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IDS Scheer AG is working to dispel the myths around BPM for its customers—many of whom have more questions than answers when it comes to optimizing their business processes.
At its ProcessWorld user conference here last week, hosted by the companys US subsidiary (IDS Scheer North America Inc., based in Berwyn, Pa.), the company tried to paint a more complete picture of what business process management can do for a company by introducing an upgrade to its Aris PPM (Process Performance Manager) software, as well as expanded partnerships with SAP AG, Intalio Inc. and Fuego Inc.
Version 3.1 of Aris PPM, a process controlling tool that helps companies measure and enhance their core processes, is geared toward bridging the gap between corporate strategy and actual implementations, IDS Scheer officials said. New features include a Corporate Performance Management feature for long-term process optimization and a Business Activity Monitoring capability that helps with the distribution of process performance indicators.
The expanded relationship with enterprise applications provider SAP, of Walldorf, Germany, will result in new Aris Toolset reference models for SAPs xApps. The reference models should help to speed the business process design and modeling phase of xApps implementations, according to IDS Scheer officials.
Intalio, of San Mateo, Calif., will more deeply integrate the Aris modeling tool set within the Intalio/n3 BPM system. The tighter coupling will bring better adherence to BPM standards such as Business Process Modeling Notation and Business Process Execution Language and will help users better integrate process models.
Separately, Fuego, of Plano, Texas, will integrate Aris Toolset into its Fuego BPM process automation software. Integrating the two environments will enable Fuego to automatically import process models created in Aris and then run the models on its namesake Orchestration Engine.
Despite IDS Scheers efforts, not all users found what they were looking for at the conference.
“I am not able to find yet what I came here looking for,” said Jorge Sampson Roquebert, director of consulting at Neoris, a BPM consulting company in Mexico City. “I am not looking for products. … I am looking for theory that suggests what we are doing [with our BPM practice] is on the right track. BPM touches the heart of companies. We want to see if we are touching the right places. Technology is a second step to that.
“In the next year, we will develop an [application service provider] model, and the SAP integration [will be important then], but its not what we came for,” Roquebert said.