Process for the Enterprise » Admin

We’re on the (Google) Map

Scott Francis — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:36:56 +0000

BP3 is now registered on Google Maps. Not a bad interface for registering the map location and business summary. And its always good to be “on the map”!

Added Disqus Commenting

Scott Francis — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:53:26 +0000

Had lots of feedback in favor of adding Disqus commenting system (here and in other blogs), specifically around threading, identity, and sharing. For example, you can login using your Twitter id or openID etc.

So we finally bit the bullet and installed it. Hope it helps keep the discussion going in our blog and makes it easy for everyone to post their opinions!

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Is the Shakeup Continuing?

Scott Francis — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:02:59 +0000

There’s been a lot of coverage of what it means for IBM to buy Lombardi. Jaisundar proposed that this would upset the balance of power and cause more acquisitions… But perhaps the side effect he (and others) didn’t foresee was the positioning of the remaining BPM vendors (pureplay or otherwise) for the benefit of their suitors.

First we have Appian’s CEO posting here. I don’t blame him for putting a stake in the ground that Appian is going to win, and positioning that the only two vendors left that matter are Appian and Pega. Savvion might disagree, as would a few others, but nevermind. He states that they’re the only ones strong enough to survive (by which, I would suppose he means financial strength, but he leaves that as an exercise for the reader’s imagination. I don’t blame him for slagging IBM as killing innovation – in any acquisition like this, that is a very real possibility, and will determine whether this is a successful buy or not (at least, for folks who don’t work for IBM). But methinks he doth protest too much, and may be trying to make sure that potential suitors remember that Appian still exists in case they want to get in the game by buying something.

Next, we have ActionBase, one of my favorite non-traditional BPM offerings. In a previous post Jacob Ukelson made the argument that Sharepoint should be a better BPM tool than it is. Now he argues that Sharepoint + Actionbase is that BPM dream team: unstructured content + unstructured process… If that isn’t a pitch for Microsoft buying a nice Sharepoint add-on I don’t know what is. Analysts are frothy thinking about how Microsoft or SAP might want to counter IBM’s move, and this is one option.

I’m not sure that unstructured process + unstructured data is the dream of every IT shop, but it is certainly a combination prevalent in many processes and organizations. And of course those two offerings could work well together.

So it looks like everyone is putting on their finest Holiday Sweaters and looking to make a good impression for their potential sweethearts. It’ll be interesting to see if there really is a wave of acquisitions or if this is it.

Its the creative destruction process of capitalism at work. I just hope BPM doesn’t get lost in the woods in the process.

A Hunch About bp3 and #BPM

Scott Francis — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:20:17 +0000

If you haven’t used the site, hunch, you might want to give it a look. Its pretty interesting, as it attempts to crowdsource decisions. Hunch also does a pretty good job of anticipating your answers to questions based on your previous answers to questions.

Recently Chris Dixon made available a blog widget which can help you understand your readership demographics a bit better (assuming the readers participate!). I thought I’d give it a try…

Of course, I see some interesting possibilities for crowdsourcing vendor selection (BPM vendors), or philosophical debates like BPM vs. Business Rules. So I seeded a starting point, that is on Hunch now. I need to finish adding vendors to it, and I need help from others to add more results, train the results, and add more questions! (Anyone can login and add questions and results so please contribute! If we get enough contributions and training in, then this decision tree may have statistical significance )

Here’s the link to the BPMS decision helper…

Callidus Offers BPM for Incentive Management

Scott Francis — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 04:16:49 +0000

I missed this press release from just about 2 weeks ago. I think it will be a growing trend to embed BPM functionality into core business applications. Callidus‘ offering in particular is interesting because it is a way to extend core functionality to make their packaged software fit the mold of your internal business operations that much more closely.

You can also find more information directly on Callidus’ site, where they have some slick graphics to go with the product description. We’ve worked enough with Callidus enough over the last 6 months to know that this is robust BPM functionality, not just a band-aid workflow engine or marketing spin.

Translation Available

Scott Francis — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:00:37 +0000

Thanks to an intrepid WordPress plugin developer, we now have Google Translate machine translation embedded in our blog. You’ll find it along the right-hand column, and while I can’t test it in too many languages, I did get a kick out of practicing my meagre Spanish skills. I’ll have to ask our own Peter Olah how the Hungarian translation holds up to scrutiny (it *is* machine translation after all).

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BP3 Blog for the iPhone

Scott Francis — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:28:02 +0000

I’d like to take credit for it, but it is all the magic of WPTouch, a great WordPress plugin that Sandy Kelmsey turned us onto in this post. The homepage for the plugin is here. Literally half of our team has switched from blackberries to iPhones since the 3G model came out. I’m still the only one using a Mac, but don’t be surprised if that changes too…

Meanwhile, if you have an iPhone, feel free to check out our blog in its new iPhone mode. I was pretty impressed by the folks at BraveNewCode- the WPTouch theme/plugin is pretty ingenious and it doesn’t interfere with the normal browsing experience. I wish all the blogs had this kind of theme for reading from the iPhone.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering how our team feels about the iPhones, we love ‘em. Being able to read websites or html email on your phone is actually useful. Typing is marginally harder after using a blackberry for 4-5 years, but getting easier. And some of the apps we’ve found are pretty entertaining (when you travel a lot for work, the iPhone apps for Yelp! and Urban Spoon are invaluable for finding a quick foodie fix… and the directions/mapping are great too).

A new look for the BP3 site

Scott Francis — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 04:03:38 +0000

We have a new look for the BP3 site – a fresh look, you might say. And that’s what we are bringing to the world of business process – whether it’s process improvement or process management (BPM). We have some exciting news to share over the coming days and weeks, stay tuned to this space for the updates.