From Business Analyst to Disruptive Innovator – The destiny of a true BPX

[OwenPettiford]

For Enterprise SOA to continue to take a hold in the SAP world and make a difference to the bottom line of organizations it is critical that a new breed of worker is quickly matured.   Imagine a world where we have 4 key IT centric roles moving forward :-  * Consolidators : The people who provision the services and keep them running.  * Repository Keepers : The people who govern which services are available and how they can be used.  * Composers : The people who build the services into processes that can be deployed across the organizations.  * Disruptive Innovators : The people who think about new ways to combine services to drive new opportunities and business models   Now the really good news for SAP customers is that SAP is doing most of the leg work for the Consolidators, the Repository Keepers and the Composers.   * For the Consolidators the back-end platform is being service enabled in a way the will deliver enterprise class scalability.  * For the Repository Keepers the Enterprise Services and Process Components are being modeled and described in a searchable repository.  * For the Composers hundreds of xApps and ES Packages are being created which will form the building blocks for company specific composites.   So this leaves the role of Disruptive Innovator aka the Business Process eXpert (BPX). To enable this role SAP is helping to create the BPX community and providing tools that can help inspire the BPX to create new opportunities for their organizations.  It is therefore important that the BPX understands the SAP Tools and how they can be applied to different problems.  I have found it helpful to use the following matrix (without the SAP Tools shown) when running workshops with end-users, to find out exactly what their requirements would involve from a process perspective, are they trying to improve the usability of the systems via UI enhancement or are they trying to automate or control a complex business process….or both.     This can then be used to discuss the technical requirements with the IT team. Requirements at the bottom-left can be implemented quickly and usually represent good candidates for Enterprise SOA quick wins. Requirements in the top-right represent a more challenging set of requirements which will take longer to analyze and deploy – but usually deliver a large return to the business.  I hope that you find the matrix useful in both scoping your ideas and understanding how the SAP Tools could be applied to solve them.