduced via automation. Corporations are now beginning to realise this, and as they move to private and public clouds, they are looking for security solutions that are more effective to deploy and to maintain in this atmosphere than the ones they are used to. They also are looking at solutions that can easily interoperate, as one vendor is unlikely to have a solution that covers all their needs.

Naturally, such a transition will not happen overnight. To stay relevant, security vendors have to retool their current offerings to adapt them to this new environment, and needless to say, this is not an easy task, and new security companies will emerge to rise to the opportunity.

The cloud offers us an opportunity to change enterprise security for the better.

Thank you for reading! And please feel welcome to leave a comment!

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Is there an 'Unreasonable Fear' of Cloud Technology?

Following service interruptions last week in Amazon's cloud computing web services, as well as the downing of Sony's PlayStation Network online services, Is There an "unreasonable fear" of the cloud?

Cloud computing often means that information and services are stored on shared remote computers and accessed via the Internet, the "cloud" theoretically reducing a company or individual's storage requirements and costs. Businesses and services that use the cloud range from Netflix to Hotmail.

The term cloud, however, can be used in varying ways, and in the broad sense, it could include Sony's PlayStation Network online services, which was down for a full month. It's been a wake-up call. A lot of people assumed the use of the cloud was kind of a magic bullet, the lesson is that you have to treat your cloud like any aspect of your IT infrastructure and you have to architect appropriately for it. 

The PlayStation Network looks like it is a hack of some sort. Honestly, I'm shocked, The Sony situation sounds like they got access to administrator accounts, so the full damage is not yet known. It is possible, in theory, that they got access to credit card information and that they got access to content.

The Sony online services were suspended April 20 due to "an external intrusion on our system, Sony service resumed on Sunday. I think in order for Sony to resolve this matter, it will involve re-building their systems to further strengthen their network infrastructure. Though this task is time-consuming, it is worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security."

Meanwhile, Amazon offers public cloud services which are maintained at multiple data centers in various cities and countries that are used by a wide variety of businesses and customers. Service interruptions last month that originated at its Northern Virginia data center brought down or disrupted websites for clients. The incident brought into question a need for redundancies and backup. In some of these cases, the sites that went out did not avail themselves to all the backup capabilities that Amazon offered.

I think the biggest lesson I'm seeing in this is that even if you use clouds as part of your strategy in IT and there is no reason not to do that even if you have your own local system, it can be insecure. If you are going to use external providers, you still have to architect for these situations. If that system is going to go down or be compromised, you need to have a backup plan. Either you need to pay for what these services such as Amazon offer for backup and even then I'm not sure it is sufficient or you need to be prepared to operate in multiple clouds using multiple vendors. Or, you need to have a combination of private cloud and public cloud.

Another lesson in contracting with these companies, it may be appropriate to have liability clauses so that if something does go wrong, you have recourse, you have to have backup that is the point. All of these things hacking, technical problems could have happened if you don't use the cloud. So I wouldn’t recommend saying ‘don’t use the cloud.’ The cloud is an amazing resource. Users just have to be realistic about these types of failures. With the way the technology is always improving, there are more solutions for example you can now handle your data in the cloud without storing your data in the cloud

To learn more about the cloud and the best strategy to use for your business, Read MAHESHA PANDIT blog here http://letitscale.blogspot.com/

What Do You Think? Can you trust the Cloud?........

Thank you for reading! And please feel welcome to leave a comment!

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Metro Bank – the future of UK retail banking?

Metro Bank is Britain's first new high street bank for over a century and it's a seven days a week bank.  The bank only closes four days a year, and is open 78 hours a week.   That's because they are in the account opening business, which means taking business away from the competition. The bank opened its fifth store just the other day, and plans to have 12 stores operating by the end of this year thanks to its full capitalisation of £125 million through private funding.

Every call in the call centre is answered by the second ring and the whole technology operation is run on a pay-as-you-use basis.  The banks view is that you should over invest in stores and facilities, as that's building the brand, and that Britain's banks have underinvested in these areas for years.

