At Germany-based business process management (BPM) vendor Software AG’s annual user conference ProcessWorld 2011 in Orlando this week, several of the show’s Innovation Award winners were on hand to share the details of their BPM journeys, including the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.
The government agency’s senior analyst and project manager Yeon Soon Min said the allure of services-oriented architecture (SOA) was the ability to streamline a manual and redundant process and provide better visibility and a task list for adjudicators to deal with the “pile of cases on their desk.” ProcessWorld 2011: Software AG continues MDM push with Trillium Alliance
Min said the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, which has been a Software AG customer for almost 25 years, maintains more than 100 million acres of land and a large number of permits that go along with that. For the agency, building Web services and using process automation means the ability to reuse core systems and avoid having to “recreate and rebuild our apps.”
For another innovation winner, Israel-based Clal Insurance Enterprise Holdings Ltd., refining the claims process and eliminating information silos was a must, but undergoing a rip and replace of all IT systems was not.
“In insurance, documents are a key factor in the process … it was essential all the information was located in the same user interface,” said Eli Negri, the company’s chief information officer for long-term savings systems.ProcessWorld 2011: Software AG expands support services for BPM projects
Instead, the choice to “inject” new technologies from Software AG into what Negri calls a “spaghetti of systems” meant a reduction in a claims process that used to take no less than several months.
Although the new process has only been recently moved to the production stage, Negri said, “right now, we are completing the (claims) process within days.”
Atlanta-based cable company Cox Communications, using webMethods, built a spatially enabled mapping app to help determine serviceability for prospective customers. It was a logistical process that, before this, was costly and rather complex, said the company’s director of solutions architecture Bruce Beeco.
The mashup, which integrates various back-end systems housing data necessary to gauge serviceability, now gives workers that “virtual view,” said Beeco.
Given that analysis can now be done on prospects ahead of time, Beeco said the company has reaped cost savings when allocating field resources.
Follow Kathleen Lau on Twitter: @KathleenLau
