Digital Business (DBiz)

Business process management (BPM) has been quietly undergoing resurgence as organizations gradually recognize the central role of process in digital transformation. Some industry observers have argued that process is sizzling, while others have pointed out that for BPM to achieve a renaissance it will require greater scale, flexibility, and collaboration than what was previously the norm.

In one of my earlier articles on Disruption, Innovation and the Art of Business Architecture, I made the case that the concept of entropy is highly applicable in explaining the evolution of business organizations.

Generally speaking, entropy is the measure of disorder in a closed system, and it is a concept borrowed from thermodynamics - the branch of physics that deals with the relationship between heat, work, temperature, and energy in a system.

EDITOR’S NOTE: DBizInstitute.org has released it first research report "Digital Business Adoption: Examining the drivers for digital business success around the world". Access this members-only report by logging in (existing members) or join DBizInstitute.org today.

2019 is going to be a very different year than the past few years. 2017 was a "pedal to the metal" year where almost all were making forward momentum with digital. 2018 started strong, but there was a shift to "steady speed" over acceleration. Many economic experts are now predicting a slight dip in growth which means businesses will be hovering their foot above the brake pedal just in case the turmoil in the markets takes a sharp turn.  What does this mean for business investment in Digital? This blog will be my best shot at predicting the likely trends.

Whether you are into BPM on a full-time basis or a general technologist, it is hard to not be seriously considering RPA or RDA (Robotic Desktop Automation) in the mix of any business solution you are working on lately. For Pegasystems specialist, you may have been introduced to RPA by their fairly recent acquisition of OpenSpan (now Pega Robotics). Pegasystems is rapidly assimilating the RPA into their BPM platform (PRPC 7.4).  Although, integration with BPM is a good feature, in the industry RPA is platform agnostic and considered a platform in and of itself. 

I have seen some organizations establish entire reporting units dedicated to RPA, even with a well-established BPM practice already in place. In discussions with technology leads, some seem to have a hard time enunciating how RPA fits into the overall architecture, this will be mitigated once there are enough RPA implementations and associated case studies disseminated.  

EDITORS NOTE: DBizInstitute.org is conducting a Digital Business Adoption survey. Please take a few moments to answer the survey and contribute to this important research.

Have you heard the news? Space has become Big Business. Currently evaluated at around $350 billion, studies done by investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch predict that the global space economy could grow to $1 trillion or more in the 2040s. 

The signs that space has gone mainstream are in plain sight. Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson are riding around New York City in a Mars rover... Iridium Communications is planning to launch its final Iridium NEXT satellite using a flight-proven Falcon 9 Block 5 booster… Elon Musk's rocket company is sending a Japanese billionaire and eight artists around the moon… The news making headlines in the social media are only the tip of the iceberg. Below the waterline, the space industry (appropriately called “New Space” - to distinguish it from the 20^thcentury “old space”, which was mostly the domain of governments) is a place teeming with exuberance and ideas.