That's why Metro is focused upon the small things, like the pens.  They give away pens, Lots of them.  Take away as many pens as you want. Why chain the pen to the counter?  Give them away. Like the vans.  All the banks in Britain have vans picking up cash and cheques from branches, and they don't even bother to brand them.  Metro Bank's vans are all fully branded, as that's thousands of free eyeball impressions every day.

Like the coin counting machines.  You don't need to be a customer to use those machines, and yet these coin counting machines cost about £30,000 each to put into the branch.  In traditional banks, you wouldn't do that.  You would ask where the return is.  How do you justify that? But Metro Bank justifies all of this because of the customers becoming fans and that delivers the shareholder returns.

It all looks great but I think the things that will make the real difference are the ways that Metro Bank is being set up. There are many advantages that completely new businesses have especially in banking. From the infrastructure:  no legacy systems to integrate with, all data on systems that can be scaled and are cutting edge; to the way that customer service staff work both on phone banking and in branch interchangeably. It’s these advantages that will make the real difference in delivering a truly better customer experience that might just get people to switch.

Thank you for reading! And feel welcome to leave a comment

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

BPM: The view from all sides

BPM opens the door to the possibility of smaller software portfolios, flexible response to business needs, and easy customization. BPM enables data to flow easily from the organization's various data repositories to its employees and partners while actually strengthening the governance of the data itself as well as that of the processes driven by that data. And, perhaps most importantly, BPM-based processes are indeed invented here, custom-configured for the needs of the business, often without programming.

Sure, BPM has its challenges, and I hope to touch on those in this space. Ultimately, though, BPM holds out the promise of a revolution in the way that technology impacts business, and the way that business, in turn, views technology.

Since 2000, the financial services industry has led the aggressive adoption of BPMS technology. Many leading financial services institutions are consolidating their projects into a more coordinated BPM program. BPM has mostly been embraced in service industries, where human productivity and effectiveness are especially critical to process performance.

In their September 2010 primary research survey on BPM adoption, respondents said they expected the following benefits from BPM:

Continuous Process Improvement [53%]
Transformational [7%]
Incremental Gains [20%]
Substantial Benefits [19%]

The above list of expectations gathered from a Gartner survey should have more credibility. I am sure that you have heard what BPM can do for your company from many vendors. And, you may be hesitant that you will actually receive those benefits. Businesses tend to purchase a BPM solution to improve business performance through broader and better coordination of a specific mission critical process. They are looking for continuous process improvement, transformational gains, incremental gains and substantial benefits.

Their thinking is if I can make my mission critical process more efficient and more effective, then I can expect lower costs, increased revenues, and improved customer relationships. It can differentiate my company from its competitors and It can become a core competency.

Thank you for reading! And feel welcome to leave a comment

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Social Media and Business Process Management Make Strange Bedfellows

Or do they? Just look at who is using and who is producing each one. On the one hand, we have the BPM industry, BPM Software is all about following rules, improving efficiency, and getting large, bureaucratic organizations to operate the same way every time for a given process. Social Media on the other hand is cool.  There is no other way to put it.  It isn’t worried about being efficient; it is led by 20 somethings that are out to change the world.  While Business Process Management and Business Process Management Software is about modelling business processes and simulating them until we can make them more efficient. Using social media to engage and grow a community you certainly wouldn’t want to design out the processes by which participants would interact and “code” them into the collaborative environment. People don’t socialize and collaborate that way. With social media you focus on purpose and outcomes often letting the means to the end emerge naturally as people engage one another.

Ok, I'm generalizing, but you get the picture. Most BPM companies are going to have a hard time innovating around Social Media because they really don't understand it or the culture it comes from. Nonetheless, the two exist in the enterprise together so of course it begs the question of how the two fit together. As an open source BPM provider, we tend to have a deeper understanding of social media than most BPM companies. After all, Social Media has long been an integral part of open source software culture.

