The Ultimus BPM Blog

Show me the proof!

craig@mwdadvisors.com (Craig Wentworth) — Wed, 02 May 2018 19:54:00 GMT

Blockchain anchoring provides ‘proofs of existence’ which can be used by participants in business processes that cross enterprise boundaries when output data (e.g. decisions, documents, or even whole databases) needs to be verified against its representation in a state recorded at a previous point in time, to prove authenticity.

There are many of emerging use cases for blockchain in enterprise settings. MWD Advisors is tracking a number of ‘blockchain for business’ proof-of concept initiatives, with much of the action centering around the simplification of cross-border payments, smart contract automation (with business rules executing on-chain autonomous applications), and blockchain-enabled digital identities facilitating borderless access to information and services (to name but three).

However another use case example, perhaps much closer to more traditional business process automation, is the use of public blockchains as trust anchors. This is where the output of a process (be that a decision, a document, or a whole database state captured at a specific point in time) is cryptographically hashed to generate a ‘digital fingerprint’ which is then encoded onto a chain as a timestamped, immutable, and accessible proof of existence. Any party in the process transaction (or an auditor) can then refer to this proof (also called “anchoring receipt”) at a future point in time in order to verify (independently of their creator) whether or not the recorded decision, document or database they’re being presented with does indeed match up with the version captured and hashed onto the chain on the earlier occasion.

Theoretically the data output from a business process stage could itself be written directly onto the chain (rather than storing a hash value of the data), but this becomes impractically expensive – in terms of blockchain commitment costs and time – as the size of the data increases. Therefore, the concept of anchoring with a digital fingerprint has become an accepted mechanism for committing the proof of existence of the data to the chain instead.

Why anchor to a public blockchain?

It’s particularly useful in scenarios where business processes extend outside the enterprise (amongst suppliers, partners, customers, or to instrumented IoT devices), into an environment where there’s less trust and fewer business relationship constructs upon which to fall back upon. In situations where you’re not yet necessarily looking to integrate and automate cross-boundary processes via blockchain smart contracts (something which may require more exploration and partner buy-in than you’re able or prepared to do; or which you have investigated, but concluded isn’t a good fit at present), it’s still very useful to be able to make available an immutable proof of the execution and output of a process. Blockchain anchors provide a means to do this, enabling relevant parties to verify freely using open source tools (even if the hash incurred proof-of-work costs for the owner / originator of the decision, document, database, etc. in order for it to be encoded on the chain).

The act of digitally fingerprinting a process output and then depositing this onto a public blockchain is a two-part process. Firstly the output is hashed to generate the cryptographic proof-of-existence value; then that value is collected up into a block to be written to the chain (typically the Bitcoin public blockchain, or Ethereum). Whilst the party creating and committing the proof to the chain will incur a cost (in Bitcoin or Ethereum gas), open source tools exist that enable the proof to be verified (against a presenting copy of process output concerned) for free. The procedure is often deployed in tandem with the incorporation of a digital signature. The latter is used to prove who signed something; the former is used to prove what they signed, and when they signed it.

Together, this all enables businesses to blockchain-enable their process applications to provide a secure and authenticated view of transactions – proving that ‘something happened’ as a result of a process stage being executed – and thereby increasing the integrity of the overall solution as it’s deployed across enterprise boundaries (where there may not necessarily be sufficient trust amongst the participants to assure and believe asserted states of data otherwise – if either a dispute arises, or if a transaction is audited).

When to use a public blockchain trust anchor

Any business process where there is an exchange of value between parties will produce some form of ‘receipt’ that the transaction concluded to everyone’s satisfaction (for example, the sale and registration of land, sale or lease of high value goods like cars or aeroplanes, or the transfer of intangible rights, say). Whilst a digital signature alone will prove who has signed a document, colluding parties could subsequently draw up fraudulent copies. The digital fingerprint of the original, however, can be used to validate claims of authenticity.

For instance, in the education sector hashes could be coded onto a public blockchain to represent degree certificates, school diplomas, accreditation of any prior learning and attainment. Subsequent institutions party to the journey of a lifelong learner looking to check an enrolling student’s credentials, or employers seeing to authenticate the qualifications they present with, could refer to the blockchain hash to verify if a document they were being asked to consider was indeed bone fide. Legal contracts could be subjected to similar verification checks, to determine their authenticity in cases of dispute. Banking or insurance auditors could scrutinise the records of financial transactions to assure themselves of the accuracy of the data they’re being presented with, and audit the documentary evidence of decisions that led to any actions under investigation.

