Introduction
A common perception among many customers is that a single Enterprise Application such as ERP or ECM can take care of all process management needs in an enterprise. When organizations deploy enterprise applications such as SAP NetWeaever with integrated process management capabilities, many customers assume they do not need any other BPM system. This white paper dispels this misconception by introducing the concept of a business process ecosystem and comparing it with other ecosystems that people understand from everyday life.
This paper highlights the complementary role of BPM in the process ecosystem and shows how BPM extends the value of customer investment in SAP or other enterprise applications. We explore the concept of processes that exist “Inside SAP” (ISAP) and “Outside SAP” (OSAP) and we highlight the requirements of these different types of processes. Finally, a number of case study examples show how the Ultimus BPM Suite has been successfully used as an integral part of the business process ecosystem in organizations across industries and how it has complemented their investments in enterprise applications.
Customer Conundrum
The deployment of enterprise application such as SAP requires companies to make a very substantial investment in software and services, and also in “retraining” the users and changing their work patterns using the new application. After making a significant investment, companies naturally want to maximize the return on their investment by using it as extensively as possible. Since many enterprise application such as SAP have started incorporating some process management capability as a core functionality, their customers are naturally inclined to assume that the enterprise application can handle all their BPM requirements. Helped by the marketing of vendors, customers are convinced that the capabilities in these enterprise applications are sufficient for all their process needs. In many cases, customers deep in the midst of SAP deployments hold this opinion. But the same is true for users of other applications such as PeopleSoft, Documentum, Oracle Financials, etc.
As BPM gains traction, and the major software vendors enter the fray to claim a bigger pie of the mindshare and the market by making more noise, the misconception is likely to increase.
The attraction to one monolithic application for handling all the process requirements is also appealing to customers from a cost and utility point-of-view. Companies prefer to use software from one vendor and pay for one maintenance and support contract. They also prefer to have their employees trained on one application. Therefore if one monolithic application can provide BPM along with some other important functionality such as ERP, it is naturally perceived as a significant benefit to the company.
Due to the aforementioned factors, companies face the challenges of understanding the economics and practical rationale for using enterprise applications for certain processes, and stand-alone BPM systems such as Ultimus for other types of processes. For the sake of clarity we use the market-leading SAP as an example and call processes Inside SAP, “ISAP”, and processes Outside SAP, “OSAP”. ISAP processes are those that are best handled inside SAP and other enterprise applications. OSAP processes are those that can be best handled outside SAP and other enterprise application by pure BPM solutions such as Ultimus.
The Transportation Ecosystem
The best way to understand differences between ISAP and OSAP processes and the reasons why a single enterprise application cannot handle both is by understanding the ubiquity of hierarchies. Hierarchies are common in almost everything people do and make. Take the transportation system for example. Its basic function is to carry people and goods from one point to another. At a simplistic level one would assume that one type of transportation system should be able to handle all the transportation needs of an organization. However in reality, the transportation ecosystem has a hierarchy of systems with each level of the system providing different capabilities.
At the top of the hierarchy are airplanes, trains and ships capable of moving a large number of people or cargo from one point to another. These large systems are not flexible in terms of their destination end-points and are also expensive to purchase and use.
