Savvion Releases Folksy Business Manager

Savvion, a business process management (BPM) company, has introduced Savvion BusinessManager 7.5, a business process management suite designed to allow users throughout an enterprise to create and manage the business processes. The new suite is the next generation of Savvion BusinessManager 7.0, first announced in November 2006.

By letting employees get involved "immediately" in the creation, deployment and use of BPM, BusinessManager 7.5 is relying on its user friendliness and its efforts to reflect "how people are already used to working." If it sounds folksy, it is.

Simplifying its product so that users can use "realistic" ways to model processes, the 7.5 suite essentially dumbs down the process so that users can do stuff without "having to know modeling notations" and can draw "right on their computer screen."

The suite offers a few new components aimed at letting users to easily perform tasks, sometimes automatically. Some of the new features include:

• Tabular Process Definition (patent pending): Process diagrams from the tabular format of process description can be automatically generated. The resulting models are ready to be turned into executable applications without any conversion or modifications.

• Project-Oriented Processes: Project-like layouts, which specify milestones and phases, perform path and timeline analysis, and even import existing project definitions from Microsoft Project can be created.

• Business Scheduler: Users can create and manage schedules of various process and non-process activities with complete run-time monitoring support.

• Document Management System Connectors: Enables connectors to Documentum and Alfresco that help enterprises leverage already-existing document management systems in process solutions built with Savvion BusinessManager 7.5.

Savvion also offers enhancements in the release. Users now benefit from a new extended AJAX-based form designer that allows for "drag-drop re-usable and easy-to-understand user interface widgets." There's also a re-designed simulation module with a variety of graphical and spreadsheet reporting functions that let users perform "sophisticated" what-if analyses.

The BPM market is poised for rapid development, with growth estimated at 15.1% from 2007 to 2012. As process thinking becomes a "core management discipline" system, the applications used to support the process will be viewed as assets. Business processes are supposed to be sophisticated mainframes of successful business management. There's nothing folksy about BPM.

By effectively coordinating the multiple interactions across platforms, including networks and humans, companies need to be weary of simplifying the process too much, as to undermine its intent and affect. Before allowing users to work as they are used to, first make sure that they working effectively to begin with.

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