The added security and assurances provided by anchoring process outputs to a public blockchain aren’t always strictly necessary when there are other business relationships to fall back on, in order to maintain a working environment of trust. However, as the enterprise boundary becomes semi-permeable, and processes span multiple parties (suppliers, partners, customers, auditors, etc.) end-to-end, organisations can no longer rely on traditional methods alone to ensure the authenticity of the process outputs; it may no longer by possible or desirable to entrust all such evidence to a central authority, or cost-effective to have them held under escrow by a trusted third party (even if there is one that fits the bill for all concerned).

In such circumstances, therefore, new approaches are necessary to permit the widening of the process zone. It doesn’t necessarily widen an environment of trust to encompass all the elements of an extended enterprise, but it will enable all parties to operate effectively with the levels of trust available to them.

About MWD Advisors

MWD Advisors is the industry research and advisory services firm behind The Advisor. Our core focus is how digital technologies are changing the ways that organisations and people get work done. As well as providing clients with subscription access to our industry and technology research, we also provide a variety of training and consulting services.

We’ve been in business since 2005 and we’re based in the UK, but our research scope and consulting base is international. We currently have around 7,000 members of our subscriber community – from across financial services, retail, utilities, government, telecoms, travel and transport, healthcare and high-tech sectors.

Ultimus 20th Anniversary: Celebrating 20 Years of BPM Leadership

Laura Storjohann — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 16:33:00 GMT

Ultimus is very pleased to announce that we are celebrating the twentieth anniversary since our founding, marking twenty successful years of automating business operations in every major industry across the globe.

As we celebrate this milestone, let us take a look back on where it all began…

A Game Changing Visionary

Ultimus was founded in 1994 by Rashid Khan, a visionary who set out to build a company dedicated to improving the way businesses operated. Khan envisioned a new kind of workflow automation solution: a complete software suite that tightly integrated all necessary functionality and was intuitive and accessible to non-technical users. In 1994, when spreadsheets were all the rage, Khan held the belief that anyone who could use an Excel spreadsheet should be able to easily develop workflow processes. In contrast to existing products that were difficult to use and required sophisticated programming skills, Khan wanted a solution that would make solution deployments fast and cost-effective.

With this idea in mind, Khan created Ultimus and helped pioneer the concept of the Business Process Management Suite. Two decades later, Ultimus continues this revolutionary role in the BPM industry.

Expanding Global Industry Leader

Since our founding, Ultimus has quickly become an international operation, having expanded from our origins in Cary, North Carolina, to operating 14 offices throughout the United States, Europe, Central America, the Gulf and Middle East, and Asia. With this continuing expansion, we recently unveiled the opening of our New York City office, our new Corporate Headquarters.

Maintaining our global leadership as an enterprise solutions provider, Ultimus continues to support our customers in over 80 countries across every major industry, with software that is supported in 18 languages. We are a recognized leader in banking and financial services, government, technology, manufacturing, and telecommunications, and are honored to power some of the world’s biggest companies including Sanofi, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DHL, Lockheed Martin, Sony, Pfizer, and Sonoco, as well as over 75 retail and commercial banks.

Over the years, Ultimus also won recognition in the BPM industry with many accomplishments. These accolades include KMWorld Magazine's Trend-Setting Product Award, CRN Editor’s Choice Award, the e-Week Excellence Award, Kinetic's Process Innovation Award, PC Week’s Best of COMDEX, and more. We have also consistently achieved growth and profitability, winning Ultimus positions in Inc 500, Software Magazine’s Annual Software 500, and Deloitte & Touche’s Technology Fast 500. Ultimus has also been ranked among the leaders in the BPM industry by Forrester Research, Gartner Group, and the Butler Group.

