Managing Success
by Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Part of what makes business process management (BPM) a challenge today is the fluidity of modern enterprises. Not only are corporate priorities and market requirements always evolving, but a company’s physical and logical infrastructure is in constant flux as technologies change and employees continuously enter and exit roles. So as important as modeling business process changes and deploying the code that automates the execution of these improvements are, these steps in and of themselves aren't enough to ensure business process optimization. What companies need are mechanisms that allow them to track process performance and make adjustments with respect to their business goals. These mechanisms enable companies to create the kind of flexible yet stable infrastructure necessary to introduce better products to market faster while lowering corporate risk.

What companies need is a view into crucial processes that will give stakeholders accurate information about how well services are performing in business terms and if and where they need to make adjustments. Are initiatives really driving growth and cost savings or is there still room for improvement? This kind of a vantage point is the best way to effectively manage innovation.

Unfortunately, many organizations have no real formal mechanized process in place to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) to fine tune services and the SOA components that support them to realize business goals. This is a big oversight, given the impressive results companies that put a structure in place to track performance and help businesses manage their processes. According to the Hurwitz Group, more than 50 percent of medium-sized and large enterprise that use dashboards report a $500,000 to $1 million return on their investment within 12 months.

IBM delivers exactly this kind of a business view into technology-driven services through its WebSphere Business Monitor. WebSphere Business Monitor provides companies with a business process dashboard, which can be tailored to meet the needs of a particular organization. WebSphere Business Monitor, which comes packaged with a copy of IBM’s simulation software WebSphere Business Modeler Advanced, functions as a crucial element in the business process improvement exercise.

The solution allows companies to track business process flows and gives organizations insight in near-real time into the performance of business services and alerts stakeholders of critical issues. Business and IT managers can use WebSphere Business Monitor’s scorecard view to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) to see if services are delivering on their promise.

Companies can also use the solution to automatically institute an action or series of changes in accordance with rules or corporate policies. This helps businesses continue to elevate the organizational performance without requiring significant manual intervention.

WebSphere Business Process Monitor plays a vital role in helping businesses achieve BPM success and, just as important, sustain it. By delivering a bird’s eye view of business processes, the IBM solution supplies companies with the information they need to gauge on a broader level how well initiatives are performing for the business and determine where improvements would help a company boost processes to better meet customer and partner needs. Ultimately, it enables businesses to achieve the corporate efficiency and effectiveness needed to thrive in the market.

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