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07.29.10 Accelerating The Automation Of User Processes  By Bill IvesHere is a software innovation that is potentially transformational. I have long been interested in providing support to knowledge intense business processes. This was my first exposure to what became knowledge management in the early 90s and the concept behind many useful enterprise 2.0 implementations. Now OpenSpan is going beyond mashups to provide quick to create interconnections between applications to automate many aspects of business processes. As a result users have more time to focus on the decisions within these processes. These automations can also create substantial time savings to drive significant ROI. I recently spoke with Rick Marquardt and Francis Carden of OpenSpan about their offering. OpenSpan's User Process Management software provides an intuitive visual design environment for automating user processes within and across applications without requiring APIs or changes to the application's code. They have figured out a way to get inside the application even if it does not contain an API for this task. Developers have the ability to integrate Windows, cloud/SaaS and custom legacy applications, which enables organizations to improve user efficiency while extending the ROI of existing applications. With OpenSpan organizations can go inside any application a user accesses, monitor user interactions to understand how power users operate and then automate processes to streamline these actions. Building these automations to connect applications is a drag and drop process as Rick and Francis demonstrated to me. Below you can see an example of making connections between a CRM application and an Order Entry system. This can eliminate the current out dated practice of cut and paste between apps to automate fill-ins.  Open Span can also monitor user activity to help determine which processes to automate and what applications to connect. In addition to reducing steps, this can also reduce the number of windows on a user's desktop. Using the OpenSpan Events desktop monitoring technology, you can record every step in every user's workflow, 24x7x365. It is no longer necessary to conduct sample time and motion studies or view screen recordings to try and guess what's happening. You can get the user's detailed desktop interactions in real time for accurate monitoring. This can both help target where to automate and then track the ROI from these efforts. I have been involved in a number of call center monitoring efforts so I have first hand appreciation of the value of this capability. Below is a sample screen. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Dr. Bill Ives is an independent consultant and writer who has worked with Fortune 100 companies in business uses of emerging technologies for over 20 years. For several years he led the Knowledge Management Practice for a large consulting firm.. Now he primarily helps companies with their business blogs. He is also the VP of Social Media and blogger for TVissimo, a new TV schedule search engine. Prior to consulting, Dr. Ives was a Research Associate at Harvard University exploring the effects of media on cognition. He obtained his Ph. D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Toronto. Bill can be reached at his blog: Portals and KM. He also writes for the FastForward blog and the AppGap blog. |
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