Continuing Mr. Khan’s Vision

“This anniversary is a significant milestone for the company.” said Leigh Michl, Chairman and CEO of Ultimus. “The past 20 years have been filled with rapid growth and achievement and we’ve introduced many significant innovations into the BPM industry. We are proud of what we’ve achieved thus far, and are compelled to honor Rashid Khan’s genius and vision with new technologies that will be as revolutionary today as those introduced by Rashid.”

A Big Thank You

From everyone here at Ultimus, we’d like to give a big thank you to all of our customers and partners for your continued loyalty over the years and for giving us the opportunity to make the business world a better place!–

Laura Storjohann
Marketing and Communications Specialist
Ultimus Inc.

Business Process Management + SharePoint = Customer Success

Taylor Leighton — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 20:56:00 GMT

Upcoming webinar featuring Kevin Smith, IT Director at Pentair Water Pool and Spa, and Chris Adams, VP Product and Technology at Ultimus, will highlight and discuss the various ways companies are using Ultimus’ Business Process Management (BPM) Solution to extend the value of their Microsoft SharePoint environment. This allows an organization to gain efficiencies and increase productivity with the tools they have today and without further investment in IT resources. Kevin will give details on his experience integrating SharePoint with Ultimus BPM Suite and the outcome of this integration.

Using Adaptive Discovery- A BPM Best Practice

MK Strupe — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:30:00 GMT

A BPM project can be an overwhelming task if you let it. While it is important to map out your processes in their entirety it is also important to remember that your BPM project is an ongoing project. By this I mean that process owners should engage in continuous process optimization by regularly reporting on automated processes and analyzing them to ensure they are still as efficient as possible.

Business processes can be very complex, having multiple, intertwined channels of workflow; some of which are used several times a day while others are only used once a quarter or year. When there is pressure to see results and ROI, taking the time to map out every single possible channel of workflow can actually hurt the overall success of the BPM project. This is where the "80/20 Rule" plays a role in process automation. By focusing on the processes that your organization uses the most, and that generates 80% of your revenue, your BPM project will be more successful than if you try to map them all out at once. Moreover, using Adaptive Discovery and rules, you can focus on the most common scenarios and outcomes.

For example, a manager for company X receives many purchase requests. If the request is under $500 he/she has the ability to approve it. However, if the request is for $500 to $2,000 the purchase request may need to be re-routed to the department manager or to the department manager's boss for approval. Typically for company X all of the purchase requests are under $2,000. This being said, company X automates their process, makes it "live" and applies rules that direct the request to the appropriate management level depending on the dollar amount.

Every now and then company X receives a purchase request for several thousand dollars. As there are no rules in company X's BPMS for a purchase request that exceeds $2,000 when a request of this size comes in the process owner will be notified. At this point, the process owner edits the rules in the BPMS to direct purchase requests of $2,000+ to the CFO or other executive member.

Based on the action taken with the large purchase request and the new rules applied, the BPMS "learns" what action should be taken in the future for similar requests.

By only mapping out the most typical scenarios (purchase requests under $500 and requests under $2,000) company X was able to launch their purchase request process quicker to start seeing time and cost savings with their BPMS. They essentially made their process "live" when it was only 70% complete, and through adaptive discovery they were able to more pieces to the puzzle when needed. This is one of the many benefits of a BPMS- you can always quickly and easily edit your processes to meet the changing needs of your company.

In starting your BPM project, don't panic if you can't think of all of the possible scenarios you may incur; rather model and automate the most common ones that are used on daily or weekly basis, and the rest will fall into place when they arise.

Relevant Links:

Methodology For Fast ROI with BPM: "Rome Was Not Built In A Day"

Think "Small" When Starting with BPM: Recipe for Immediate ROI

Strategies for Choosing Which Process To Automate: The Ultimus Process Prioritizer

Mary Katherine Strupe
Marketing Coordinator
Ultimus

Ultimus Listed As a Top BPM Vendor in 2010 By Ovum

MK Strupe — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:36:00 GMT

Ultimus is pleased to announce that Ovum has evaluated the Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite as a top BPM Suite for 2010. Based out of the UK, Ovum is the ICT advisory brand of the Datamonitor Group, with a 25 year history of advising both enterprises and their suppliers on the business value of ICT.