So, now that I’ve just explained why Social Media and Social Media Software is incompatible with BPM – let me tell you how despite the differences the two can and should co-exist intimately. But what ties the two together is that business needs both.  And when we talk about software residing in an enterprise, then we’ve got to talk about how they can and should interact. 

Think about it this way - what if bpm users were empowered to improve their process performance by harnessing an interlaced, interactive, and living knowledge base and that is where a key point of interaction between BPM and Social Media resides.

Thank You for reading!


All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Google BPM: Noodle!

Google has finally arrived into the Enterprise space with their Enterprise BPM offering called Noodle (named after process spaghetti!). Here’s look at what they Google Offers: All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation


Process discovery: With Google’s powerful presence in the email & productivity space, combined with the strong tagging and pattern recognition technology, there’s finally a way to auto discover the spaghetti of processes. It uses the groups and aliases given to all the people and tracks down the frequently used labels and combines with who connected with whom most often, to come up with this. There’s also a way to search and filter the communications to trim off the garbage from this spaghetti.


Collaborative Modeling: With a cool collaborative technology using the behind the scene syncing technology around Google docs, and a simple drag & drop and tagging interface, you have a collaborative process modeling environment. There’s obviously no match for process workshop, but there’s so much that happens after that brings you back to the real world reality. And ability to remotely collaborate over process model is something that is indeed a blessing.


On the Cloud: Google is on the cloud, your process models will be on the cloud, your processes would execute from the cloud.


BPM and ACM, meet each other: A process model designed and deployed through the modeler, process executes through emails, messaging, and the engine that keeps track of a fixed and variable parts of the process. Similar to what happens to a Google Doc in a shared mode – while you’re viewing a doc on the cloud it remains the same copy for all. The moment you edit it and make it private for you, it creates a separate process instance so to say – in process world still visible for monitoring and process participation to others. What’s more, you can define which roles can actually edit and make the process better.


On Mobile: With the Android Apps and by pre-building an interface that every Android phone understands natively with Google App Engine, your processes can execute seamlessly from any handset that is powered by Android.


Social, what social? When you do the collaborative modeling & execution and enable people to participate and subscribe in processes, and you have Android interfaces for capturing the relevant tags and kicking off the process instances, then you have cool stuff of liking, favoriting and sharing the process templates.


And there’s a bunch more with Google’s marketplace and App Engine based approach that offers the potential to keep expanding the capability without having to fight around whether it is BPM or ACM or Social or mobile or even on cloud or not.

Thank You For Reading and as always we welcome your comments!

The Financial Service Industry

In Yesterday’s blog we were talking about BPM in Vertical markets but Which industry, if any, has successfully deployed BPM?.  This article focuses on such solutions within the financial services (FS) industry.

The FS industry is one of the industries that are focusing on BPM solutions, and BPM vendors have responded by providing industry-specific functionality. Within FS, we can talk about banking, insurance, credit card companies, securities, etc. These organizations are under intense competitive pressure and, thus, are constantly trying to improve their operations and to respond to dynamic market demands.

FS organizations have implemented several enterprise solutions over the last few years and encountered mixed results. These solutions include customer relationship management (CRM), and anti-fraud initiative solutions, as well as business improvement and competitive advantage applications.

One problem that keeps arising is that applications often are not integrated with each other or are not being used on an enterprise-wide basis. This makes it hard for FS companies to streamline business processes that are specific to the organization's changing needs.

FS companies must be able to design the processes so as to increase productivity within the organization. To do this, it must be possible to adjust processes so that they match an organization's needs as they evolve in an ever-changing environment. For FS companies, these needs may include complying with regulations, acquiring new customers faster, improving efficiency, integrating processes with legacy systems, automating manual processes, analyzing processes for risk management, improving exception handling, and decreasing the number of bottlenecks.

BPM vendors play to these industry requirements. BPM Vendors allow companies to design processes within their solution in order to manage their resources in a structured manner.

Through the BPM solutions that they offer, BPM vendors also help FS organizations achieve compliance, reduce risks, keep or acquire new customers, and link different vertical applications together to become more efficient.

