I spoke with Brett Champlin recently and asked him about the upcoming BrainStorm Chicago Conference(s) and what is new for 2006. BrainStorm Chicago actually consists of 5 dedicated events including: BrainStorm’s Business Process Management, Service Oriented Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Conferences as well as the Business Rules Symposium and Organization Performance Symposium.
Champlin is the Co-Chair for BrainStorm’s Business Process Management Conference, President of the Association for Business Process Management Professionals (ABPMP.org) and Manager of Business Performance Improvement with a Fortune 100 company. Champlin has led business process transformation projects for the last 15 years. He is on the adjunct faculty at the University of Chicago where he teaches a class in BPM. He also contributes a regular column to BPM Strategies Magazine.
Champlin told me that the BPM portion of BrainStorm’s Conferences continue to be the largest draw, but that additional interrelated topics have successfully been added during each of the last couple years. The first unique benefit of BrainStorm’s BPM event, which Brett discussed – is the inclusion of both business and technical tracks, as opposed to other conferences where BPM is generally presented as only a business or a technical track. BPM is actually two things, according to Champlin. The first is that BPM is a management discipline, which is managing by process. The new approach also includes the advances in technology that can aid process thinking. The technology side delivers an architectural level in the technology stack that supports BPM. The products label themselves BPM, or more properly, BPMS for Business Process Management Systems. Champlin said it is important to note that BPMS do not deliver business process management directly out of the box because process management is a management, not a technical function. BPMS can enable process thinking and make it work better and be more successful. Champlin thinks that BPM can not be made sustainable without a solid technological infrastructure to support it.
Due to popular demand from conference attendees, a track on business rules and business rules development has been added. This track is needed because it addresses definition of the business decisions. The rules need to be more visible and available, so the business processes that execute the rules can be manipulated and improved more directly. It makes change easier.
Champlin said he also suggested that BrainStorm add a organizational performance track to “close the loop.” Business Performance Management, the other BPM, includes the executive dashboards and monitoring that businesses use to tell how well their business processes are working. Changing your processes doesn’t really help unless you change them for the better. Performance management provides the assessment tools to tell what works and what doesn’t and allows management to be more proactive and react much faster to trends and changes.
On the technology side, conference attendees have asked for more information on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). People want to know what infrastructure they need to create successful BPM. There was enough interest in SOA that BrainStorm has creates a separate conference for it, which will be held concurrently with the BPM Conference Series..
Champlin told me the foundations of SOA go back almost 20 years, but we had to wait until the technology was robust enough to support the, “…vision of an infrastructure that allows the business to be more flexible and be able to adopt new technologies and adapt the technology infrastructure more rapidly in response to the needs of the business.”
I asked Champlin if there was one thing he wanted me to be sure to mention. He said that in his keynote talk, he is going to draw attention to an issue IBM has taken an interest in. That is the very interesting fact that our economy is now a service economy, with about 70% to 80% of the labor force providing services, rather than manufacturing product. This translates into nearly 80% of the US GDP coming from services. Yet, most people still have an industrial-era business model in their heads. Most of the models and presentations we see try to apply industrial thinking to the service industry. Champlin said we have to replace the industrial engineers with service engineers who are more attuned to the differences between industrial and service models. Service processes are much more complex and have different drivers. If we want to increase value to the customer, we have to recognize these new drivers. Champlin is going to share this new mindset in Chicago.