After a product demo, review and a market review, Ultimus was included in Ovum's list of top BPMS providers. From a product perspective, Ovum specifically noted Ultimus' product strengths in Process Discovery & Scoping, Simulation & Testing and Modelling & Design. While from a market perspective, Ovum recognized that Ultimus "is able to appeal to a broad range of customers due to its flexible approach to licensing and deployment as well as an efficient sales model." Ultimus is excited to be recognized for having a strong and robust BPM Suite and providing BPM success for customers and partners across the world.

Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite v8 is allowing our long-standing customers and partners to evolve their existing workflows into true business processes by taking advantage of the numerous product enhancements and evolutions in Ultimus v8. For example, Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite v8 provides a powerful and easy to use continuous process improvement platform, "Adaptive Discovery".

While classic process improvement methodologies include serialized steps of process discovery, execution, measure and review, and subsequent rediscovery and optimization, Ultimus' continual process discovery methodology allows all players in the process lifecycle to take part in process optimization. Moreover, Ultimus business processes never have to be taken "offline" in order for process improvements to be made. Via the Ultimus Adaptive Discovery platform, process bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and routing errors can be corrected and optimized real-time. Live running process incidents can be updated immediately and continuously, thus ensuring the process becomes "smarter" the longer it is utilized and ultimately saving your company time and money by ensuring your business processes are always running optimally.

With a process improvement methodology in place, your business processes today can quickly become outdated and inefficient. Companies cannot afford to take the "wait and see" approach with business process execution, where only after waiting weeks and months to collect and review process data is it found out that the business process model is failing. Do you have a process improvement methodology in place today? Better yet, can you afford to not have one?

Chris Adams
VP Product and Technology
Ultimus

Lean vs Six Sigma: What's the Difference?

Emily McKenzie — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:54:00 GMT

Lately there's been a great deal of talk around Lean execution. But, some people speak of Lean, some speak of Six Sigma and some use a combination of the two. But, what's the difference? How do you know what's right for your organization?

Lean Six Sigma is a methodology that combines process speed with quality. To become a truly more efficient and effective organization in terms of operations and business processes, you must have both Lean and Six Sigma methodologies; having one without the other ultimately results in process destruction.

Lean, itself, focuses on speed. It emphasizes reducing the amount of time between activities, events, and cycles. The shorter the cycle time, the more cycles you can complete in a given amount of time. Lean also identifies areas where process waste and bottlenecks can be eliminated. There are 8 types of waste that can be removed from business processes to reduce costs and time:

Waiting- whether it is for the next activity, process step, or information, process wait time can be 90% or more of the processing cycle.
Overproduction- over producing products or services ahead of the need can result in product expiration or excess inventory
Rework- correcting defects, mistakes and errors
Motion- excessive movement/transfer of people, supplies, materials, and documents
Over Processing- of information, data, and testing
Inventory- maintaining excessive amount of supplies that could potentially expire
Intellect- failing to use the talents and knowledge of the organization
Unnecessary Transporting- equipment, people, etc.

While lean promotes rapid business processes the problem that arises from it is a lack of quality. It doesn't matter how many forms are completed or calls are taken if the data and information captured is not up to par. Simply completing activities rapidly, without check marks fosters an environment prone to errors and often requires rework. This is where Six Sigma becomes essential to business process management..

The Six Sigma methodology is a quality tool that emphasizes reducing the number of errors in a process. It focuses on identifying variation in the types of data inputs, and looks at Root Cause Analysis to determine the source of errors. After all, what good is it to complete a process quickly if the information is incorrectly entered?

To ensure process and organizational success a combination of both lean and six sigma are needed. Together lean and six sigma work through process mapping to model and automate the most efficient, quality workflows possible, allowing your company to maximize productivity, while eliminating waste and reducing costs. Having a Lean Six Sigma approach to your business processes is essential for any company to achieve operational excellence.

You'll also hear from certain people that software is not necessary for Lean Six Sigma execution. Sure, it's not necessary if you only want to receive a fraction of the possible results; but, why only go through process of making your manual tasks lean? If you automate your tasks with a Lean Six Sigma approach you are likely to receive an exponentially higher return on your efforts.

Is your company implementing both lean and six sigma thinking into operations? Have you considered a process automation solution to help with your Lean Six Sigma Initiatives?

Mary Katherine Strupe
Marketing Coordinator
Ultimus