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What is Business Process Management?

Business Process Management is a method of efficiently aligning an organisation with the wants and needs of staff and clients. As organisations strive for attainment of their objectives, BPM attempts to continuously improve processes - to define; measure, improve and automate your organisational processes.

Why do organisations automate their business processes? 

Business Process Management is gaining significant momentum in the market with so many companies looking for better ways to manage their processes. It is fast gaining the reputation of being one of the most valuable IT investments you can make because it helps you achieve your most critical business objectives:

  • Increased Productivity
  • Better Customer Service
  • Greater Competitive Advantage
  • Stronger Financial Performance
  • Regulatory Compliance 

What is Metastorm ProVision? 

Metastorm ProVision® enables you to model, visualize and improve your entire enterprise – resulting in a thorough understanding of the cause-effect relationships between business strategy, business processes and the systems and technology that support them. Enterprise visibility and the resulting business and IT alignment are the foundation for true enterprise agility.

It is an industry leading enterprise modeling software for business and IT. An end-to-end solution for Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Analysis, It enables you to understand, realize, innovate and monitor all aspects of your business operations to continually improve performance.

What is Provision EA? 

Metastorm ProVision® - Without understanding where you are, how do you know where to go? Metastorm ProVision EA is an industry leading Enterprise Architecture (EA) solution that allows you to comprehensively discover and model your Business Strategy, Business Architecture and Information Architecture (Applications, Systems and more) and then systematically and comprehensively plan changes to the enterprise.

What is Provision BPA? 

Metastorm ProVision® BPA - Processes are ultimately where organisations do work and deliver value. Metastorm ProVision BPA is an industry leading Business Process Analysis (BPA) solution that allows you discover and model your current business processes and then conduct sophisticated simulations and analysis of where and how they can be improved to deliver greater value and improved business resource optimization.

Metastorm ProVision® BPA combines great ease of use with much more than a simple process discovery and modeling tool. Metastorm ProVision® BPA allows you to easily define the basic elements of a process as well as collaboratively model, analyze and understand the relationships to other key elements, such as business goals, strategies, problems, impacts, organisational participants, and related business and enterprise architecture.

What is Metastorm BPM and what modules are offered with it? 

Metastorm BPM has a standards based Web-centric architecture that was designed from the ground up to provide the ability to allow the agile business to deploy human centric processes quickly and easily. It comprises the following modules:

  • Metastorm BPM’s people centric graphical Process Designer based around Metastorm’s STAR architecture and methodology was designed with complex enterprise processes in mind. It allows processes to be defined and integrated to other systems, forms to be built for user interface and roles to be defined.
  • Metastorm BPM’s robust, scalable, fault-tolerant Process Engine manages the folders in the process and the access control to their forms. Because Metastorm BPM uses database architecture, the Engine can draw on all information about the process including an audit trail, which is automatically logged in the database. This automatic creation of a knowledge base about the execution and content of workflows is a significant benefit, from which management reports can be generated.
  • Metastorm BPM Client allows users to participate fully in Metastorm BPM processes. Users can use an Internet Explorer Web browser, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Office 2007 applications that support Ribbon tabs or a JSR 168 compliant portal to fully participate in processes. Some customers develop their own client interfaces using the ASP .NET client controls that Metastorm provides. This enables participation in the same familiar environment that is used for their everyday tasks.
  • Metastorm Enterprise Directory Services provides data caching services for popular directory services together with an administrator to control the information cached from directories.
  • Metastorm BPM Public Access provides the capability for members of the public to initiate Metastorm BPM processes from an organisation’s web site by completing a blank form and submitting it.
  • Metastorm BPM Software Developers Kit (SDK) is designed for use by Systems Integrators, Corporate Developers and Independent Software Vendors who wish to build tight integration between Metastorm BPM and other software applications, build Metastorm BPM services into their own clients, or who wish to extend the functionality of Metastorm BPM.

How does Metastorm BPM compare with other BPM products? 

Metastorm is the only solution provider to provide an integrated software platform that unifies strategy & enterprise architecture, process analysis and optimisation, and human- and system centric process management for optimal results. Metastorm BPM has a number of unique features that sets it apart from other BPM products. These include its single integrated client, its STAR (Stage Action Role) methodology, its enterprise dynamic roles, its people centric process designer, its process aware forms and its real time business process monitoring.

Can ask-4 Business Solutions coupled with Metastorm BPM scale to accommodate a large number of users? 

Yes. Scalability and high-performance are inherent features of our solutions and Metastorm BPM because of its stateless and transactional design. Client processes communicate with the Metastorm BPM Transaction engine using semantically-rich but compact XML messaging.

