Analysis

What is CEBP (Communications Enabled Business Processing)?

Robin Bloor By: Robin Bloor, Partner, Hurwitz & Associates
Published: 8th June 2007
Copyright Hurwitz & Associates © 2007
 Logo for Hurwitz & Associates

BPM is yesterday's news. Actually it's last century's news. It was born about 20 years ago—the first company offering that kind of development capability being Pegasystems Inc. Other companies probably claim that honor, I'm sure, and it doesn't matter much as far as this article is concerned, because the point is that BPM is actually quite old. Let's set aside the fact that companies selling workflow software and document management software (with a workflow engine), nowadays tend to claim to be selling BPM. That's all marketing confusion created by highly skilled "confusion engineers". Let's just accept the idea that any development capability that allows you to design a business process rather than an application can qualify to some degree as BPM and leave it at that.

Designing business processes is by no means new, but as time passed part of the IT industry realized that in many situations designing the business process is a better strategy than designing an application. That provided an opening for BPM and then BPM was strongly boosted by the advent of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), because SOA enables the building of business processes in a more flexible manner than was previously possible. So BPM's rise has been slow but exceedingly sure and now it is almost as fashionable as YouTube.

Enter CEBP
This is why I find CEBP interesting. Communications Enabled Business Processing (CEBP) is, if you didn't know, the integration of unified communications into BPM. It is also a term invented by Avaya in its marketing desire to describe some of its software products in an it-does-what-it-says-on-the-tin way. What Avaya provides is a capability to design business process flows that include multiple modes of communications. In my view this is important and it is likely to set a trend—a trend that I expect other "unified communications" vendors to follow most probably by competing directly for the same corporate customers.

Why is it compelling? Let's cut to the chase and consider the sad state in which most business processes currently find themselves. Very few business processes are well automated at all. The reason for this is very simple. It's people that make systems work. The project managers, IT designers, business analysts, consultants and various line managers that get involved in a system's design have their day and then the department that runs the business process is left with whatever was delivered and they make it work, because that's all they've got.

Business processes are usually made to work by two considerably convenient extras that are freely available to the staff that has to make a system work:

  1. The spreadsheet (the poor man's development tool)
  2. Existing communications channels (email, chat, phone, mobile phone, SMS, etc.)

The Point
I'm not here to criticize the failure of IT and/or business designers. Designing effective systems is tough work at the best of times. I know because I've done it, both well and badly. But even well designed systems are far from a perfect fit.

The point is that ad hoc capabilities, both for communications and for storing odd bits of information that the original system just didn't allow, actually grease the wheels of most systems. In some sorry situations they make up the greater part of the actual business system. Because the original designer(s) never knew about or allowed for nuances in the way that particular transactions are handled, emails get written, information is passed from one person to another, a little Excel database gets set up and so on. And when the business process changes and IT is too busy on something else, then the changes get implemented in this way

Now we may like to salute the staff that "made the best of a bad situation", but realistically it would be better if we properly automated those aspects of a business process that the designers missed—by using BPM tools (which are a little more fit for purpose than spreadsheets) and using CEBP to flow the communications activity in an efficient manner. True, we're probably going to have to talk to the staff to find out exactly how to do this well, but that can work.

So what is there to win here, by combining BPM with CEBP? Well, think in terms of the call center technology which revolutionized the frequently repeated telephone activities of an organization, in sales and in customer service. No-one would dispute the benefits of the call center over what went before. In many instances productivity gains were dramatic. Well, the same kinds of productivity gains are on offer again, but this time it's to replace the communications inefficiencies that are naturally a part of most business processes by simply designing their flow and automating it.

Doing this will have two impacts:

  • It will increase individual effectiveness and productivity
  • It will speed up the business process significantly.

These are benefits worth shooting for.

Reader Comments

Sorry, we are no longer accepting comments on this item. We suggest trying to contact the author directly.

8th June 2007: 'Mike' said:

Go take a look at www.k2.net/BlackPearl. Yesterday I saw a great webcast about K2 [Blackpearl] given by Adriaan Van Wyk, CEO of SourceCode Technology Holdings. For those of you who haven't tried it, K2 is a Business Process Management (BPM) or "workflow engine".

Reply to Mike?

10th June 2007: 'Derek Miers' said:

Robin - so this is not a piece of "confusion engineering" then. You're trying to spin a term in just the same way that you ascribe to various BPM technologies. One wonders what the fee was for this piece of vendor driven PR. Its not that I am fundamentally disagreeing with the point (about integration of channels into the Process and, one assumes, the implied empowerment of knowledge workers). It is just that you put this across as though it were some amazing insight, yet it really is pretty obvious and you are merely spinning the name of the vendor into the space.

Reply to Derek Miers?

