Eccentex Corporation provides dynamic case management (DCM), a.k.a. adaptive case management, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions using its multitenant cloud-based AppBase platform as a service (PaaS). DCM solutions should support what the evolving knowledge worker needs and allow organizations to optimize case outcomes, improve customer services, and mitigate risk.

Eccentex recently announced the launch of AppBase 5.0, which includes user-friendly creation tools and templates or frameworks (referred to as AppTemplates) for quick delivery of case management systems by business analysts and line-of-business personnel (rather than IT staff). The vendor is hereby trying to redefine the fundamental processes and user interfaces of the modern knowledge worker. Read the rest of this entry »

In many service industries, such as financial, insurance, utilities, healthcare, government, and others, case management is the lifeblood of the business. These highly unstructured (dynamic or adaptive, if you will) processes where the next process step’s best action depends on the outcome of the previous step require apt human process stewards, a.k.a. “knowledge workers.” These knowledge workers, characterized as workers whose main capital is knowledge, are aided by a multitude of tools such as sophisticated business rules engines, knowledge bases, predictive analytics, etc. in executing tasks exactly when, where, and how they are needed to achieve customer satisfaction, while maintaining corporate governance and compliance requirements.

Yet, Eccentex Corporation, a provider of AppBase platform-as-a-service (PaaS) applications for dynamic case management (DCM), just announced the results of a recently conducted survey, which found that companies are failing to equip their employees with the tools they need to thrive in today’s work environment. Survey results, which included responses from knowledge workers in a variety of industries, pointed to widespread demand for mobile and cloud-based access to business-critical information systems and platforms needed to do their job.

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On December 4, 2012, Pegasystems (a.k.a. Pega), a prominent business process management (BPM) and customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions provider, announced its new Pega Process Extender offering. The product aims to enable organizations to leverage their SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications with new work automation and user experience capabilities. Pega has significant experience complementing SAP ERP applications, and large enterprises can now take advantage of all of Pega’s BPM, dynamic case management, and next-best-action predictive analytics solutions to unlock and leverage their data, logic, and processes in SAP.

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We’ve just published a new brief, reporting on EMC’s Documentum family of enterprise content management (ECM) products and services. Read the rest of this entry »

The multi-channel customer experience management software market represents an attractive US$5 billion-plus market opportunity, which IDC recently forecast to grow at between 5 to 12 percent through 2015 (a 6 percent compound annual growth rate [CAGR]) within the larger overall customer relationship management (CRM) space. To that end, in July 2012, KANA Software, a longstanding customer service software provider, which has lately been on an impressive comeback and acquisition trail, announced that it has acquired the upbeat and innovative contact center customer service company Ciboodle from the Sword Group.

The official press release cites that this move creates a more powerful independent provider for multi-channel customer service solutions across agent, web, social, and mobile experiences. The acquisition is further evidence of consolidation in this attractive sector, as marked by Oracle’s acquisitions of RightNow, InQuira, and several smaller social computing companies, and salesforce.com’s acquisitions of inStranet, Radian 6, and other smaller companies. Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Yammer might also have some relevance to this CRM segment. Read the rest of this entry »

Nuxeo sees its content management product as the base for organizations to create their own content-centric business applications. The company offers some interesting tools to aid in this process, which I’ll get to in a moment. Nuxeo also offers its own distinct modules for document management, case management, digital asset management, and with the recent version 5.5, for social collaboration. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series presented the opportunity of service economy and associated complexity of providing consistently an experience of customer service excellence. The article then introduced KANA Software, a provider of Service Experience Management (SEM) solutions. Although KANA has focused on enabling superior customer service for its enterprise clients since being founded in 1996, it has experienced periods of ups and downs.

Having been acquired and taken private under Accel-KKR in late 2009, the vendor has since regrouped and come out with its renewed value proposition. Part 1 concluded with KANA’s SEM approach and accompanying solutions that blend customer relationship management (CRM), business process management (BPM), business intelligence (BI), and knowledge management (KM), social media monitoring, and many other parts.

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In this service economy it is not surprising to hear about smart innovative companies whose businesses have been blossoming due to the superior customer service they provide. Zappos and its “Powered by Service” tagline is a crown example.

