Ingredients for a successful IT modernization strategy using BPM - Part 3

Change is tough on employees. Heck, it is tough on people in general. It is even tougher if changes are pushed on you without your consent or understanding of why. This is why managers should first work on showing the value of change. Organizational change may be a result of digital transformation, and development leaders and CIOs will not be able to effect this technology change without the people it will affect. Automation at enterprise scale will require employee participation, and that may mean changing the organizational DNA.

Digital transformation & IT Modernization

Companies are aiming to increase their revenues by improving the working processes and tools. Digital technologies have opened doors for new business models to arise. Companies that were able to manage the digital wave early saw their revenues increase, those that didn’t, well, maybe you didn’t even hear about them because they aren’t on the market anymore.

Technologically speaking, there are three types of transformations:

• Digitalization: use new tools (eg webmail, Cloud archiving, BPMN - Business Process Model & Notation) to do business as usual
• Business model organization: review and adjust business processes to market expectations (eg ethical production, food delivery, flex-office)  
• Business model digitalization: harness the best from the opportunities provided by digital tools to optimize business process activities (eg online stores, online customer service center)

In the digital era, we are no longer limited to choose between procuring heavy-in-maintenance software or developing expensive-tailored software. You can get a light-in-maintenance software that allows customization for business requirements. Not only has technology changed, expected time-to-market has also changed.

Enter the Digital Process Automation wave with the help of Bonita, our open source BPM (Business Process Management) -based digital automation platform. Many companies came to Bonitasoft looking for help to jump into the digital world and have seen results in a matter of months. How about you?

Think long term, modernize your systems

Suppose your company invested in an expensive business centered software, that does the job, but (and if there is a “but” then I got your attention) you don’t know exactly what it does any more. Maintenance time and costs keep increasing; it is difficult to find resources willing to work on the technology, it is too risky to do any changes, and the list can go on. What if I told you that you can keep your war-machine that does the work and still get digital?

Bonitasoft founders saw those pain points coming years ago and designed software that can connect to those heavy proprietary and customized software, platforms, and applications and thereby allow you to digitize your business. If you are thinking long term to get rid of the war-machines later, you won't have to start all over, because, once your business processes have been digitized with Bonita, you can either go full-Bonita or simply change the connectors to whatever new software you replace the war-machine with.

Bonita: Connecting people AND systems

What is the role of BPM in solving business issues?

Orchestration means connecting different systems that weren’t talking with each other before - using an API integration, for example. Using BPMN allows you to weave threads among people, processes, company information systems and machines, transforming graphical models into executable commands.

A Digital Process Automation (DPA) project is applying automation through processes, meaning that we integrate data exchanges as part of the process as it proceeds - between people AND between people and software and machines.

What are the benefits?

Whatever services are involved in the processes to be automated can be modeled graphically. Integration with legacy systems or modern services is facilitated by the connectors natively available in this type of solution, including in particular the connection to REST and Java services for API calls, as well as the possibility of integrating custom developed connectors.
Transaction management services, clearing capabilities, synchronous and asynchronous service calls, etc. are also native.

Why Bonita?

• Extensibility is Bonita’s bigger strength according to developers who use it, along with being open source, low-code and user friendly! Bonita gives technical teams choices with graphical tooling, multiple extension points, low-code and out-of-the-box frameworks. Sweet deal right?! :-)
• Being able to choose between on premise and Cloud platforms offers flexibility to connect existing tools and databases in the best way for your business.

How will legacy systems, new applications, and employees weather a change?

“IT modernization involves managing a transition between existing and new systems and attention to change management as well as technology management. IT modernization through process automation changes the way people work on a day-to-day basis and adds governance and traceability to work that may not have been there before. And because people are human, they are going to both adapt to systems and change them.” - Miguel Valdes Faura in ToolboxTech

3 ingredients for a successful IT modernization

The key ingredients for a successful IT modernization

• Clear and shared company vision along with success metrics. Management knows and communicates what they want to accomplish, and everyone involved in the changes should understand the objective and key success metrics.
• Employ good change management practices internally (employees) and externally (the market).
• Choose the right partners with whom to share the adventure!

This concludes my series of observations and advice about IT modernization: what it is, what tools can help you achieve it, at what cost and how to move ahead without scaring your teams.

If you only remember 5 things from this series, here are my key takeaways:

• IT modernization is about upgrading technology to provide your teams with the right tools to help them grow the business.
• Why do you modernize your IT? It will help Improve end-user experience and reduce employee frustration with outdated tech.
• BPM used for orchestration can be an essential tool to coordinate multiple systems.
• Don’t rush to modernize all at once, take time to include your teams so they are at the heart of the change.
• You're never blocked with Bonita (to circle back with my first chapter).

I hope this series clarified things for you, and would like to finish with a tip from Valentina Botnari, on the Bonitasoft Product Management team, who helped me with this last article :-)

There is no magic formula for going digital because it’s based on a strategic decision. From my point of view, as long as you keep in mind that your IT system requires important time and money investment to keep helping you increase your business revenues, the IT modernization process is in the bag.
-  Valentina Botnari, Product Owner, Bonitasoft