FS organizations can use BPM solutions to their advantage in the following areas:

• Claims management
• Loan management
• Client intakes
• Conflict processing
• Compliance regulations
• Credit issuances
• Credit processing

At Carkean solutions we have extensive knowledge of exactly what is required of us when it comes to financial services firms. And our product; Aquima is second to none when it comes to artificial intelligence. Aquima facilitates agile application development, which in turn allows systems to be quickly modified and adapted to changing market conditions. Aquima is different in that you can update your systems in real time and it costs nothing but a small amount of time to do so. Aquima is not an ‘off the shelf’ solution but a bespoke system which can be tailored to your needs and can be developed to combat the problems you encounter most frequently.

Thank you for reading as always! If you have anything to add feel free to leave a comment or post on our social media sites.

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

BPM in Vertical Markets

BPM is already used in a variety of markets, from financial services and government to healthcare and manufacturing. In fact, vendors have different forms and workflows for each industry that companies can use as the basis for their BPM solution and that they can customize to their specific needs or structure in order to optimize their processes.

This customization is, in fact, fairly simple as BPM solutions are designed in such a way that business analysts are capable of doing most of the process development, thereby limiting the need for programming skills. BPM solutions enable analysts to design work flows, process flows, forms, and maps using the process designer.

Despite this, many organizations have focused on implementing vertical solutions, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM).
BPM, in contrast, spans the entire enterprise. Nonetheless, despite BPM's seemingly horizontal applicability across industries and enterprises, many organizations might benefit from industry-specific, or vertical, BPM solutions.

The core components of BPM are the process designer, the actual process engine, and the interface component. The process designer component is where the process developers or business analysts design business processes. The process engine component is used to authenticate and authorize users. In order to do so, it either stores the information in its own database or is able to connect to external applications or directories where user information is being stored. Finally, the interface component enables users to access the BPM solution through a variety of applications and interfaces, such as browsers, portals, e-mail, etc.

BPM Vendors allow companies to design processes within their solution in order to manage their resources in a structured manner. Through the BPM solutions that they offer, organizations achieve compliance, reduce risks, keep or acquire new customers, and link different vertical applications together to become more efficient.

Thank you, for reading and we look forward to hearing from you!

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Death of Osama lifts dollar but hits gold, silver and oil

The  announcement of  Osama bin Laden death has  pushed the dollar higher, reversing recent weakness, and caused commodities priced in that currency including gold, silver and oil to fall.

Whether any of these hold long term remains to be seen but the historic event instantly created losers as well as winners across global markets. Oil and gold prices fell by as much as two per cent on news of bin Laden’s death and silver slumped by 10 per cent, its steepest fall since late 2008. Brent crude fell by 98 cents to $124.91 a barrel, more than $2 below last month’s 32-month high of $127.

Oil was already down before the news about Bin Laden, after NATO air strikes over the weekend killed one of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s sons and after industry sources said that Saudi Arabia raised output in April. Spot gold prices fell by more than $5 to $1,540 an ounce immediately after the reports of bin Laden’s death, having earlier touched an all-time high of $1,576. Spot silver stood at $44.64 an ounce, down 6.6 per cent and some analysts predict further falls.

The price changes will be reflected in valuations of unit and investment trusts when trading on London Exchange recommences today and recently popular commodity funds, which saw massive inflows last year, will be the biggest losers.

The Oil markets are likely to be the most volatile given their higher sensitivity to the tug of war between lower risk overall and the possibility of isolated disturbances in some parts of the Middle East and central Asia.

Thank You for reading and we look forward to hearing from you!

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Back to basics – why use a BPM system?

Here is a blog about the bedrock of BPM systems (BPMS), and indeed BPM in general, that is, the reason why any business should bother to use it.

