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Research Note

www.wolfgang-martin-team.net
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin
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WOLFGANG MARTIN TEAM
powerful connections
An analysis by
Agile Companies are
Data Driven
Big Data meets Business Processes
Agile Companies are Data Driven
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin http://www.wolfgang-martin-team.net
2
Contents
1 Prospering in the New Normal Using Big Data Potentials
(Management Summary). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 Closing the Gap between Data, Decisions and Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3 Continuous Adaptation of Processes through Big Data Analytics . . . . . . 6
4 Keep Your Business in Tune. All the Time. On the Fly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5 Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Copyright
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WOLFGANG MARTIN TEAM
powerful connections
Agile Companies are Data Driven
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin http://www.wolfgang-martin-team.net
3
1 Prospering in the New Normal Using Big Data Potentials
(Management Summary)
Digital has become the New Normal, and this will have an enormous impact on the way companies
organize their communications with customers and the way they have to be organized internally.
(Peter Hinssen) [1]
Data have swept into every industry and business function and are now an important factor
of production. (McKinsey Global Institute, May 2011) [2]
The New Normal. It began with the economic crisis of 2008/09 and is vastly different from the Old Nor-
mal, the preceding era. The challenge is to master the volatility of the global markets and the digitized
world. Stability is hard to come by. Markets speed has risen dramatically: Information spreads at the speed
of light. Unpredictability, rapid decision-making and reaction, and the increasing speed of change have be-
come managements central challenges. More and more, agility is the most important factor for companies.
Agility is the ability to be innovative and always in a position to adapt the companys business model and
processes to constantly increasing market dynamics, in short, the organization must continuously be
learning. Because process life cycles are constantly becoming shorter, rates of change are constantly
accelerating in ever-faster cycles. Not being agile in todays market means, plain and simple, losing busi-
ness and market position. This sets new tasks for management: Traditional ways of thinking and acting in
a company no longer work. Information has become the decisive resource for overcoming complexity and
dynamics in the New Normal. Information is key to a traditional business organizations becoming a
learning organization.
Big Data is a product of the New Normal. The amount of information produced by the digital world is
immense, data sources are numerous and diverse, and the speed of data production is tremendous. Conse-
quently, there is enormous potential in Big Data, and above all, great knowledge. Big Data expands the use
of analytics for process control and automation. For instance, Big Data allows the innovative expansion of
processes involved in customer interaction and, thereby, their improvement. Using localization data from
the mobile Internet, customers located near a local contact point (boutique, agency, shopping center, etc.)
can be identified with Big Data analytics in real time and can then be targeted for contact through a com-
bination of customer profile, locally available product ranges, and ongoing promotion. In this way, new
innovative business processes that previously were infeasible or had not even been considered become
viable. Big Data makes companies data driven. Big Data meets processes.
Data move quickly in Big Data. And that makes the market in the New Normal fast. But the window of op-
portunity for making a profit from findings from Big Data is brief. Action time must therefore be short.
This means fast data collection and analysis and fast decision-making processes. But we still need more:
We must have implemented the decisions before the window of opportunity closes. Agility is therefore
absolutely necessary in both the action phase and the implementation phase. Metasonics subject-oriented
business process management (S-BPM) provides agile modeling, implementation and operation of all
business-critical processes, which must be managed even in the face of high rates of change. This applies
not only to structured processes, but especially to creative and situational processes as well as ad-hoc and
semi-structured processes. Because in S-BPM, modeling processes is at the same time programming. The
graphical process model is itself a ready-to-use application. In this way, users obtain optimized processes
[1] Siehe Peter Hinssen (2010) http://www.peterhinssen.com/books/the-new-normal/synopsis?utm_campaign=
AdWords_New_Normal&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&gclid=CLOX3KassrECFc8KtAodgUAAVw
[2] Siehe http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mgi/research/technology_and_innovation/big_data_the_next_frontier_for_innovation
Agile Companies are Data Driven
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin http://www.wolfgang-martin-team.net
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based on information that is always current with no time delay. S-BPM, however, is not only an approach
and technology, but also a different way of working that frees employees from the constraints of control
flows and rigid procedures. Instead, communication, guidelines and policies are the focus with S-BPM.
