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Source: Technology Evaluation Centers
TEC Product Certification Report: Savvion Inc. BusinessManager 7.5
Business Process Management Solutions is also known as :
BPM Solutions,
BPM Software,
Business Process Improvement,
BPM Studio,
Business Process Management Activities,
BPM Space,
BPM Trailblazer,
Business Process Management Tools, BPM Server, Business Process Management Studio, Increasing Maturity of BPM Solutions, BPM Portal User Interface, BPM Portal, BPM Functionality Modules, Managing Business Process Applications, Business Process Management Space, Business Process Management Software, BPM Activities, Business Process Management Environment, BPM Evaluation Center, BPM Tools, Business Process Management Value, BPM Rating Score, Business Process Management Server, BPM Environment, BPM Setting, Business Process Management Evaluation Center, Comprehensive BPM Functionality, Business Process Modeling.
Table of Contents
Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 has been certified by Kurt Chen, research analyst, Technology Evaluation Centers Inc.
Demonstration conducted by Ajay Khanna, Savvion Inc. Brian Calado, Savvion Inc.
Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) is pleased to announce that Savvion's product, BusinessManager 7.5 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of business process management (BPM) solutions in the BPM Evaluation Center. The BPM Evaluation Center enables you to compare and evaluate functionality based on TEC's comprehensive model of BPM software. Data used in the Evaluation Center are obtained from vendor responses to TEC's requests for information (RFIs). Certification ensures that
- Savvion BusinessManager's product capabilities have been demonstrated to a TEC analyst based on the responses the company provided in its completed TEC RFI;
- A TEC analyst has analytically and comparatively reviewed Savvion BusinessManager RFI data against known benchmarks.
There are many benefits to evaluating a TEC Certified product. To potential clients of a software vendor, TEC certification provides the following:
- Reassurance: You can be assured that the data TEC provides about its certified products conform to a well-defined standard of accuracy. When a vendor's product is TEC Certified, it means that a trusted, independent third party has seen the product up close.
- Better Communication with Vendors: TEC certification helps ensure that vendors understand and respond accurately to their clients' RFI criteria. Certification with TEC analysts provides the opportunity to clarify any issues with the RFI criteria. This ensures that the vendor is speaking the same language as its potential clients—and gives the clients an unambiguous specification of product functionality to inform their selections.
The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations that rely on the integrity of TEC's research services for assistance with their software selection projects. Organizations looking for a solution can be confident that they're comparing the product on an "apples to apples" basis with other, similar products.
Savvion BusinessManager Market Data Summary
Savvion provides BPM solutions to organizations in industries such as communications and media, financial services, life sciences, health care, and manufacturing, as well as business practice areas such as customer management, supply chain management (SCM), case management, order management, and product management.
On January 11, 2010, Progress Software Corporation announced the acquisition of Savvion. Progress believes that the acquisition of Savvion will further its goal of providing "unprecedented business visibility, responsiveness, and business process improvement, coupled with the highest degree of data integrity and integration."
Savvion BusinessManager is a BPM solution that includes the following components:
- Savvion Process Modeler, a process modeling tool that helps translate business process improvement ideas into graphical process models. Users can map out current business processes, analyze process, simulate results, and identify improvements.
- Savvion Process Asset Manager, a version-controlled repository designed to help users socialize and share the ideas they've designed in Savvion Process Modeler. It includes search functionality so that cross-functional teams can find and reuse their own ideas and those of their colleagues.
- BPM Studio, a development environment for technical business analysts and IT professionals. BPM Studio incorporates wizard-driven features, which can make it easier for users to assemble and roll out process-driven solutions.
- BPM Server, a scalable set of Java-based engines that manage running process applications. The server provides a set of services for executing and managing business process applications, including integration, workflow, and business rules.
- BPM Portal, BusinessManager's online task management and monitoring system. It includes dashboards and many reporting, analysis, and exception intervention options for managers, as well as task management interfaces for day-to-day activities.
- Savvion Business Expert, an add-on product to the BusinessManager suite designed to help business users identify key performance indicators (KPIs), analyze problems, triage short-term solutions, and optimize long-term solutions.
Savvion BusinessManager has been adopted by over 350 companies, including 22 of the Fortune 100. As a private company prior to its acquisition by Progress Software, Savvion did not disclose detailed financial information. However, Savvion stressed that the company remained profitable for the seven quarters following Q4 2007. For financial information regarding parent company Progress Software Corporation, please see the company's latest financial information.