The benefits of using a BPMS can be summarised as:

• Higher productivity
• Faster process times (eg end to end)
• An order of magnitude improvement in process transparency/visibility
• An entry point to a virtuous circle of process understanding, improvement and execution
• Better control over the process (eg through the use of embedded business rules)
• Improved job satisfaction for operational staff using the system

Of these the most significant in terms of both impact and universality is undoubtedly process visibility. Whilst senior business managers can be passionate in demanding visibility, Boards can demand more, as IT investments do not always produce a return. This is where the higher productivity benefit comes in handy, higher productivity in the operations teams can pay for the initial project and the ongoing IT costs, whilst the benefits arising from enhanced visibility are spread across the business.

Faster process cycle times; usually arise from a BPMS implementation. Naturally, additional focus and effort can drive further improvement. BPMS can use prioritisation to ensure that outcomes are optimised, something that can be especially hard to achieve where processing is manual.

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

BPM Apps?

Recently reading that 2011 is to be the Year of the App Store, I visited some App Stores to look for BPM Apps. The results start by unearthing some real BPM Apps and conclude with a vision of the App Store as a whole new paradigm for BPM.

You’ll be amazed to read that there are currently 134 BPM Apps for the iPhone alone and equally disappointed to learn that nearly all of these relate to music (beats per minute). One of the features of today’s App Stores is that their search and filter features are remarkably limited considering that a successful search is intended presumably to conclude with a sale.

Most all of these Apps require that you host a BPM server before you’ll get any business benefit from the App. Some of the Apps are a complete BPM system, cloud-based and accessed through a web browser.  As I understand it, their target market is any organisation, big or small, private or public sector, which wants to build and manage its own processes without actually investing in their own BPM platform. This is essentially the traditional BPM market, expanded down towards SMEs that could not previously afford the upfront investment that BPM has tended to require.

The benefits from this will flow mainly to the end consumer. In the same way that much software that would previously have been boxed and sold for is now available in App Stores, there is no reason why business processes should not provide similar economies of scale. And the profits of the successful Process Apps will be shared by the App Store, the BPM Platform Provider and the Process App Developer. Combining the traditional BPM virtues of ease of process build with new App Store publication and subscription functionality will encourage and support a whole new world of competing micro-processes, benefiting all involved parties.

If 2011 is to be the Year of the App Store, will 2012 be the Year of the Process App?

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

We as BPM Vendors

A recent Gartner BPM survey I read noted that the majority of companies leveraging BPM solutions are using BPM to provide better value back to their own customers.  I found this detail to be extremely interesting and also a reminder of the end goal of all BPM vendors should keep in mind. 

If BPM vendors are not placing the customer’s needs first and foremost, then what real value do BPM solutions provide?  If BPM solutions are not designed to specifically drive the customer’s (buyer’s) business needs, then we as BPM vendors are not conducting good business; we are simply engaging in code development.

I know there are a lot of deterrents between the technologies that BPM vendors provide and the actual real needs of the customer.  For example:

• BPM Platform versus a customer’s specific need
• BPM Suites seemingly to never quit growing in terms of features and functions
• Ease of adoption and use by the customer’s employees who drive the process (A recent BPM notion where some argue that the buyer actually needs to retrain their day-to-day thinking to employ a BPM technology, rather than the other way around)

I remain excited and encouraged about the value BPM provides.  BPM needs to be easy and needs to be better aligned with customer needs, arguably one day BPM could be where Email and Excel are today.

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Gartner Business Process Management Summit 2011

Gartner, an information technology research and advisory company is hosting the Gartner Business Process Management (BPM) Summit on April 27-29 in Baltimore. The company says the BPM Summit is the largest, most comprehensive BPM conference in the industry.  The Summit will be offering objective advice, actionable insights, hands-on problem solving and unlimited peer networking. It’s the only BPM event that fully explores proven BPM management disciplines as well as the latest BPM technologies and demonstrates how to use them together in the most effective way possible.

At the 2011 Summit attendees will be exploring proven BPM best practices and the latest BPM technologies and delivering the actionable insights, information and problem-solving you need to create or expand a successful BPM program of your own. There will be 4 tracks targeted to BPM maturity levels. Participants can enjoy 17 Gartner analysts offering unbiased one-on-one private consultation. There will be 50 Gartner analyst-led sessions.

