BPM in the company: let them decide the processes

Does your company have a CRM, ERP, BI, ECM, 1C, PM, BPM? Surely, at least you have come across one of these systems as a user, administrator, manager, or even as a developer. Particularly "lucky" dealt with the entire "zoo" of corporate software at once. Those who worked, he knows: there are problems with these systems: from integration to building new modules and adapting to business requirements. At best, it is expensive and time consuming, at worst - an expensive system stands idle, without bringing any benefit, let alone company profits. And it seems there is no way out of this vicious circle. If only one system, so that the minimum of programming and maximum flexibility, and that the processes in it are not built according to complex notations, and that it was simply pleasant to work in it!

We have two news for you: good and so-so. Good: BPM already exists. So so: very few people know what to do with it.
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Our team has been working with BPM for several years, specifically with Pega. During this time, we have implemented several large projects related to Pega BPM in the financial sector and have developed a unique expertise. Being immersed in technology, we see how Pega is popular in the world and, alas, is still almost unknown in Russia. In general, who, if not we? In our blog on Habré, we open a series of articles in which we will tell about Pega from all sides and dispel some myths that have already appeared. We set a goal to write about technology "human" language. This article is introductory, and then we will dive into the details.

Why BPM business?

BPM is a business management concept through business processes. We will tell you how to do this on Pega.

In any company there are processes. Moreover, everything that happens is a process: from the purchase of stationery to construction management or the organization of the flight into space. And the more routine the process, that is, the more often it repeats, the more it needs automation. Automation of processes entails a number of positive changes in the company:
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• reduced burden on workers - labor resources are released, which can be redirected to solving more valuable and time-consuming tasks;
  
• labor costs for intra-company operations are reduced - it is not necessary to do the work within the process several times, redo the documentation, and make changes on the fly;
  
• the transparency of processes is increased: first, it becomes easier to find the bottlenecks of the processes and detect problems (for example, unnecessary steps or notifications); secondly, rules, chains of actions and responsible ones are written in the root business process; during the start of the task, a copy of the process is created and each participant knows exactly what needs to be done and in what time frame, and he knows that if he does not do this, finding the culprit in the process protocol is a 30-second case.
  

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A common mistake of companies is to use a powerful tool only partially or not at all for what it is intended for, and then complain of low payback. Working with Pega, you should trust it with the automation of all processes - you will feel the results quickly.

These three positive changes are due to Pega’s features as a technology platform. In essence, Pega is not even BPM, but a new evolutionary branch - iBPM, an intelligent business process management system. In Russia, it is not so well known, and meanwhile abroad Pega is in service with large banks and transport hubs and, by the way, does not leave the leading positions in Forrester ratings and Gartner quadrants. Pegasystems BPM is also a basic development and modeling environment in which business-oriented applications can be created. So what determines the intelligence of this BPM system?

• Pega provides quick and easy changes to business processes and significantly reduces their costs. Any business is changing: shrinking, growing, changing the product or management strategy. And there is nothing worse when complex and cumbersome automation lags behind the changes, because the next revision takes a lot of time. With Pega, you can react to changes instantly — all you have to do is review the processes and rebuild them in the visual editor. Thus, the business is not tied to the system and can implement improvements on an ongoing basis.
  
• As a rule, business processes in companies are owned by managers, managers, analysts who are competent in management and are often weak in programming and engineering. The process of internal order completion from the manager to the programmer is difficult, starting from the creation of TK and ending with the testing of changes.
  
• The introduction of Pega never looks like an introduction from scratch. Even if business processes in the company are not fully defined or frankly lame, you can add to it what you have and then change and improve the schemes as you work. Compared to other projects, Pega has a lightning speed of implementation.
  
• Constant monitoring of business processes helps to look deeper at the problems within the company, respond to them and change almost on the fly.
  
• Finally, it is worth mentioning the pearl inside Pega BPM - the case management system. Case management system is an IT system for coordinating all “manual” and automatic actions when performing complex tasks of the same type (cases). For example, in the British Heathrow Airport, all the actions of the services are included in the case from the moment the aircraft gets into the area of ​​responsibility of the dispatchers to the moment when the aircraft leaves the airspace of the airport. In banks, a case, as a rule, includes all actions from the moment a client applies (for example, a request for a loan, a protest card transaction) until the issue is completely resolved (for example, a loan is issued). Case management aims to improve operational performance through standardization, unification and continuous optimization of business processes.
  

The first striking achievement of Pega, which proved the viability of the chosen approach to automate banking processes, was a large-scale project at the US Federal Reserve in the early 2000s. As a result of the successful implementation of this project, Pega became the first industrial IT system implemented in all 12 banks of the Fed. For the first time across the country, one of the Fed's key business processes was standardized, and the number of operations centers was reduced threefold. In addition, replacing the many existing IT systems with the only IT system, the Fed reduced IT costs by millions of dollars a year.

The companies that use Pega are London Heathrow Airport, MasterCard, City Bank, Morgan Chase and many others.

Today, large-scale solutions based on the Pega platform have been successfully implemented in the ten largest global banks, as well as in many leading companies in other industries, including London Heathrow Airport. Due to this, case management systems have become widely known and actively used in most countries of the world, including Russia.

As of 2017, Pega solutions are implemented in Sberbank, Alfa-Bank and MTS.