Decision authority is transferred to where work takes place. Individual departments can model processes
themselves from an I-perspective, thus largely managing their business processes independently. This puts
them in the position, together with IT, to agilely fulfill the constantly changing requirements of the New
Normal and rapidly implement findings from Big Data.
2 Closing the Gap between Data, Decisions and Processes
Companies must be agile in the New Normal. Agility is the ability to be flexible. In the New Normal with
its Big Data, this means always having up-to-date information in order to optimally control ones company
and its processes. The unexpected, which is normal in the New Normal, may not come as a surprise.
Hence, it comes down to analyzing the right data quickly, rapidly deriving prognoses and trends based on
the information thus gained, making the right decisions fast and, above all, implementing them swiftly. This
is the technical and methodological prerequisite to achieving a high speed of change in a company.
Rapid speeds of change are necessary because Big Data provides data and facts in real time. Data and facts
mean opportunities to gain or lose market share they mean prospects and risk. Data and facts offer a
certain freedom within a window of opportunity that must be taken advantage of. Only when you are
in a position of being able to implement new findings from corporate data and Big Data within the given
window, you can benefit from opportunities or avoid risks.
The window of opportunity for exploiting chances or avoiding risks consists of four phases. You must be
fast and minimize latency times in each of these phases. The time of latency is the period beginning when
an event occurs and ending when the reaction takes effect (Fig. 1).
The first phase is data latency: Data latency is the time required to gather the data necessary for the iden-
tification of an event and prepare them for analysis. This is typically addressed by real-time data integra-
tion in the framework of data management. The second phase is analysis latency: Analysis latency is the
time required to analyze the data and deliver information relevant to making a decision. This is addressed
either with complex event processing (CEP) solutions or by using analytical databases: Analytics must now
be available and usable in near real time. The third phase is decision latency: Decision latency is the time
required to arrive at action on the basis of the information relevant to making the decision. If time plays a
critical role in this process, then decisions actually can no longer be made by humans alone; this is then
the task of rules engines. The fourth phase is implementation latency: Implementation latency is the time
required to implement the taken actions. At this point, expedient implementation such as agile business
process management is necessary in order to carry out the required process changes quickly and flexibly,
or such as agile software development approaches in order to quickly model and implement any required
new business services.
Example: With intelligent customer interactions (e.g. in e-commerce or m-commerce), real-time client
behavioral data like web clickstream data and historical behavioral data such as purchasing behavior,
purchase history, catalog information, distribution strategy, and other external criteria such as time of
day, day of week, season. Integrating these data into a model yields a real-time data integration. This
brings us to the first milestone, Data captured. Next, predictive models are used to make prognoses.
This leads to the second milestone, Information delivered. Decisions as to which recommendations
in the given situation raise the conversion rate are then made on the basis of this information. Because
Agile Companies are Data Driven
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin http://www.wolfgang-martin-team.net
5
we are talking about a matter of seconds in this example, we must apply rules derived from the pre-
dictive models in the analysis phase. This brings us to the third milestone, Decision made. The im-
plementation of the measure corresponds here to the execution of the decision made by means of a rules
engine as a service in the customer-interaction process or by triggering another, perhaps new process.
The result is also measured to determine the performance of the process. If we recognize that the
process modification just carried out did not raise the conversion rate, then this negative experience
must be fed back into the analysis and decision phases in order to learn from the experience. At this
point, agility is necessary in the rules engines and process engines so that the experience can be quick-
ly implemented in the customer-interaction process because in e- and m-commerce, time is money.
Take away: In order to master new situations, opportunities or risks, a company must be in a position to
use the given window of opportunity for quick and agile reactions. A decision must be made and an action
implemented before the window of opportunity closes. The prerequisite is the minimization of the data,
analysis, decision and implementation latencies. This means agility in all four of these phases, which clos-
es the gap between data, decisions and processes.
Real-Time and Action-Time
Figure 1. Model of action and implementation times. The four phases, which conclude with the milestones
Data captured, Information delivered, Decision made and Action implemented, must run their course
in less time than the window of opportunity dictated by the respective event. Only then can the company
profit from the opportunity provided by the event or avoid an imminent risk.
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin After: Richard Hackathorn und Colin White
Window of Opportunity
Action Time
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Agile Companies are Data Driven
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin http://www.wolfgang-martin-team.net
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3 Continuous Adaptation of Processes through
Big Data Analytics
The interaction of data, analysis, decisions and processes results in the necessary agility to derive and
continuously apply information and facts from Big Data and company data so that processes are always
properly synchronized and coordinated (in tune). Let us consider this in two scenarios from daily
business life.
