As with a number of my posts I do occasionally get off the beaten track and talk about other subjects.  Business Process Management just happens to be one of them.

For those of you who want to brush up on what that means i’ve “lifted” a definition from Wikipedia that address that quite well.

“Business process management (BPM) is a method of efficiently aligning an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It is a holistic management approach that promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility and integration with technology. As organizations strive for attainment of their objectives, BPM attempts to continuously improve processes - the process to define, measure and improve your processes – a ‘process optimization’ process.”

Business process management can be broadly grouped into the following categories.

• Design
• Modeling
• Execution
• Monitoring
• Optimization

Benefits of Business Process Management

The hard work here is done by the tools and technologies at ones disposal, dramatically increasing the efficiency gains. Some of the biggest advantages are:

1. Transparency
BPM makes a business process very  transparent, thereby improving visibility and efficiency.  It can show where the most delays are occurring, and where is each transaction stuck as it passes from one stage to another.

2. Process refinement
The initial configuration and design exercise coupled with the data that emerges after running processes for some time can allow refinement.

3. Centralization of Data
Data about each and every transaction is logged and can be retrieved as and when required. Therefore, it is possible to analyze accurately what happened. Referencing is also easier as embedded searches allow for data to be picked up as required for study.

Technologies

While there are a number of BPM software providers I’ve decided to focus on one of them. Active Endpoints is a provider of cost-effectively and flexibly use all of the web services infrastructure that has been installed in companies over the last few years to create composite applications.

About the company:

Active Endpoints was founded by software industry veterans committed to delivering standards-based, high-productivity tools and enterprise-class servers to the SOA software market. Building on our success in delivering open, enterprise-scalable services-oriented architecture solutions for OEM customers, Active Endpoints, already well-known for its contributions to the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and BPEL4People open standards, now turns its attentions to a comprehensive system for corporate line of business developers. ActiveVOS is the result.

Active Endpoints.:

Active Endpoints is the world’s first all-in-one, standards-based visual orchestration system.

Active is the only SOA-based process orchestration and business process management (BPM) system that allows enterprises and developers to:

1. Automate business processes
2. Collaborate across IT and business boundaries
3. Control the overall state of the business
4. Adapt rapidly and easily to change

You can read more about what this tool does at the ActiveVos Blog. 

For those of you interested in getting you hands dirty, the company is currently offering free trial versions of their SOA Software.

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The Great Indian Developer Summit started with a bang ( from what i gather ). Five intensely packed days involving over 60 speakers and more sessions than you would know what to do with.Held at the prestigious IISC institute in India’s own silicon valley this gathering of over 3000 technically minded people invaded one seminar hall after another in search of new ideas and thoughts.

This is what the sponsors have to say about this event.

“Whether you are a veteran or a newcomer to the world of .NET, Java, or the Rich Web, the Great Indian Developer Conference at Developer Summit 2008 presents a unique opportunity to learn and assimilate technology know-how, augment executive decision-making, understand best practices and case studies, and absorb the innovation excellence of experts from India, Europe, US, and Asia Pacific, in focused settings. All this besides being involved as a key stakeholder in one of the largest developer markets in the world.

With a conference program put together by technology visionaries, creators, authorities and industry watchers from the media, Great Indian Developer Summit features three co-located conferences, with two parallel tracks for each conference, which that will offer incisive insight through keynotes, power panels, break-out sessions, Birds of Feather (BoF) discussions, and hands-on workshops” And from what i saw i would whole heartedly agree.

I entered what i can only call a melee on the third day. Being a passionate Enterprise 2.0 promoter i felt that the Rich Web section of the summit might be something i could understand and while I’m not a developer i did feel that the summit could offer me some enlightenment.

For a person hoping to be reasonably impressed i was completely blown away by the key note speech. Jesse James Garrett is widely regarded as one of the worlds foremost technology product designers. His opening address on user experience and product trends couldn’t have set the stage for the rest of the day any better.

The rest of the day was spent jumping from one lecture hall to the other since they had 4-5 sessions running in parallel, the only down side to this summit. Then again it did allow for a tremendous amount of diversity that wouldn’t have ordinarily been possible in a serial arrangement of seminars.

Some of the sessions held on the Rich Web “day” were as follows, Enterprise 2.0 and the New Age Weapons, Ajax and Comet: Implementing the Real-Time Web and Mashups vs Composite Applications to name a few.

All in all, a great way for me to have spent a Wednesday. The biggest takeaway would have to be the numerous seeds of possibility that were sown as a result of this massive collaborative effort.