What methodology should I adopt when developing my own solutions? 

Our philosophy at ask-4 Business Solutions is to advise our customer developers to ‘keep it simple’ and design with ‘focus on people’.

Basic methodology consists of the following five steps:

  • Define the process improvement goals that are consistent with business demands and enterprise strategy. Identify a Project Sponsor.
  • Measure the current (existing) process and collect relevant data for future comparison. Identify areas of improvement.
  • Analyse to verify relationship and causality of factors. Hold regular JAD (Joint Application Development) sessions.
  • Improve or optimise the process based upon the analysis using techniques like design of scenarios, check the stability of your design and most importantly be able to   demonstrate the benefits captured during earlier stages of development.
  • Control to ensure that any variances are corrected. Set up pilot runs to establish process capability, once agreed by the business transition to production.

Continuously measure the process and identify areas of improvement and benefits realisation. The Metastorm BPM platform allows for continuous process improvement and allows for your automated processes to evolve with the changes in business.

How easy is it to take an existing ask-4 Business Solution and tailor it to suit our organisational and business requirements? 

All of our solutions have been designed in a modular fashion and can very easily to adapted to suit your own business requirements. Our fully functional solutions are based on the Metastorm BPM technology and can quickly be customised to reflect your own unique business identity and be fully deployed within a matter of days. (Subject to of course your own deployment polices); in most cases, in less than 10 working days.

How are ask-4 processes deployed to Users? 

An ask-4 process is deployed by “publishing it” from the Metastorm Designer or from the Services Manager. Metastorm BPM maintains versions of each process. When a new version of a process is deployed, there is no need to take the process off-line or to rename it.

On what platform does the Metastorm Process Engine run? 

The Metastorm Process Engine runs on Windows Server 2003 platforms. Windows XP Professional and Windows Vista are supported for development and testing.

Metastorm BPM’s robust, scalable and fault-tolerant Engine manages the folders in the process and the access control to their forms. Because Metastorm BPM uses database architecture, the Engine can draw on all information about the process, including an audit trail, which is automatically logged in the database. This automatic creation of a knowledge base about the execution and content of workflows is a significant benefit, from which management reports can be generated. The Engine manages all Metastorm BPM transactions and ensures that incomplete actions are not committed to the database. The Engine is also the single point of contact for all external applications and databases that are involved in the process.

The Metastorm Integration Manager is available on a variety of platforms including Windows, UNIX, i5/OS (AS/400, iSeries, and System i), z/OS (mainframe, zSeries, and System z), and CICS

How does ask-4 address security? 

The first level of security is authentication to Metastorm BPM using a user name and password or via some other system’s credentials using Metastorm BPM’s Open Authentication Architecture. The second level of security provided by Metastorm BPM is via the Metastorm BPM Role Security Matrix. Roles are evaluated every time the Metastorm Process Engine requires the role. Within a process, different users may hold the same role for different folders at the same stage in the process.

Role Security Matrix - The Metastorm BPM Role security matrix controls the work that appears on a user’s work lists, the folders that a user is authorized to monitor, whether a user can initiate a
process, the forms a user has access to in their work items, the actions or tasks that a user can take on their work items, whether a user has administrative control over an item and if a user can report on a process.

Database Access - Metastorm BPM allows users to view and update database tables through a browser. Database security is maintained, as the individual users do not need access to the
database itself. The access that the user has to the database is under the control of the designer of the process and is limited to what the designer allows in the process. It is the Metastorm
Process Engine that accesses the database and individual user access to information in the database is always through the Metastorm Process Engine.

Digital Signature Architecture - The Metastorm BPM Digital Signature Architecture will allow designers to add signature fields to forms. Users completing such a form may (or must, if the field
is required) provide a ‘signature’, which will be recorded in the database. Many different types of ‘signature’ (biometrics, smart cards, digital certificates, etc.) can be supported, by means of this
simple, open ‘plug-in’ architecture.

Secure Sockets Layer - Metastorm BPM can run on a server where Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is installed. Metastorm BPM will make use of SSL where this has been installed on a server.

What e-mail systems are supported? 

The Metastorm Process Engine may send mail via SMTP.

Which databases are supported as the repository database? 

Either Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle may be used as the Metastorm BPM repository database.
For information about particular versions supported, please consult the Metastorm BPM Supported
Environments guide.

Can customers, partners and suppliers participate in ask-4 processes? 

Customers, partners and suppliers can participate in an ask-4 process across the internet using a Metastorm BPM client providing that they have been assigned a user-id that entitles them to access the Metastorm BPM system. Individuals external to the organization can initiate items into a process without a user-id providing Metastorm BPM Public Access has been enabled.