There are six keynotes with top BPM innovators and seven interactive BPM workshops. Participants can also network with 5 BPM Excellence Award 2011 winners, including the Winner Carphone warehouse, to read more about the winners click here. The event will have 4 Panel discussions on critical BPM topics. It will also present 7 Guest Case Studies. The latest BPM suites and tools will be demonstrated by more than 30 companies exhibiting at the conference.

So how do you create BPM success for your organization? How do you drive high-performance business results? With a carefully calculated formula that helps you launch BPM projects, hone evolving BPM competencies and exploit leading-edge BPM insights for long-term success. These are all the things that attendees will learn and take away from attending the summit and leave the conference with some action steps that can be applied in participants own organisation.

This is a very important summit if your organisation is in the BPM industry, as you will be able to get advice, see the best practices and tools to meet your BPM challenges. It’s an important summit that allows companies in the industry to keep up to date, so save the date.

  

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Gartner Guidelines to BPM Project Success

The Core driver of Business Process Management (BPM) projects is the delivery of enhanced business performance through cost reduction, increased productivity and the ability to easily change and adapt the business to any situation. It is primarily a business philosophy about people, the way they work together, their business processes, the technology they use, and the performance objectives that these processes underpin. At the same time, BPM technology delivers the ability to make this vision a reality with BPM projects now a competitive advantage. The vast majority of BPM technology projects are successful According to Gartner, who recently surveyed BPM projects, 95% of those questioned said that their BPM projects had been successful.

Gartner has identified seven key factors that organizations need to observe when selecting a BPM project to pursue:

1. 1.       Limited scope. For the best results, start small. This means a limited-scope project, not a major end-to-end process to improve, but perhaps a portion of one.
2. 2.       High value. The business performance improvement must be seen as having a high value towards attaining the desired business performance results.
3. 3.       Clear alignment to goals. The BPM-based performance improvement that is being pursued directly contributes to the attainment of a targeted goal and fulfils the corresponding strategy.
4. 4.       The right metrics. Only through measurement can companies get the necessary awareness and credibility regarding the value of the BPM-based improvement achieved.
5. 5.       Goal agreement. All the relevant process stakeholders must work together to agree on what is the desired performance improvement. 
6. 6.       Enthusiastic business sponsor. To get the project done promptly and well, and to spread the word across the organization, an enthusiastic business sponsor is essential.
7. 7.       Business user engagement. Getting the people who actually do the work of the process onboard can be an enormous help towards success. Getting them on board typically means offering a fresh perspective on how to look at what they do in their jobs, and making a process view easy to understand and intriguing.

Early, visible, concrete project success is especially important to the long-term acceptance of business process management as a valuable discipline. The Seven key factors above contribute to attaining the highest probability of immediate, and therefore long-term, success.  I think it’s important to have a guideline before deciding to start a BPM project as it helps the organisation to achieve its goals as well as avoiding failure. The key factors above are from Gartner, the world's leading information technology research and advisory company and the insight they have provided will help clients to make the right decisions.

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Artificial Intelligence is Tomorrow's Business Intelligence

Although BPM strives to automate the mechanical processes of a business, the future is in developing BPMs that move into the territory of human judgment. Some of the processes involved in a business environment are not included in the automation because some sort of human decision is needed. With the growing complexity of information systems - especially into decision support systems and artificial intelligence - some human decision-making processes can actually be automated. This is the future goal of BPM, to further automate previously un-automatable processes.

Making computers think more like people. In the workplace, software already predicts customer behaviour and machine failures on the factory floor. These capabilities will continue to evolve. AI’s strength is that it can uncover patterns and spot problems amid a mountain of data. That might translate into detecting future trends.

AI would help businesses because they revolutionise how you can interpret data and turn it into useful information. Thereby it allows the user to set their own parameters, their own needs and their own expectations to which the system is then able to work out the solution. Rather than simply sorting the information or recompiling it.