Savvion introduces one major release every year, along with two minor releases. The company's products have various licensing options, including user-based, central processing unit (CPU)-based, applicationspecific, transaction-based, and enterprise license agreements (ELAs). Savvion also hosts solutions for its customers and offers recurring payment terms for such solution delivery. Savvion Process Modeler is available as a free download from the company's website for a 30-day evaluation period. Customers can then purchase the tool for single or multiple seats for process modeling and analysis.
Approximately two thirds of Savvion's system implementations are performed directly by Savvion, with the rest being performed by partners such as BearingPoint, Accenture, Wipro, and so on. Average implementation time is reportedly three months. To help customers and partners maximize the value of BPM, Savvion provides both Web-based and classroom training, including on-site training as an option.
This certification is based on the latest version of Savvion BusinessManager (7.5 SP1, released on July 15 2009). Throughout the product briefing and demonstration, my overall impression is that Savvion BusinessManager delivers comprehensive BPM functionality and can help users achieve high productivity in BPM activities, whether they are engaged in business process modeling, execution, or process performance management.
Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 receives a high overall score in the TEC BPM functionality evaluation model. In fact, the solution scores higher than the average solution in all seven BPM functionality modules.
Besides functionality comprehensiveness, productivity is another key feature that differentiates Savvion BusinessManager:
- For business analysts, Savvion provides a very user-friendly business process modeler. Features such as tabular view and gesture recognition will help analysts increase the speed of process definition.
- For business process operators, Savvion provides workflow portal, search, document management, and so on, through an easy-to-understand user interface.
- For managers, Savvion's monitoring and analytic capability allows them to quickly address process issues and drill down to various levels in order to easily identify root causes and spaces for process improvements.
Based on four main principles, here is how Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 fared.
Ease of Use
- Layout: The application's layout is logically designed—tree columns, multi-tabs, and dropdown boxes are properly used, making the layout easy to understand as well as informative.
- Visual presentation: The user interface is designed to improve productivity—changes made in the tabular view are automatically reflected in the diagram view of process models; swim lanes are colorcoded; process bottlenecks and critical paths are visually highlighted, etc.
- nformation retrievalI: Users can easily locate specific information through navigation, searches, and filters.
- E-mail interaction: Savvion BusinessManager provides two-way e-mail interaction capabilities for notification, task execution, approval, event triggering, etc.
- Workflow portal: The configurable workflow portal allows each individual to efficiently retrieve tasks, resources, and information.
- Wizards: BPM Studio (a product for technical business analysts and IT professionals within the Savvion BusinessManager suite) incorporates rich wizard-driven features, making it easier to assemble and roll out process-driven solutions.
Security and Control
- Role and user definition: The system can either use an external user directory or define its own roles and users.
- Data access: Data access control is associated with roles and users with different access right options (e.g., create, modify, view)
- Audit trails: The system provides audit trails in fine granularity—audit trails are captured for workflow events, user inputs on forms, escalation actions, notifications, etc.
- Version control: Workflow documents and process artifacts are stored in a central repository and version-controlled.
Implementation
- Server: Besides offering an on-premise solution, Savvion also provides its customers with a hosted option that allows faster deployment and lower initial investment in IT infrastructures.
- Setup: Savvion offers its business process modeler as a desktop application and the rest of its BPM functionality through a Web-based interface. Savvion developed its Rapid Assisted Process Implementation and Deployment (RAPID) methodology for implementation in order to deliver solutions in 90 days.
- Services: Savvion offers pre-packaged programs to accelerate customers' process improvement initiatives. These services include process services (e.g., process mapping, discovery, design, modeling, and analysis), process automation (e.g., infrastructure and environment planning, system configuration, and customization), operation support (e.g., maintenance plans, migration and transition plans, and performance analysis), change management, and training and education.
Innovation
- Tabular view: Savvion Process Modeler's patent-pending Tabular View process definition provides a unique and productive way for business users to define their processes. When defining a business process with Savvion Process Modeler, a user can conveniently switch between diagram view and tabular view. Changes made in one view are updated automatically in the other view. This feature brings intuitiveness and productivity to process definition in a single location.
- Gesture recognition: To further improve efficiency in process definition, Savvion has also brought Gesture Editor on board. This feature allows users to customize mouse gestures so as to save time in finding the right commands or buttons.