11th June 2007: 'john' said:

I don't get it...... What is CEBP? You align to BPM but you don't describe the differences or the; What is it exactly? (other than a concept), What does it do?, Where does it fit in the archtiecture stack?, Where has it been implemented successfully?, When is the best time to use the technology/methodology? I would agree with others comments, it looks as though you are utilizing a very promissing and exciting technology BPM as a platform for something you are trying to position as the next best thing. If CEBP truely is the next best thing for BPM, then utilize BPM terms to help BPM experts understand what the heck it does. One good place to start would be to describe the who, what where when how and why the technology would be applied. As BPM helps to address these questions and who's intent is to address the same area's you describe, it would be helpful for you to describe how it is different than BPM (methodology and technologies. (BTW - Pega didn't start doing BPM until 2004 - they were in the BRE Business Rules Engine space until iLog and other competitors along with the the CAGR of BPM doubled that of BRE for them to run into BPM)

Reply to john?

13th June 2007: 'Rajas' said:

Robin:
A good thought provoking article. Naturally raised the curiosity of many of your readers. Mike: Excellent bit of information on Black Pearl. Though the trailing period in the link you supplied did play tricks on the seeker. Incidentally the Design or Policy demos do not apparently contain any "communication" related processes. Derek: Sometimes the obvious is so obvious that it is ignored. So Robin mentions clearly that "a" vendor does it today, but likely followed by others soon. Wait for the trend. John: The "communications enabling" bit binds the processes to the humans more efficiently and effectively. As BPM strives to weave the "human element" to leverage intuition and judgment to complement the automation, latencies are introduced. CEBP targets to knock out the latencies and build more comprehensive business processes. You are welcome to sample my blog. You will find more pertinent information (read vendor PR) embedded in my article. (For the records, I work for Avaya)

Reply to Rajas?

18th September 2007: 'dale' said:

What interests me about CEBP is the very tangible potential it promises towards adding a 3rd dimension to the **implementation** of BPM within an organization.

As Robin points out indirectly, classic BPM and CASE both fell victim to the fallacy of “something through pictures”. In fact, it’s arguable that practical application of BPM required folks like those over on Porter Drive (Tibco) and First Street (BEA) to integrate the “picture” part into something that enables the picture to “come alive” in some way.

That gets us to 2 dimensions. The process was documented, and people and systems to use the process description in manual and systemic forms.

But communication is still something BPMS just “assume” will happen (at the right place, at the right time, etc. etc.). Well, in the real world, they often don’t. Exhibit A: People still tie string around their finger as a remember to schedule an appointment with the dentist.

John is dead right to opine for real-life examples. With the hope of engendering a debate and the contribution of more examples from others, here’s a start:

1) A medical insurance claim gets stuck at [plug in your favorite medical insurance whipping post here] the verification step. The CRM system tracks the need to communicate with the dearly insured and the BPMS describes 3 steps to take when this happens, but the prol is off on holiday in Nice and can’t be bothered talking to someone they detest to begin with. A BPMS can delegate the responsibility for managing this communication to CEBP. Rather than having the BPMS or CRM pester the dickens out of the hapless process agent with a pop-up a day, the next thing the agent knows is that the person they’ve been trying to reach is calling them! Benefit: Assume call center stats roughly apply here, we’re talking $5 to $8 savings per instance. Not small change for large firms…

2) A transportation company, already vested with a sophisticated tracking and CRM system, is trying to drop off a package sent morning delivery. But the address is wrong or nobody’s home. A tracking system receives the alert, and could delegate to the CEBP responsibility for tracking down the sender. The first thing a company employee knows about this is when the sender calls an agent in the contact center. But it might not need to even go there. Imagine that instead of calling the Contact Center, the truck driver received a message (voice or text) resolving the issue. But wait, if that’s possible, CEBP could also arrange for a call to be placed to the recipient when the delivery is anticipated to occur within the next 15 minutes (recipient opts in, of course). Or perhaps only call if the delivery is delayed. Benefit: Could be as significant as enabling a new premium line of business (remember Fred Smith and his wild idea that big aluminum flying tubes might make it possible to deliver packages anywhere overnight). But even if not this, then at least the savings of resolving the problem a) quickly and b) with minimal staff time. I’ve seen states that suggest a $4 - $6 cost for each failed delivery attempt.

I think everyone agrees that we’re still in the embryonic state here. And yes, there’s a very real possibility that CEBP just becomes the latest form of corporate entertainment. But if one is inclined to bet against that proposition, the killer app (or business value) in might be found in the convergence of the following:

1)processes that are complex but benefit from multi-channel communication in the middle, not so much at the ends, although that too might be a nice-to-have.
2)processes that span value chains.
3)processes that are long-lived, yet prone to interruption and delay.
4)processes that present elevated business risk if they are delayed due to extra-organization communication/additional data insertion requirements.
5)Industries in which customer satisfaction is significantly driving the choice of continue customer loyalty AND frequent touch points are proven to positively impact satisfaction.

Reply to dale?

16th December 2007: 'Bobo' said:

Dale,

If you work for Avaya, you should admit it.

Reply to Bobo?

The messages above were all contributed by IT-Director.com readers. Whilst we take care to remove any posts deemed inappropriate, we can take no responsibility for these comments. If you would like a comment removed please contact our editorial team.