At Carkean solutions our product; Aquima is second to none when it comes to artificial intelligence. Aquima facilitates agile application development, which in turn allows systems to be quickly modified and adapted to changing market conditions.

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

BPM in the Financial Sector

To date, many organizations often start a BPM project or program with the objective to optimize an area that has been identified as an area for improvement. In financial sector, BPM is critical to make sure the system delivers a quality service while maintaining regulatory compliance. In Recent years several financial organizations have merged, willingly or otherwise. Others have changed their status, moving from investment banks to traditional banks, to acquire more government protections. Meantime, governments throughout the world are introducing new regulations to prevent practices that are presumed to have caused some of the current problems.  Mergers always result in two sets of processes that need to be merged into a common process. Changes in status also require that new processes and business rules be implemented throughout the organization. And, of course, new regulations require new practices and new business rules. All such changes require process analysis and redesign.

There is a great deal of reluctance in the financial sector for BPM adoption, one of the primary reasons for this reluctance is the high expectations placed on BPM. There are a number of reasons for the failure of BPM:  There is a Failure to adopt a holistic approach to BPM, Obtaining organization-wide support is important for a successful BPM implementation, especially senior-management support. This is because a BPM implementation seeks to change the very way the organization functions and this will not occur without support. 

There is also a Failure to adopt an ongoing approach to BPM, Many companies treat BPM as a one-time IT project, neglecting to learn from experience and tweak services and processes for optimal benefit. Instead, many companies remain content with the small gains of a one-time redesign. Finally there is also a Failure to look beyond process automation, what many companies fail to do is to focus on BPM as an enabler to deliver a better customer experience.

However if applied properly, BPM offers financial firms a huge number of opportunities:  BPM allows for Integration and process optimization which can reduce the time lag between sale and completion to enhancing the customer experience and optimize revenue in any financial transaction.  BPM also allows for a structured and powerful approach to Process Discovery combining the ability to change a new process easily while maintaining a high degree of control as required by a financial industry process. A new product or process can be launched in a short time, optimized easily to reach a matured process status with the next decision point of integrating with other existing systems.

Easily the most difficult problem for financial firms today is compliance management. Financial firms today are practically under siege from multiplying regulatory frameworks. Achieving compliance is an seemingly-endless struggle, marked by high costs and time-consuming processes that change on a regular basis and require repeated effort to stay compliant.  Many of the difficulties of compliance, however, can be avoided with effective BPM tackling process definition and process monitoring, which are at the heart of compliance. BPM technology allows businesses to automate and standardize processes that are both auditable and consistent, which allows the enforcement of rules-based behavior across information silos. On the process monitoring side, BPM automatically captures information on a company’s processes, as required by a number of regulatory mandates, and creates an audit trail. 

There are a number of key advantages that Business Process Management offer financial organizations. However, these advantages are not attainable unless BPM is applied in a holistic, ongoing, organisation-wide manner and treated as a means to better overall business performance - rather than merely a tool for automation and minor cost savings.  Applied in such a manner, BPM has the potential to deliver not just cost savings, but the strong revenue gains that automatically come out of a service-centric organizational ethos.


All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Beepy-Em in the Finance Industry

Over the past few years financial services firms have been obsessed with Business Process Management (BPM) software and rightly so. As we know banks rely heavily on profitability. Both their own and that of their clients and they find it very difficult to measure and maximise that profit. Another attribute of banks is that they tend to ‘snowball’, quickly getting larger through multiple mergers and acquisitions.
With those points in mind, it’s no wonder they so eager to obtain such software. BPM software is very proficient when it comes to measuring and maximising profit through improving efficiency and customer relations. BPM software can also help when it comes to connecting the various systems gained through the numerous mergers and acquisitions banks often commit.

So we have established that financial services firms do benefit greatly from BPM software, but which vendor do you chose? With so many different companies selling various different products it can be understandably confusing when choosing the right package. A very important tip is to check the focus of both vendor and the product. From the point of a financial services company; applications that have built-in financial intelligence are a must. The company providing the software must also have a clear understanding of what the financial services require from a BPM.