Many vendors that offer customer service software solutions, especially those that bundle customer relationship management (CRM) with business process management (BPM) capabilities and even infuse knowledge in the service process, have been doing quite well, such as Pegasystems, SwordCiboodle, salesforce.com’s Service Cloud 3, inQuira, RightNow, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customer Care Framework (CCF), and so on and so forth. But achieving consistently excellent customer service and satisfaction is not easy by any stretch of imagination. Research shows that over the last 15 years customer satisfaction has dropped by over 20 points (true, we as customers are becoming more fastidious, but that is our right, isn’t it?) while the cost per interaction has more than doubled, in great part due to agents’ errors and repeated service resulting in issue resolution calls.

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Part 1 of this blog series analyzed the runaway success and genesis of Microsoft SharePoint or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). The article outlined the main reasons for the collaborative product’s widespread use and then analyzed its evolution.

Part 2 talked about SharePoint’s typical proven use case scenarios as well as about the product’s shortcomings and points of concern. Due to its workflow management and document management system (DMS) capabilities companies often attempt to use SharePoint as a full-fledged business process management (BPM) platform, but how successfully?

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Part 1 of this series began the analysis of the recent merger of Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) and Savvion Inc. Progress has this way made a large leap into the business process management (BPM) space, from where it had been notably absent. My post detailed how Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 [evaluate this product] is one of the most mature BPM suites in the still-evolving market, with the ability to handle high volumes of workflows that coordinate people, data/documents, and systems.

Part 2 analyzed Savvion’s capabilities with regards to the three common usage scenarios of BPM systems, i.e., human-centric business processes, system-centric (integration) processes, and document-centric processes. Moreover, in its white paper “Understanding Usage Patterns An Enterprise BPMS Must Support,” Savvion identifies and describes four other equally important usage scenarios that are neither very well understood by users nor well supported by BPM vendors.

Savvion claims to currently be the only BPM provider that can accommodate all seven of these usage scenarios. Part 2 then also analyzed the case management and rule-based (decision-intensive) processes, whereas Part 3 continued with the project-oriented and event-centric BPM usage scenarios. My post also ushered the Progress’ recent novel concepts of “operational responsiveness” and the grouping of its portfolio of products into three logical groups with the “responsive” moniker.

Progress touts that three important possible benefits can result when companies are in control of the systems and processes that drive their organizations. First, they gain deeper insight into the operations and events that impact their business. Next, they become faster (and better) at pinpointing and responding to potential opportunities, challenges, and risks.

And finally, they bring about continuous improvements that drive greater profitability. The final part of this blog series will explain the lofty responsive process management (RPM) idea in more concrete terms and examples. 

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Part 1 of this blog series began with an analysis of the recent merger of Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) and Savvion Inc. Progress has this way made a large leap into the business process management (BPM) space, from where it had been notably absent. The article summarized that Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 [evaluate this product] is one of the most mature BPM suites in the still-evolving market, with the ability to handle high volumes of workflows that coordinate people, data/documents, and systems.

Part 2 then analyzed Savvion’s capabilities with regards to the three common usage types of BPM systems, i.e., human-centric business processes, system-centric (integration) processes, and document-centric processes. Moreover, in its white paper “Understanding Usage Patterns An Enterprise BPMS Must Support,” Savvion identifies and describes four other equally important usage scenarios that are neither very well understood by users nor well supported by many other BPM vendors.

Savvion claims to currently be the only BPM provider that can accommodate all of these seven usage scenarios. Part 2 also analyzed the case management and rule-based (decision-intensive) processes, and Part 3 now continues with the project-oriented and event-centric BPM usage scenarios.

Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this series began to analyze the recent merger of Progress Software Corp. [NASDAQ: PRGS] and Savvion Inc. With this acquisition, Progress has made a large leap into the business process management (BPM) space, from which has been notably absent. The article asserted that Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 [evaluate this product] is one of the most mature BPM suites in the market, with the ability to handle high volumes of workflows that coordinate people, data/documents, and enterprise systems.

The product’s architecture is standards-based, multi-tiered (i.e., with separate presentation, business process, and integration flows), service-oriented, and with well-documented application programming interfaces (APIs). Thus, like its Progress siblings, Savvion is relatively easy to interface to existing infrastructures and development environments, and even to embed into partner products.

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