The most interesting implementation of the Pega BPM platform was made by the LANIT team at Sberbank. The processes in the Operational Unit, responsible for the work of several tens of thousands of offices throughout the country, were automated. It was possible to centralize and streamline the execution of client operations. A large project was implemented in the Legal Department of the Sberbank Central Office - the department’s work became transparent, the effectiveness of each individual employee is visible.

By the way, it is the Sberbank case that demonstrates the speed and flexibility of Pega. Just imagine: the first process in such a gigantic structure was launched already after 3.5 months, and then quite scalelessly scaled throughout the structure.

Technological advantages

In addition to business profits, Pega BPM also has technological advantages, which advantageously distinguish it from the homogeneous range of corporate systems. Moreover, often with the introduction of Pega, executives and techies who are used to interaction patterns with 1C, SAP, Oracle and so on. technology, feel the new system, as revolutionary and breakthrough. And this is precisely due to the technical features.

• Pega is not limited to BPM, but also includes workflow, partial CRM functionality, operational management, and project management. Thus, based on Pega solutions, you can implement end-to-end automation. The system has a flexible and holistic architecture within which it is possible to describe all the processes and organize the automation of the entire company.
  
• Pega's processes dynamically adapt to changes in factors: region, type of client, business characteristics, etc.
  
• Pega provides the ability to customize the desktop interface once and use it from any convenient gadget. It is believed that the importance of mobile versions for corporate systems is overestimated, since the user accesses them from the workplace. It is not far from the truth. But if you suddenly need access at a meeting, at a client or on vacation, then this access should be complete. Pega perfectly implemented this principle - you can confidently work from mobile devices and connect to a central repository with business data.
  
• Pega is a tool for creating business processes with a less complex technical syntax than other BPM systems. If necessary, advanced, deeply immersed in existing processes, the user can learn how to create business applications within the Pega BPM infrastructure.
  

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Pega is truly multifunctional, and you will be surprised how easily it adapts business processes to any requirements: from bank needs to the requirements of the largest international airport Heathrow.

As you can see, Pega BPM is useful and clear to business. Due to the reporting, high safety standards, integration capabilities, predictive and adaptive analytics, it is absolutely comfortable for a company of any type. In general, if you are entangled in the processes or cannot call the processes at all what is happening in the company, the implementation of such a system can improve the situation.

Why do pega employees of companies?

Employees of absolutely all companies - from microbusiness to transnational holdings - dislike the introduction of corporate systems. And this is not surprising: they fear unnecessary unnecessary work, additional control, formalization of relations, and even cuts. Meanwhile, employees should translate all the benefits that they will receive from the implementation of the system.

1. The excessive “bad” bureaucracy disappears - all unnecessary links, coordination, influence are excluded due to the transparency of the system.
   
2. Monitoring is getting better - every employee can follow the processes within his competence, analyze, propose improvements and thereby become more involved in the work, become even more necessary employee.
   
3. The cost of organizing processes decreases, customer satisfaction increases, and revenue rises. A big sale is a good chance to get an increased premium.
   
4. All processes are absolutely transparent: each participant can observe their progress, see who has the process. Shifting responsibility and the human factor disappear almost completely. In such a situation, relationships within the team improve, confidence grows.
   
5. Finally, the BPM system in the company is an additional motivation, since each employee can directly participate in the management of the company and feel its usefulness. A motivated employee is the key to the success of the whole team.
   

As for control, in Pega BPM it is no more than in other corporate information systems. Moreover, control over the process is delegated to all its participants.

Does Pega have a future and is it worth working with her?

In fact, Pega in itself is the future of automated control systems (ACS) and corporate information systems (CIS).

Pega development really differs from what programmers in the Enterprise are used to. Pega / PRPC has certain similarities with OOP languages: classes, inheritance, properties, methods, conditions, trees, etc. Some things, of course, are related to relational databases (internal PRPC database and external Oracle / SQL Server and any other ), debugging, service-oriented architectures (SOA) and Java SDK to extend Pega / PRPC functionality. Also in Pega you can design user interfaces, work with web components. If you really generalize, then Pega has a development for every taste: you can create configurations by working with the mouse in a visual editor, or you can develop and modify components in Java and Javascript using HTML and CSS.

Working with Pega BPM is a promising direction for development in both business intelligence and development. At the same time, you should not be afraid that after working with a specific system you will find yourself associated with 2-3 companies on the market - the Pega BPM usage segment is growing and will actively grow in the future. Therefore, if you have experience with Pega or a relatively suitable stack of knowledge, immediately send a resume - LANIT Bee PM looking for the most-most.

Working in truly non-trivial and complex projects, developers can use and pump their skills:

• Java SE, Java EE,
• PHP,
• Java, C ++, C #,
• PL / SQL,
• skills of creating technical tasks
• management skills.

Analysts can use their experience and deeply master the most important skills to work in corporations of the highest level:

• work with processes on the client side: examine them, analyze, make recommendations,
• collect requirements and develop technical specifications,
• manage a large pool of documentation
• test software at the business level (high-level functional software testing).

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The main thing is to use the skills so that Pega works as effectively as possible for the customer. If you have experience with Pega, come - we will teach you how to prepare it and we will do cool business projects together.


The 28-year experience of LANIT has shown that in many technologies we turned out to be pioneers and visionaries. Often we create reality before the market. We are sure that it will be the same with Pega: it is already ready to replace heavy, complex ERP systems in business of different levels. So, it's time to join Pega projects - both as an employee and as a client.

By the way, we found the product placement Pega in the Soviet cinema.