- Other enhancements: Other enhancements in Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 SP1 are also useful and productive. These enhancements include (but are not limited to) support for Google widgets in Form Editor, a Web 2.0 BPM Portal user interface using Ajax widgets, Flash-based interactive process playback from the portal for audit and compliance, and more.
Using the TEC Advisor decision support engine, we have prepared a few high-level graphs that identify this product's functional focus and competitiveness.
The TEC Focus Indicator (FI)TM
This TEC Focus Indicator (FI) tells you which types of functionality are most likely to differentiate Savvion BusinessManager from other products in the BPM space. It includes three zones indicating the product's focus: the Dominant zone, Competitive zone, and the Not Competitive zone.
TEC's model of BPM systems is designed with a comprehensive breadth; generally vendors will deliver a common base of functionality. While we believe in the necessity of knowing whether a product supports a base of common functionality, it's very helpful to understand how a product really differs from the crowd.
The bars in this FI chart represent neither the quality of the product nor an absolute quantity of supported functionality. Rather, the bars show support relative to the average solution.
The functional focus arrow indicates which modules of this product provide an equal or greater quantity of support than the average solution. Modules near the top of the functional focus arrow reveal where Savvion BusinessManager is more likely to differentiate itself through breadth of functionality. The more concern you have for the type of functionality near the top of the functional focus, the more it's to your advantage to explore this product further.
Understanding the TEC FI Zones
The top Overall bar shows the overall difference in supported functionality between Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 and the average solution. To understand how we calculate this difference, read the Calculating the TEC FI section (page 11).
The Overall bar is our measure for determining which modules fall within the Dominant zone. If a module's difference from the average is greater than the product's overall difference from the average, we label it dominant. Those are the modules most responsible for pulling the Overall bar beyond the average.
Modules with values that do not extend beyond the Overall bar but still provide as much or more functionality than the average solution, are labeled competitive.
Dominant Zone
Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 has two modules located in the Dominant Zone: Process Collaboration and Process Analytics.
With the increasing maturity of BPM solutions, the average overall BPM rating score is now over 90 (on a scale of 0 to 100) against TEC's BPM evaluation model. Process Collaboration and Process Analytics are the only two modules with rating scores lower than 90. These are the two areas where Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 outranks the average significantly and makes clear differentiations.
More details for the modules in the Dominant zone are available in the Functionality Benchmark section of this document.
The area of functional focus within the green Dominant zone indicates two things. First, it indicates which of the most competitive modules contribute the most pull in raising the product's score above the average. Second, it indicates where the product has a significantly greater level of support for functionality than the average solution in this space.
This also may reveal how the vendor has focused its product development. These modules may or may not make up the bulk or even the core of the functionality within the product, but if your clients require more than the average breadth of functionality from these modules, this product will stand a better-thanaverage chance of satisfying your requirements.
Competitive Zone
Besides the two above-mentioned modules in the Dominant Zone, the rest of the modules (Form Management, Process Modeling, Workflow Portal, Monitoring and Management, and Security Management) for Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 are all located in the Competitive Zone.
As mentioned, the average rating scores of these five modules are all over 90. Hence, it is almost impossible for any given solution to rate significantly above the average. Nevertheless, Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 still manages to exceed the average scores in all five areas.
More details for the modules in the Competitive zone are available in the Functionality Benchmark section of this document.
The area of functional focus within the green Competitive zone indicates where the product has a level of support for functionality that is somewhat greater or on par with the average solution.
In some cases a module may be considered a commodity within the market: many vendors offer the majority of the functionality, which makes it difficult to differentiate a product based on breadth of functionality. In other cases, a vendor may intend its product to compete on a level that satisfies most customers' requirements for certain modules, with a market focus requiring that it differentiate itself through other modules.
Not Competitive Zone
Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 has no modules located in the Not Competitive Zone.
The area in the red Not Competitive zone indicates where the product supports a lesser quantity of functionality than an average solution. Modules listed in this section are unlikely to be as important to the vendor's target market as the other modules. It may also be the case that the product is a newer entrant to the space. If the product has many modules in the Not Competitive zone, this indicates a more finely scoped target for its functionality than other products, which may be indicative of a point solution. Even if a product has modules in the Not Competitive zone, it may still be entirely capable of satisfying your requirements for this functionality, particularly if the average solution offers more functionality than you require. Nevertheless you should be aware that if you require a greater-than-average breadth of functionality from a module in the Not Competitive zone, this product may not offer all that you require. It's likely that you would need to review the product in more depth to determine whether its functionality is sufficient.
