µBPO or µOutsourcing culminates the proceedit’s value chain forwards to a sustainable Process Excellence

microBPO is the last step in the proceedit’s value chain (Optimization > Automation > µOutsourcing) that takes profit of the capacity to externalize a single task of a specific instance of each of our automated business processes depending on real-time automated decisions based on work-load picks, holidays, absences, less cost, …

To apply a microBPO strategy, the different process tasks are classified in three categories: the ones that always have to be done internally, the ones that shall always be done externally and the intermediate ones that can be outsourced or not, depending on the circumstances and guided in or out by predefined automatic process rules.

Many advantages came from this approach: of course, savings when outsourced tasks are clearly of low added value and mechanical, homogenization of the process cycles times and then having less troubles in accomplishing always the contracted SLAs, capacity to absorb expected or unexpected picks on demand or valleys on resources available to perform the process tasks, make easier to go to 24 / 7 hours operations, preparation of contingence plans (accidents, strikes, …).

microBPO is the hardest part of the whole trip because it needs to reinvent all business and it hurts a lot in the organization, but there is no other way, if you want to sustain a competitive advantage against businesses that have been born nearly 100 % automatic, real competitors of the “physical” companies. 

Therefore, when it appears that the company has done everything (optimize and automate) the hardest part begins, try to outsource as much as possible and as cheap as possible (while maintaining quality and SLAs) but not always varying a lot depending on the circumstances of the moment, trying to obtain the most profitable combination of internal and external resources, a real never-end challenge.

ASM, SOA & BPM as the basis for the automation and integration of business processes and crucial steps in the proceedit’s value offering

In the proceedit value chain (Optimization > Automation > µOutsourcing), the second step, Automation, is the crucial one.

 

BPM & BPMS are the basic methodology and technology applied to automate business processes. A BPM Process can be understood as a movie that organizes the coordinated work of different actors: humans, applications and devices with a common aim (see the figure below).

The SOA layer facilitates the integration of business processes with the different corporate applications and content providers, not only in order to use the documents and data registered in the BPM Process, but also to allow saving documents and data created or modified along the process, and registering transactions on these applications (e.g. taking a picture) at a certain moment when the process has all the information and approvals required to do it.

Most of the business processes in organizations require heavy interaction with their legacy corporate systems. Often, these systems are still supported by Cobol applications running on old mainframe technology difficult to interact with. In these scenarios, migration to modern Java based applications running on powerful and stable x86/Linux systems is recommend. proceedit has the methodology & technology needed to perform this migration onto a 100 % automated, 100 % iso-functional and very progressive risk-free (no Big-bang) way. 

Automation is the only way to secure the potential savings obtained during the OPEX phase by fixing the working procedures and, therefore, avoiding future deviations on users’ behavior and making the operative excellence gained during the process optimization step sustainable. 

What is more, Automation is the only effective way to allow the third step of the proceedit value chain to be applied: the micro-Outsourcing of certain tasks of the process in certain circumstances defined by business rules applied on the fly.