At Carkean solutions we have extensive knowledge of exactly what is required of us when it comes to financial services firms. And our product; Aquima is second to none when in terms of artificial intelligence.

Feel free to leave any comments or questions and we will get back to you!


All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Eat, Pray and Tech

Imagine a world where your refrigerator emails you when you’re out of milk or your mobile phone buzzes when your dog leaves the yard. You won’t have to imagine it much longer. Such connectedness will be one of the defining trends of 2011, according to JWT’s annual trend report. Among the predictions: We’ll increasingly see worlds colliding, with technology impinging on areas that were formerly tech-free; we’ll also people on technology overload choose to disconnect, at least for some amount of time each day. JWT compiled its sixth annual list by conducting surveys in both America and Britain and also getting input from 50 of the agency’s planners in two dozen markets worldwide.

The reports overriding theme is the economy and technology, the borders between the online world and the physical world are becoming increasingly fuzzy. Mobile gadgets are bridging the two worlds--the web accompanies you and helps you navigate the physical realm--and all kinds of Objects/devices are becoming internet-enabled.   So not only will we have a multitude of connected gadgets, from e-readers to phones to televisions, but objects like fridges or even dog collars will connect to the internet, alerting us that we need certain groceries or that Rover has strayed beyond the basement, for example. The latter is often referred to as the Internet of Things.

If there are two trends that stand out to me in this report, it’s their Eat, Pray, Tech trend and De-Teching trend—they both address our increasing dependency on technology, but from completely different angles. Eat, Pray, Tech speaks to that fact that high-tech devices and services--and the skills to use them--are fast becoming as integral to people as food and clothing. In an interconnected, tech-driven and -enabled marketplace, the latest technology will be more than just a luxury or a guilty pleasure. (Example: The story of a homeless-by-choice writer who owns an iPad and a netbook is symbolic of tech as a core need.)

 At the same time, as our dependency on technology rises, so too will our desire to dial it down. De-Teching speaks to the idea that more people will log off—at least temporarily—or engage in one tech activity at a time in an effort to re-engage in the offline present and/or to rewire their brains to be more effective.  (Example: People have begun voluntarily abstaining from digital media and in some cases initiating unplugging drives around certain holidays.)

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is taking off on a massive scale, so what should companies know as they move their information technology into the cloud?

Cloud computing is a fundamental change of how we - companies and consumers - use computer technology. Cloud computing is the delivery of computing power over the internet. It turns software into a service where customers don't pay for a licence but for how much they use; it makes computing power and storage space a commodity, bought when needed and scaled up when necessary.

The cloud is such a "major technology disruption" that the new chief executive of computer giant Hewlett Packard, Leo Apotheker, has decided to refocus his whole company around a cloud strategy.

The early adopters are both the very big and the very small beasts in the corporate world. Ironically, small firms would be best placed to take advantage of the cloud. Indeed, it is usually start-ups that are seizing the moment. After all, information technology is costly. It requires capital expenditure - for servers, software licences - and a team to maintain it all.

The global economic crisis is helping with cloud adoption. Big IT providers report that customers' budgets are so squeezed that there's a huge reluctance to invest. So finance directors hope that moving to the cloud allows them to replace capital expenditure with operational expenditure.

Getting your IT from the cloud may be cheap, but it comes at a price: standardisation. Using the cloud means opting for off-the-shelf solutions. There will be no, or hardly any, customisation. On the upside, instead of having the same big, pricey software package for everyone, your staff should be able to select smaller and cheaper applications with the functionality that is just right for them.

The cloud is also the perfect answer to the surge of corporate mobility. Workforces are becoming ever more mobile, while staff - from the chief executive down - carry smartphones and tablet computers, and expect that they can use them to access their work files everywhere.

Using cloud services saves companies from building the expensive infrastructure to support mobile solutions.

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation