Why do we have people in our processes or why won't workflow work?
by
Charlie Bess
In the past few months, I've talked to some groups about the use of information technology to optimize people out of day-to-day business processes and focus the people on turning the anomalies in those processes into opportunities.
I've met with few organizations that are willing to initiate projects today in this space, even though I can give specific examples of where teams within EDS have been using rules engines and pattern recognition like this for over a decade. In fact, it is essential to the efficient and effective operation in the services industry.
Many times the initial response is to roll their eyes and view this as some technology for the next decade, not this one. Techniques like Business Rules Management Systems (BRMS) and Business Process Management Suites (BPMS) are not perfect but they are useful.
With new multi-core devices coming out every month, the parallel processing capabilities are within the grasps of anyone.
It makes me wonder what will it take to push organizational leadership over the edge and begin to seriously look at these concerns.
Is it when their competitors publish their results? If that's the case, the opportunity costs will be very high.
Is it when their ERP system releases these capabilities as part of their product? I don't know about the ERP deployments you may work with, but few users want to be running on the new system the day/month and likely year it comes out.
What do you think it will take for these techniques to enter the mainstream?
As we move to adopt workflow techniques like Windows Workflow Foundation (here is a great set of articles about it) and other techniques, we'll need to turn our business analysis into consultants in order to make the shift. That in itself can be a tough hurtle for many IT delivery teams.