Scenario 1: Business service monitoring. In a customer-oriented company, service processes serve to
increase customer loyalty. In the event of errors or complaints, therefore, the reaction time must be fast
and the problem must be resolved to the customers satisfaction. Agile service processes accomplish
this. The objectives are to make information regarding the problem available to the customer in a time-
ly fashion, to enable the service partner in the field to quickly resolve the problem based on precise in-
formation and an accurate diagnosis, to avoid unproductive customer visits (which cost both the cus-
tomer and the partner resources and money), and to enable internal employees to monitor and track in-
cidents. It is important that customers, partners and employees all have the same information.
Todays state-of-the-art solution for business service monitoring takes the form of a cloud solution,
which provides the elasticity to accommodate peaks in demand in the service department as well as the
advantage of paying a fee that exactly reflects the service requirements. This saves operating costs. The
agile service processes are then implemented in the cloud solution. Agile processes describe processes
and reality in a single model that is identical for IT and service employees. A personalized view of the
process is provided (What do I do? What do others do? What is my contribution? What is the contri-
bution of others?). Coordination takes place via communication instead of traditional control flows. In
this way, employees can work independently of one another on different tasks at different times.
In our example, the customer and employees in the field access the incident-resolution processes and
the corresponding process information via apps on mobile devices. The information is thus always and
everywhere available, and all participants are assured access to the same information. A performance-
management solution, which provides access to key figures on process monitoring and control, is used
to monitor and track processes. In this way, incident resolution improves continuously, and the agility
of these processes ensures the rapid implementation of findings from performance management: Mod-
ifications can be carried out while the processes are running.
Scenario 2: Advertising campaigns in the apparel industry. Social media are augmenting the cus-
tomers power and importance, above all in the B2C market. In the clothing market, for instance, where
margins are small, it is especially important to cater to customers tastes and preferences. Leading com-
panies in this market therefore use agile processes to tailor their products to customer wishes at any
time. This boosts sales figures and at the same time reduces product lines without the risk of being un-
able to offer the desired products.
In the clothing industry, one advertising campaign introducing new products follows fast on the heels
of another. Market leaders launch these campaigns every four to six weeks, and it is important to in-
form the market of new products at the right time. More and more, blogs and social media are being
used for this purpose. This is where trends are set. But social media monitoring is also used to follow
and measure how the market reacts to these trends. In this way, the mood of the market can be tracked,
providing important insights into customers desires and opinions, which are crucial to planning the
campaigns product line and lot sizes. Relevant data sources in Big Data are also identified and then
extracted and analyzed regularly every 15 or 30 minutes. The key figures ascertained from social me-
dia control the planning of the campaign process.
Agile Companies are Data Driven
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin http://www.wolfgang-martin-team.net
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The campaign is launched in select boutiques and online channels, which allows planning assumptions
to be tested. Sales in the test regions are then used to determine the final campaign direction. Products
that have met with a good response are produced in appropriately larger quantities and brought to mar-
ket. In this way, individual purchasing, logistics, production and marketing processes come about for
each campaign. With so many constantly changing processes, process management approaches based
on control flows encounter difficulties because marketing and distribution in the clothing industry are
creative and communicative. In this case, therefore, agile processes are the solution that allows the in-
dustry to continuously adapt processes to new market conditions. Only those who know and take care
of their customers can prosper in such a market thanks to agile processes.
These two scenarios make it abundantly clear that agile processes and agile process management cannot be
achieved by methodology and technology alone. It is also critical that people be involved. The bottom line
is that the employees who are affected by process management must be made participants. Traditional
process management is based on fixed procedures and control flows. But this is not how most processes
work. They are semistructured or unstructured and do not run according to rigid schematics; in fact, they
are communicative. Examples of such processes include requirements management, asset management, job
controlling, requests for proposals, ordering processes, change and configuration management, release pro-
cedures, approval procedures, complaint management, service-management processes, maintenance
processes, etc.
