SILO BUSTERS
Busting corporate silos by adding flexible process layers on top of them, rather than breaking or rebuilding already established structures
Your aging silo systems support disconnected silo processes. The souls of frustrated business users haunt you in the IT neighborhood. Who you gonna call? Rebuilding core systems is complex, risky, and expensive – both in terms of money, as in terms of scarce natural and human resources. How about some proper up-cycling instead? Business process automation technologies connect existing systems without intruding upon them. They deliver obvious, immediate benefits to the business, while buying more time to rearrange and open up the systems underneath. Pragmatic processes in action. Nothing supernatural about it.
Priya Ganesh Expert in Residence
WHAT
- On top of disconnected applications, APIs can expose core application functions to external technologies and systems, notably in process automation and process management (see Mesh Up Your Applications).
- Robotic Process Automation (for more on RPA, read Rock, Robot Rock) enables the automated integration of many siloed applications from the perspective of a human worker, without changing any of the affected systems.
- Business process management tools offer the capability to invoke various application services – offered by different core applications – as part of a modeled and managed process flow.
- Intention-driven user experiences – such as chatbots and voice assistants (see Honey, I Shrunk the Apps) can provide an alternative, unified view on disparate core application services.
USE
- Healthcare solutions provider, B. Braun deployed MuleSoft’s Anypoint platform to build APIs that securely connect siloed data across disparate systems, accessing data to build solutions 50% faster, connecting to its partner ecosystem and ultimately delivering better care.
- New South Wales’ Government deployed Pega’s Government platform to simplify its building bond management process to achieve transparency, speed, and accountability for developers, inspectors, and building owners alike.
- A medical equipment manufacturer used RPA to seamlessly integrate all processes and data of an acquired company, creating a unified view of both businesses and enabling a global view of credit risk and customer payment behavior.
- Seven-Eleven Japan uses Google Cloud’s BigQuery and Apigee to scale their platform efficiently, giving teams across the organization access to data and insights and reducing time to insight.
IMPACT
- Lifespans of aging or dysfunctional applications can be sustained without costly and risky rebuild activities.
- No rebuilding or replacement of existing core systems – but rather up-cycling them – may save precious, scare natural and human resources.
- Siloed applications are connected inside and outside the organization to create new, outside-in, end-to-end processes serving customers’ and companies’ digital needs.
- A high level of process flexibility and agility can be provided, without intruding on the affected application systems.
TECH
- Analytics and BI tools: SAP Analytics Cloud, Celonis, Minit, PowerBI, Qlik, Sisense
- API and web services management: Salesforce MuleSoft, Google Apigee, WSO2
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, UiPath, Pega
- Robotic automation and workforce intelligence suite, NICE RPA, Kryon Systems
- Business process management: BusinessOptix, Dell Boomi, Oracle BPM, IBM Intelligent BPM, Pega BPM & Case Management, Appian