DaveBirchall.com on Business Technology

Archive for the ‘Business Process Management (BPM)’ Category

Many software companies have targeted the insurance industry with a software product offering in the last few years. These software products are able to be taken off the shelf and seemingly dropped into production.

The apparent speed of deployment can be appealing to a business that is striving to get things done and kick goals in the shortest time frame possible. The lure of such a solution can be all the more appealing when the other option is a custom software project which (as reputation would lead you to belief) can take several months to design build and then test. Although the custom software approach would inevitably lead to a better fit for the business, efficiency is sacrificed for the sake of apparent speed of deployment.

This view of insurance industry software is to my mind far too simplistic and fails to take into account a best of both worlds approach which has been developed and refined in recent years.

Every insurance company is different. By their nature, they need to be different in order to gain competitive advantage over their competitors. The way risk is calculated, premiums and pricing are calculated are all highly specialised and are often updated and refined on a frequent basis.

BA’s, Risk Managers and Actuary’s need to be able to make changes to such calculations without having to add to the work load of IT managers. Long and convoluted change management processes simply become an unnecessary stumbling block for a department focused on getting things done. By the same token, the IT team can be hesitant to give untrained personnel access to business logic in a business critical system.

The solution lies in using a Business Rules Management System (BRMS) to seperate out the business logic and make it accessible to the people that need it. Rules or sets of rules can be locked down using role based security to prevent unauthorised changes to business logic. As well as speeding up the change request process, a collaborative approach to business logic can then harnessed allowing the business to catapult into a new realm of business agility.

In addition to all this, the software development cycle is significantly reduced, allowing insurance businesses to reap the benefits of their investment sooner.

A BRMS approach to insurance industry software allows you to enjoy the benefits of off the shelf software (rapid deployment, stable code base,) with all the benefits of custom software. (efficiency, fit, usability, performance)

To find out more about how BRMS can work for you, register for our forthcoming the webinar at

http://www.solentive.com/software-events.html

So the news is not good. Apart from the obvious feelings of a new beginning (President Obama’s inaugoration) that is being projected by our US friends, the rest of the world seems a little less hopeful at least for the short term. Australia gained around 10,000 new people on the unemployment figures yesterday as BHP and Rio Tinto announced their various reforms and a global technology giant announced global redundancies in their thousands. To state the bledding obvious, everyones chief concern is about survival at the moment.

It’s a time to be focused on our objectives, make few mistakes and get results as quickly as we can. When it comes to IT projects, it’s important not only to get a return on investment but to get that return quickly. Its maybe for this reason that my company seems to be bucking the trend and doing steady business whilst other vendors seems to be slowing down. Our accelerated approach to custom software is able to play a vital role in the survival of businesses across Australia as budgets get tightened, and we are expected to do more with less.

So if you are unfamiliar with our approach, I’ll take you through the highlights.

Before I describe what it is. I’ll tell you what its not.

• Its not Agile development, its more than that. Whilst we also use Agile to accelerate the process. This is a just a small piece of the puzzle.
• Its not an accelerator, its more that that. In the world of software development accelerators can be used to speed up the software development process. Examples might be controls or reporting tools. We do that too.
• Its not code reuse, its more than that. Code or portions of code can be used during development from previous projects to allow for a lean delivery. An easy example to understand is demonstrated with a simple log in screen. Most of our customers need a log in screen for their project, so do we reinvent the wheel each time? No! We go way beyond code reuse.

So what is it then?

Solentive have developed an ‘ultra accelerator’ that allows us to deliver reliable, innovative solutions in a fraction of the time that other developers can. The ultra accelerator can be used on practically any workflow oriented application and comes with native connectivity technology (BUS) to facilitate the integration with other systems.

The approach ‘displaces’ a mountain of engineering effort by using the ultra accelerator, where other companies would normally be piecing code together or writing code from scratch. Further customization can then be performed to tailor the solution to your specific requirements.

Further to all this, our customers benefit from a very stable code base, user acceptance testing is minimised and the system is fast tracked to production.

Business processes can be automated or largely automated meaning with rules engine technology and workflow design tools so the potential for a huge return on investment is also available. For the price of a standard approach to your project, we are able to include reporting and SLA monitoring tools to ensure that your workforce is always on task and you are able to identify leakage in your productivity. Do more with less! No really!

We have enjoyed some great implementations for our customers so I thought it may be interesting to share our approach.

If a jobs worth doing its worth doing well and its worth doing now!

Do you have project? A question about software development? Are you lonely or bored and just fancy a chat ?

The door is always open as they say.

Create and Edit Business Logic in Plain ENGLISH

Just a quick note of thanks to all those that joined us online for the webinar earlier in the week. It’s been great to see the level of response and interest around BRMS.

If you missed the session or if you would like to go through it again you can view it at

http://www.solentive.com/webinar-create-details.html

In case you missed it, the recording of last weeks webinar can be viewed at

http://www.solentive.com/webinar-exclusive-preview.html

To recap the MAMBA framework can be used map , design and implement your business logic in a way that will allow Business people and IT to work more closely together than ever before.

A recent study by CIO connect has confirmed the steady evolution of the CIO roles as we suspected.

Over 80% of respondants hold board positions or places on senior change management panels. 62% said they they were being turned to by board level collagues for “insight and leadership in business change”

CIO’ are finding themselves spending more time on business issues such as strategy, transformational change and project briefings.

”We are seeing CIOs emerging to take a leadership role in driving business change within their organisations,” said Nick Kirkland, chief executive at CIO Connect.

This affirms our launch of the MAMBA platform as an enterprise transformation engine allowing business and IT departments to work effectively together to keep pace of the change in a challenging operation environment.

Are you a business transformer? Do you need the tools to allow your business technology to keep pace with the relentlessly changing needs of the business? Get in touch to see how we can help you get ahead of the transformation curve…

Original article