In such processes, employees and colleagues consult and decide together which process steps are to be car-
ried out when and by whom. This applies particularly in escalation management, when a process instance
doesnt go according to plan. And this way of working must naturally be reflected in the organization. It
must be attuned to changing business scenarios. Controlling is replaced by leading. Desired outcomes and
goals are established for each role. Rigid processes are replaced by guidelines and policies. Decision au-
thority should be transferred to where daily work takes place. In this way, employees become actively in-
volved: The organization becomes fit and powerful.
Lothar Hbner, head of business organization at FIDUCIA IT AG on using S-BPM:
Our employees perceive communications-oriented process management today as an ancillary tool for
their daily work, and they are motivated to make constructive contributions to improve process quality
on a continuing basis. It is easy to use and quickly generates significant cost savings as a result of its
structured approach.
Take away: It takes more than methodology and technology to design and run processes agilely. Above
all, employees must be included in the process. This means new forms of organization, new roles and
new ways of working so that process modeling and management are characterized by communication
and creativity: Processes should be described, modeled, tested and optimized by the people who are
responsible for them and carry them out as those processes are lived in day-to-day business.
Agile Companies are Data Driven
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin http://www.wolfgang-martin-team.net
8
4 Keep Your Business in Tune. All the Time. On the Fly.
Real availability of information is becoming more and more the key survival factor in business and in every
organization. Those who dont know the facts or who attempt to ignore them will fail. It comes down to be-
ing able to make the right decisions. If you are also able to implement the decisions that have been made
at the right time, then your success is guaranteed.
Fast access to the right information is the central requirement. But this is subject to several challenges:
The quantity of available data is growing exponentially. It is important that you maintain an overview and
be able to determine with the proper exactitude which data are relevant.
Decisions based on past experience are not always sufficiently cogent and, taken on their own, will often
lead to incorrect conclusions. In these cases, you should supplement the relevant information with data
from simulations, prognoses and trends.
The data space encompasses the entire company and more. You should always be able to topically and in-
telligently refine information you find on the Web using semantic middleware.
Data must be gathered and prepared for individual activities by each of your employees as well as for the
processes as a whole.
Data management using Metasonic and their linking of processes and corresponding intelligently prepared
data are effective and lead to the agility your organization desires. You are in a position to make well-rea-
soned decisions and to implement them immediately: Any decision, anytime, anywhere.
You can view the real-time data directly from the processes down to the level of individual process
instances on dashboards, or evaluate them using linked analysis and reporting tools and calculate the
corresponding key performance indicators (KPIs), which you can supplement at the appropriate time and
quality with further relevant information in real time:
Company data (business intelligence) and external data (Big Data),
Results of simulations of alternatives and scenarios,
Conclusions regarding trends or prognoses for the future,
Additional relevant data not specified in the process, which Metasonic Suite
makes available with semantic middleware.
Metasonic is also working on enabling you with the aid of predictive analytics to anticipate even highly
complex economic correlations and to use this knowledge to make even better decisions.
With Metasonic Suite it is also easier to implement your decisions than with other software solutions
whether in current processes or when implementing process optimizations for the future. You can either
develop these optimizations as decision-based workflows with appropriate rules, or keep the processes
highly stable by applying complex event processing and process the results as they occur.
Agile Companies are Data Driven
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin http://www.wolfgang-martin-team.net
9
Figure 2. This model depicts an S-BPM actor with its activities (states) in interaction with the complete data space.
Multiple components are necessary in order for the right data to always be available to an actor in a business
process: Unlimited data access and precise information on the current situation form the foundation for the
calculation of the currently relevant data. With Metasonic Suite, which is based on the methodology of subject-
oriented business process management (S-BPM), processes are described and experienced from the vantage
point of individual actors. Data that apply directly to the process are also managed from this viewpoint. The
actors current data store for the process step being carried out at the moment is then the starting point for the
determination of further data, which are always being determined as the basis for decisions or for the collection
of additional process data. This intelligent data calculation is performed by a semantic middleware that has
access to all the desired company data as well as the Internet or other data sources.
S-BPM-actor with states
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin
Customer DB
data
iBPM Suite
data
WWW
data
Complete
data space
External services
data
Actors state
Data nodes
Current state
Data relation
(weighted)
In short, with Metasonic Suite your decisions have immediate effects. And if something in your business
changes, you can detect it very quickly and make provisions for it just as quickly. You remain agile. Nothing
can easily put your company out of tune any more.
