Persona-based approach dramatically improves ROI of process management initiatives

Singapore – July 15, 2009 – Global 360, a leading provider of Process and Document Management solutions, today announced Process360 10.0, a major new release of its Business Process Management (BPM) Suite that helps organizations improve people- and paper-intensive business processes. Process360 10.0 is the industry’s first BPM suite based on Global 360’s Persona-based BPM approach and the first to deliver out-of-the-box applications that address the unique needs of all people in a process. The applications speed the development, deployment and adoption of process management systems, which leads to faster time to market and return on investment (ROI).

“Global 360’s Persona-based BPM is a dramatic departure from the BPM industry’s typical approach to process improvement initiatives,” said David Mitchell, president and CEO of Global 360. “Most efforts focus primarily on the productivity of the system developer, delivering tools that optimize the design and execution of process models. However, our research shows that the majority of the ROI associated with a BPM system is tied to how productive it makes process participants – the people who use the system to get work done. Persona-based BPM allows our customers to meet the specific needs of process participants and bring the entire productivity equation back into balance.”

Innovations Driven by Customer Needs
Global 360 delivers Persona-based BPM through viewPoint applications, which were developed after two years of customer research[1] conducted by user- and interaction-design experts. The research showed that BPM systems today fail to adequately address the needs all of the people involved in a business process, and especially neglect process participants. For example, applications for process participants typically are built only after process models are completed and often by enterprise developers unskilled in modern interaction design.

An April 2009 survey of 781 business, government and IT managers revealed that just 24.3% of users are “very involved” in process improvement and BPM system design. In addition, just 15% of survey respondents in organizations that have implemented BPM systems said process participant productivity increased more than 50%. The survey also showed that 84.7% of process participants “often” or “occasionally” design their own workarounds to their organization’s BPM systems to get their work done.

“Observing and interacting with our customers helped us pinpoint why so many BPM systems hit a wall in delivering on expectations for user productivity gains,” said Mitchell. “Our industry has myopically focused on process automation – how work moves through an organization – and not enough on improving people productivity, which is how the work gets done.”

Global 360’s Persona-based approach starts with detailed models of what each type of user in a process needs to accomplish. Each type of user is then provided with unique “views” that include just what they need to get their jobs done. The views include information, tasks and tools delivered through engaging and intuitive consumer-style interfaces and support established patterns of behavior, goals and motives. Users are free to personalize their views based on their individual preferences. In this way, viewPoint applications boost the efficiency of existing behaviors and empower process participants to adopt new ones – truly changing how works get done.

For all their flexibility, viewPoint applications are ready to deploy out of the box. This means that BPM systems designers can quickly and easily deliver them for new users or applications with minimal configuring and no custom coding, further speeding the development and deployment of new BPM projects. Process360 10.0 includes the following viewPoint applications:

  • viewPoint applications for the three main types of process participants – data entry, processor and supervisor. These applications enable participants to interact more easily with documents and collaborate with other users in a process. They also eliminate workarounds, reduce paperwork and backlogs, and provide the flexibility to respond to changing business conditions.
  • viewPoint applications for builders deliver cutting-edge process design and development tools for quickly modeling the most complex processes and automatically configuring and customizing user applications. Eliminating custom coding speeds time to deployment for even the most complex processes.
  • viewPoint applications for managers provide dashboard reporting, dynamic workload balancing and analytics for end-to-end visibility into processes. This improved visibility gives managers the ability to better manage team and business performance.

Global 360 also leverages viewPoint applications as part of its solutionViews, which are frameworks designed to speed time to value for specific industries. Examples of solutionViews available now include: retirement and savings portfolio management; employee lifecycle management; underwriting and claims processing; customer to case; order to case; accounts payable; and eJustice case management[3].

Said Mitchell, “We set out to fundamentally change the economics of process improvement initiatives – and we did. viewPoint applications increase the productivity of people who design and use BPM systems by 40% while cutting BPM system deployment time by 50%. In large enterprises with complex business processes, that can add millions of dollars in ROI to BPM projects and shave years off the time it takes to achieve it.”

“Building applications for users is expensive and time consuming, which is why they often get sacrificed because of budget constraints and deadlines,” said Bruce Silver of Bruce Silver Associates. “Out-of-the-box applications tailored for different types of users is a big step forward in reducing the trade-off between efficient development and productive use of BPM systems.”

Building on Existing Strengths

In addition to viewPoint applications, Process360 10.0 builds on existing strengths. For example, Process360 10.0 also builds on a rich heritage of process and document management capabilities. For example, Process360 10.0’s document viewer enables users to view documents as part of a process, rather than forcing them to leave the process to view paper originals or switch to another application to view them in electronic form. Participants may also annotate documents before sending them along to the next step. Security is applied to the documents and annotations to ensure that only those users who are allowed to see the information have access.

In addition, Process360 10.0 includes a number of improvements to its process modeler that dramatically improve the efficiency of the developer. These include: a rich palette of more than 80 process tasks; auto-alignment and auto-connection of tasks on a map; automatic creation of sub-maps for sub-processes; and map tear-offs that allow developers to leverage dual monitors while working on multiple maps.

“Global 360’s out-of-the-box viewPoint applications will not only improve our ability to design and deliver process-based applications for our users more quickly, but we can do so knowing that those applications are tailored to meet the needs of our users the first time, without the worry of custom-coding,” said Michael Sanders, IT Global Business Applications, CIBA VISION Corporation. “From an administrator’s point of view, the ability to rely on management reports and dashboards from a single application will make us more efficient in how we balance staff workloads and provide greater transparency into production.”

As the market leader for BPM on the Microsoft platform, Global 360 extends that leadership with Process360 10.0 by strengthening integration and support for SharePoint, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, Microsoft Office 2007, InfoPath and Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009.

“Process360 10.0 highlights the alignment between Global 360’s and Microsoft’s BPM strategies by strengthening support for collaboration between all of the people in a process,” said Kathleen Winder, Director Microsoft Sharepoint. “Global 360’s Persona-based BPM and Microsoft’s People-Ready Process Vision come together to change the way people work, for the better.”

Available Now

Process360 10.0 is available now with pricing models based on customer needs, including the number of users. All viewPoint applications come bundled with Process360 10.0 at no additional cost. Existing customers can gain access to viewPoint applications as part of their standard agreements when they upgrade to Process360 10.0.

Getting Started

Organizations can learn more about Process360 10.0 by visiting www.global360.com. To jumpstart implementation, they also can engage in a viewPoint Assessment, a method for assessing goals and readiness. Typically a two to three week engagement, a viewPoint Assessment delivers a business case, sample process model, key performance indicators, a sample viewPoint application and a plan for getting started. For more information, visit

http://www.global360.com/services/service/viewpoint-assessment.

About Global 360
With more than 2,000 customers in 70 countries, Global 360, Inc. is a leading provider of Process and Document Management solutions. Global 360 is headquartered in Texas with operations in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and South Africa. For more information, call 1-214-520-1660 or visit the company web site at www.global360.com.

Media Contacts:

Celia Chua
Priority Consultants
Tel: 65 63381006
celia.chua@changemandate.tech

Online:
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[1] Research included in-depth interviews with BPM system users in the fourth quarter of 2008 conducted by frog design, inc., a global innovation firm.

[2] Survey fielded by Global 360 during the month of April 2009; all survey respondents were implementing or planning implementation of a process management solution in their organizations.

[3] For more information on viewPoint and all of the viewPoint-based applications and tools included in Process360 10.0, visit www.global360.com.