SAPERION Blog

I will invite you reading the new article of Max J. Pucher, one of our thought leader in the area of efficient business processes: ACM and BPM: A Battle of The Hemispheres?

In June of 2010 I wrote the article WfMC’s Thought Leader proclaimed the next BPM revolution in Maidenhead at the end of 2009. It was about Adaptive Case Management – ACM – defined as the complement of Business Process Management -BPM. While BPM is dealing with the predictable processes with structured activity chain models the ACM is about the handling of unpredictable sequences of task within complex envirionments. Analyses of Gartner showed that about 65% of our processes are more unpredictable, so patterns are not the way to describing these processes.

And what I saw in the past was a discussion battle about whether there are benefits of documenting processes via BPMN or other such modelling notations or not. Max is one of the advocacies ot the not. And in his new article he comes to the conclusion, that the battle comes from (more…)

The advance of social media has reached a critical mass and is now an integral part of our professional lives. Many of us blog and tweet as if we had been doing it forever. While mostly beneficial, there are undeniably some drawbacks and risks. Many companies are beginning to wonder precisely what their employees are communicating and with whom they are exchanging information.

The primary concern is not whether employees are “misusing” social media for personal matters, but whether or not the company can retain control over which business-related information is shared and the form in which it is shared.

In order to retain (or regain) this control, it is important to distinguish between two different aspects: “technical control” and the ability to regulate the “content” of communication. (more…)

I am pleased to relate that SAPERION’s interface products for connecting to SAP were successfully certified in late September. Since testing is performed “only” every three years, I once again had the pleasure of accompanying the SAP certification process.

During this round we recertified SAPERION ECM R/Link for SAP® for the SAP ArchiveLink interface. The connection to SAP ILM through WebDAV in the context of our new product SAPERION ECM Data Archiving for SAP ILM was certified for the first time.

Certification for ArchiveLink (precise SAP designation is BC-AL 6.20 ArchiveLink for Archiving Systems) was almost routine. The procedure had not changed, so we knew ahead of time what to expect and how the testing would proceed. Bottom line: we wrapped up pretty quickly.

In contrast, there was a bit of nervousness during (more…)

One after another Business Process Management Suite vendor ist bying a Busines Rule Engine vendor to complete their suite. Yesterday Progress Software announced the akquisition of Corticon which I have seen on Gartner´s BPM Summit in the beginning of this year:

Dr. John Bates, chief technology officer, Progress Software said: “Within modern responsive businesses, the need to make informed and accurate decisions ‘in the moment’ is critical. High quality real-time decisions are key to avoid fraudulent transactions, to comply with complex and evolving regulations and to generally make the right decision for the business at the right time. The acquisition of Corticon reinforces Progress’ commitment to deliver operational responsiveness by helping customers build highly agile, responsive business systems with models and tools that maximize simplicity and accelerate time-to-value.”

Dr. Mark Allen, founder and former chief executive officer of Corticon, now a (more…)

The advent of e-mail has been – allow me to understate – a major advance in business communication. It saves a tremendous amount of time, reduces costs, and accelerates work processes by enabling rapid exchange of information. As a result, decisions are often made with greater speed and effectiveness.
We can assume that only a tiny fraction of modern companies would be willing to forgo their e-mail systems. In fact, it would be safe to say that virtually all companies are pleased with the universal availability of electronic mail for the past 25 years or so. (more…)

Anyone considering implementation of an information-management solution in one area of a company or organization will be forced to consider the trade offs between a specialized, isolated solution and a comprehensive solution. The isolated solution may quickly and effectively fulfill current requirements (such as archiving of e-mails or websites), but investment in a more comprehensive solution will be useful in most other situations as well.

Managing unstructured information within the framework of a comprehensive information strategy is a business-critical task. It ensures that information can circulate throughout the company without obstacles. A wide variety of internal and external systems generate large volumes of data and documents that must be simultaneously forwarded to downstream systems for further processing. In other words, management of documents must cover the entire value-added chain. This is the only way to achieve consistently high quality throughout the entire process. Any information that is not integrated into the enterprise-wide strategy will wind up in separate data silos that threaten the quality of internal processes. Information will not be available where it is needed, documents may be held as (more…)

I’m pleased to announce that SAPERION AG has passed all criteria of the ISO 9001:2008 standard on the 14th of November 2011. This project to implementing a quality management system has been managed at record speed within six months only. This is an impressing result for everyone who has been involved. This shows too how well our departments are collaborating.

For us as a vendor of BPM software it is a good story having just in cold print that our own processes are transparent and efficient.  And for sure we are looking forward to continuously improving our processes and goals living a high quality management system.

Last week, on September 8, 2011, I had the pleasure of participating in the first Signavio Partner Day. I and 34 other participants discussed the latest developments from our perch high over the rooftops of Berlin, atop the main train station building. I am happy to report that the things I heard and observed affirmed our decision to choose Signavio as our partner for professional process documentation and modeling.

In little over two years, Signavio has not only closed more than 200 customers around the world (including Mexico and Canada), but now also collaborates with more than 50 partners in Germany and other countries. Anyone seeking evidence of the firm’s ability to innovate must look no further than (more…)

Rich dlient view of SAPERION ECM Version 7.1

As many people know already, last week we released the latest version of SAPERION ECM. This is a minor release with less focus on new functionality than a major release. However, the latest version does especially include some important changes recommended by the first users of version 7. Extensive updates to the interface are designed to boost user acceptance. For example, we put a great deal of effort into menu ribbons in the rich client and once again broke new ground in terms of navigation.

Version 7 was released in late 2010 with a completely new web client based on modern Ajax and JEE technology. The web client reflects the look and feel of our rich client, making it easier for users to switch between the two clients. The new version integrates several previously absent functions. However, many of our customers will find the new outliner and records applications to be of even greater interest. It is now easier than ever before to keep Case Management functions as are more and more be mentioned by market analysers organized in both the rich and web clients.

Web client view with Google mashup

The outliner application appears as a folder in the navigation area and permits drag-and-drop archiving of entire folder zones from the file system. Attributes of any Office documents are automatically (more…)

Within human-centric processes one of the most practiced use cases is that of the 4-eyes-principle for approving e.g. a credit application, a technical paper for a medical device, or an updated instruction of a quality management handbook.

approval process using 4-eyes-principle

Often the two persons are members of the same group. So the first user task can be adressed to a organisational unit. But how can I model the the receiving mechanismen for the second user task?

Here are some possibilities how to set a receiver for the second task being not the same user who have done the first one:

1st Solution

The first task is placed in the lane for the organisational unit. The user can take the task from the intray of his unit. After finishing his work he can reject or approve the case. Afterwards the following business rule task place in the same lane determines a user of the next task and forwards to it.

Risk: what if the user (more…)