Take away. Metasonic is positioned in the BPM market with a dynamic, subject-oriented methodology
(S-BPM) and technology. As an innovative company, Metasonic AG points the way to making business
process management agile and having BPM understood, accepted and lived by employees. Using the
approach of "communication instead of control," even creative and situational processes can be success-
fully modeled and executed. For, the constantly necessary changes to such processes can be made at any
time, on the fly. This keeps all your processes in tune. This kind of approach can aid in reducing highly
risky shadow IT for BPM: IT and business departments find a common technology and communications
platform in S-BPM.
It remains Metasonic's great challenge to prevail against traditional BPM approaches and standards such
as BPMN in this competitive market, to grow continuously and in a controlled fashion in the growth areas
of the BPM market, and to increase market penetration with partners. Metasonic has already been highly
successful in the scope of its internationalization measures, gaining a foothold in Japan, Russia and the
Gulf States, and adding important customers to its portfolio.
Agile Companies are Data Driven
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin http://www.wolfgang-martin-team.net
10
Overview of Metasonic's advantages
Ease of use and the understanding that
everyone actively participates. Because only
in this way can your employees independent-
ly and directly optimize your work methods
instead of having the problem pass through
various notations and hands. Only in this
way will speed come about.
Real time, because you need your solution
now, not a few weeks from now.
Support in making decisions, because the
right data are available at the right time.
Searching for and waiting for better infor-
mation is an absolute waste of time.
Resilience, because you must also be opti-
mally prepared for the unexpected at all
times. Immediately doing the right thing
when changes require it is essential to
maintaining your competitive advantage.
Real results for everyone in your organiza-
tion, because only good just-in-time results
lead to the desired success and motivate
your employees and business partners.
For more information, please visit
www.metasonic-reality.com
S-BPM approach in brief
There is just one model, which is used in
business departments as well as IT.
Every employee can describe his processes
himself using just 5 symbols. This graphic
model is one and the same with the program-
ming code for the future application.
It is also the basis for the Web-based, inter-
active validation. Processes can be modified
and optimized at this point, if necessary.
Advantage: The employee is testing the
processes live and can detect any problem
spots or omitted scenarios before everything
goes live.
The process models are then easily linked to
existing IT applications and integrated into the
organization.
Because the model is one and the same with
the programming code, the processes can be
adapted on the fly at any time.
For more information, please visit
www.metasonic.de/sbpm
Agile Companies are Data Driven
2012 S.A.R.L. Martin http://www.wolfgang-martin-team.net
11
5 Appendix
About Metasonic AG
We are a software company, with headquarters in Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm near
Munich, founded in 2004 with the objective of greatly simplifying the develop-
ment of company applications and their integration into company processes. Our
Metasonic Suite is the only software solution that builds on your existing IT and goes to work precisely
where the others are too big, too rigid, too time-consuming, or too cost-intensive. This innovative software
for dynamic business process management is based on the unique approach of subject-oriented business
process management (S-BPM), which has been patented in the USA. We collaborate strategically and on a
project basis with many IT companies, and are represented around the world by our network of partners.
Among our customers are companies such as Audi, Fiducia IT, FI-TS, Hitachi Joho, NEC and Tesat
(EADS).
Further information can be found at http://www.metasonic.de/en
About the Author
Dr. Wolfgang Martin
Dr. Wolfgang Martin is a leading European authority on:
Business Intelligence, Performance Management, Analytics, Big Data
Business Process Management, Information Management and Governance,
SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture),
CRM (Customer Relationship Management),
Cloud Computing (SaaS, PaaS)
He focuses on technological innovations that drive business, examining their impact on organization,
enterprise culture, business architecture and business processes. He is partner of iBonD (www.iBonD.net),
works as a Ventana Research Advisor (www.ventanaresearch.com) and at the Institute of Business Intelligence
at the Steinbeis Hochschule Berlin (www.i-bi.de). In 2001 Info Economist magazine declared him one of
the top 10 most influential IT consultants in Europe.
Mr. Martin is a notable commentator on conference platforms and in TV appearances across Europe.
A frequent contributor of articles for IT journals and trade papers, he is also the author of the Strategic
Bulletins focusing on BI, EAI, SOA and CRM (www.it-research.net) and an editor of technical literature.
Further information can be found at www.wolfgang-martin-team.net

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