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Share-a-Pic is a service that aims to take advantage of the huge volumes of pictures users share using social networking sites like facebook.

Unlike other data hosting sites that allow you to host free files but make keep the revenue they earn from advertising Share-a-Pic plans to distribute a share of the money it makes back to the users who generate it for them. A very interesting concept.

How their system works:

“If in month one Shareapic calculates to distribute $1,000 to our members, we will first tally up the total number of image views for that month. Using these two numbers we can determine the respective payouts for each user. If there were a total of 500,000 image views for the month, image views will equate to $0.002 each (1,000 divided by 500,000), or $2 per 1000 image views. If you’re posting lots of pics in forums, MySpace or eBay, you can see how easy it is to earn quite a bit of money!”

Sign up... and give it a test ( if you are into posting pictures online ).

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As with most interesting new products i was extremely tempted to try Scratch back primarily due to the idea behind it. The concept here, as they put it, is to spread “Good Karma”.

So, to see how well this works i’ve decided to host a Scratchback on my site. Buying a “tip” on GridLock will cost you only $5. I’ve already “tipped” a number of sites, and for the ridiculously low sum of money involved its just plain fun.

If you haven’t implemented it on your blog give it a shot and let me know what you think.

What Is ScratchBack?
ScratchBack is an online “tipping” system. It allows you, the publisher, to accept tips and “give back” links* or images* in return.

You name your price on your tips, and you earn money from every interaction through our easy-to-use automated system. It’s free to sign-up, and you can have a TopSpot widget on your website or blog in minutes.

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I came across this rather nifty website called Vizu which allows you to create web polls on the fly and have them featured on your blogs.

I do use polls on this blog, the latest one being which your favorite social networking  site is. While i use a wordpress plugin to achieve this functionality Vizu is a much simpler solution for those of you who don’t want to waste time setting one up from scratch.

It’s a great way to get your opinions from your readers, something i’ve found rather useful since i’ve started using this feature.

Sign up, create your own poll and post it on your blog.

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CRM is defined as - “ CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is a company-wide business strategy designed to reduce costs and increase profitability by solidifying customer loyalty. True CRM brings together information from all data sources within an organization (and where appropriate, from outside the organization) to give one, holistic view of each customer in real time. This allows customer facing employees in such areas as sales, customer support, and marketing to make quick yet informed decisions on everything from cross-selling and upselling opportunities to target marketing strategies to competitive positioning tactics.”

The focus of this post is a particular CRM software application called AimPromote while this application is grouped under the header “CRM software” it is more of a Sales Lead application. I have worked with a number of such applications before and while the corporate ones are clearly more comprehensive in its list of features AimPromote’s pricing does keep it competitive for those of you who can’t invest a large portion of your capital in such an application.

It has a whole host of features that you can take a look at when you get the time. Listed below are a couple of the features AimPromote has.

• Revenue from E-commerce Sale
• Revenue from Leads
• Call Center Performance
• Marketing Automation

There is a ton of information you can get online about various CRM softwares and the features they have to offer. On the surface of it most of these applications seems to be very similar in their offerings, but a closer look reveals a lot more. Which is why its very important to look at the application you want very closely to ensure you do not make the mistake of being rash in the decision to make a selection.
For those of you who have tried this application please do send me feedback.

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For those of you in a dilemma over whether you should get the iPhone or the iTouch the following review by CNET might answer that question.

“Barely three months after the launch of the iPhone, Apple debuted its iPod Touch. Though their similar designs may lead you to think that the Touch is just an iPhone without the phone, in reality they are two distinct devices. Variations in style, features, and media performance become readily apparent to those that dig a little deeper. That’s why CNET pitted these two devices against each other to see which one is the superior multimedia player. Of course, we can’t compare call quality, so that will be left out of the tussle, but certainly we can compare almost everything else.

Let’s have a clean fight, fellas. Ding, ding!”

About the judges

Kent German covers cell phones at CNET and has been following the wireless industry for six years. He’s embarrassed to admit he can name almost any cell phone he sees on the street.
Donald Bell covers all the latest portable audio and video gadgets. He reviews everything from the smallest digital audio players to tablet-size video players.
Tom Krazit covers anything and everything related to Apple for CNET News.com, tracking what Apple is doing and where it is going as the company’s influence on the technology industry hits an all-time high.

Read the complete review here.

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I’ve put together a list of books on Knowledge Management below, if you find these books interesting you should be able to find them at a book store close to where you are staying ( keep your fingers crossed ) or order them online via Amazon.

If you have read any of these books do leave a comment here.

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