Calculating the TEC FI
TEC defines an average solution using data about real software products available on the market. We calculate an average of the capabilities about which vendors recently provided us with information and that we've certified. We define these capabilities and assign numeric ratings representing various levels of support in our models of enterprise software. These models may be accessed on our publicly available Evaluation Centers. Typically, we use anywhere from a thousand to several thousand criteria to determine the average scores.
The average solution forms the benchmark from which we calculate the difference in functionality offered by Savvion BusinessManager 7.5. We plot the average solution's capabilities at point zero on the x-axis.
Next, we determine the quantity of functionality supported by Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 for each module in our model. We assume that all criteria are equally important. In a real-world situation of course, you would give a greater priority to criteria that are more important for your needs. However, for the sake of the TEC FI analysis, we want to draw conclusions about the product's focus independent of any users' functional priorities. (Note: If you wish to prioritize and evaluate the product's functionality, you can do so online in our Evaluation Centers.)
We calculate the difference between Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 and the average solution, and we plot that value as a positive or negative distance from zero (the average solution's capability). If, for example, Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 offers a greater quantity of support for a particular module than found in the average solution, its line will extend to the right of zero.
It's important to note as well that just because a product has more or less functionality than other products, does not mean it is a good or bad product. To understand whether it will do what you need it to do, at a price within your budget, you must evaluate the product in depth.
Functionality Benchmarks
The following functionality benchmark graphs represent Savvion BusinessManager's quantity of support for the functionality within each module identified in the TEC Focus Indicator. The further the solid line extends toward the edge of the graph, the more functionality Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 supports. For the sake of comparison, you can see what you might expect from the average solution by referring to the dashed orange line.
About Process Collaboration
Process Collaboration is the module that TEC defines as containing the functionality that provides the storage, version control, validation, and exchange of process documentations. With this functionality, companies can facilitate collaboration among different users, BPM tools, and systems.
In all five submodules of the Process Collaboration module, Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 provides substantial support over the average solution. In fact, in Check-in/Check-out, Versioning, and Simulation/ Validation, Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 provides 100 percent support for all criteria.
About Process Analytics
Process Analytics refers to functionality for analyzing and reporting the business processes and activities within the BPM system. Managers and other business users use process analytics to continuously improve their process performance.
Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 achieves a rating of 98 for the overall Process Analytics module. In the Optimization submodule, the Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 rating exceeds the average solution by 20 points (94 versus 74 to be exact).
About Form Management
The Form Management module covers the ability to manage the forms used in BPM regarding formatting, data validation, layout, etc.
Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 fully supports criteria in all submodules except for the Form Creation submodule.
About Process Modeling
The Process Modeling module covers the functionality that allows users to define the business processes that, later on, can be executed in the BPM environment. Nowadays, business process models are usually defined through a graphical user interface (GUI).
Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 fully supports 8 of the 11 submodules under the Process Modeling module. In the Workflow and Business Controls submodules, the solution scores slightly below the average.
About Workflow Portal
The Workflow Portal module covers the ability for users to obtain immediate visibility into critical information (e.g., notifications, overdues) and provides convenient access to the most important resources (e.g., menus, links) within the first window displayed to users when they log in to the BPM system.
Except for the User Time Zones submodule, where Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 receives a score equal to the average (87, to be exact), the solution achieves a rating of 100 in all areas within the Workflow Portal module.
About Monitoring and Management
The Monitoring and Management module refers to the functionality that helps managers and system administrators monitor and manage workflow instances, as well as to the ability to capture audit trails.
Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 fully supports all the criteria that TEC defines in the Monitoring and Management module.
About Security Management
Within the BPM setting, security management refers to the functionality that controls activities and access to information through authentication, role and directory management, access control settings, and passwords.
Except for the User Profiles submodule, where Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 receives a slightly lower score compared to the average, the solution achieves 100 in all areas within the Security Management module.
Throughout the TEC certification process, Savvion demonstrated its solution's comprehensive functionality. Even more impressive is the company's efforts in seeking higher productivity for its customers through rigorous innovations. The name Savvion may eventually disappear due to the acquisition. However, I believe that BusinessManager as a product will have a brighter future as it is fully integrated into the Progress family.
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