BPMS Watch

Cordys Provides the BPM Behind Webex Connect

September 27th, 2006

Yesterday Ismael posted something about a new team collaboration offering from Webex called Webex Connect, that appeared to have some connection to Cordys BPM, one of the offerings described in my 2006 BPMS Report series.  I couldn’t tell exactly what it did, but Ismael seemed unusually excited about it, so I called my friends from Cordys to get more details.

In the meantime, Ismael was prevailed upon by one of his readers to say more about what the demo he saw actually did.  In his response, he said:

The demo we saw goes something like this: you’re a sales manager, and a prospect sends you an email telling you that a technical problem needs to be fixed before you get your prized PO, look like a hero, and keep your fiancee happy (verbatim). The prospect is asking whether you knew about the trouble ticket that was recently entered into the BMC Remedy system.

Upon reception of this email, you check your real-time workspace to see which members of your team are online. You request an online meeting, which leads the system to call you on your cellphone in order to patch you in. You engage in a discussion with your colleagues, while checking the ticket from your dashboard. Once you figure out a solution for your prospect, you update the discount you gave to your customer, by using a Connect-generated user interface that serves as a front-end to your SAP ERP system. This very change is then automatically reflected into your sales forecasts that are managed by a SugarCRM instance deployed on premise.

Once all that has been done, you send an email back to your customer, explaining the resolution that was brought to solve the problem — and the additional discount you gave her, but decide that the overall process should be improved so that similar incidents are handled better and faster in the future. You start the Cordys browser-based process editor, change the workflow definition here and there, and call it a day.

Cordys’s relationship with Webex began in 2000.  Cordys founder Jan Baan was an early investor in Webex, and consequently Webex became an early adopter of the Cordys composite application platform.  Webex now appears to be repositioning for the SaaS market, and Cordys fits there as well, since it is one of the few BPM tools that provides a browser-based design environment.

In Connect, Webex is extending their AIM Pro client (IM framework) into a full online collaboration workspace, with document sharing, discussions, IM, etc.  Cordys provides the embedded composite application framework underneath.  From within the teamspace, users can define composite applications or mashups and make them available as a service, or they can use those mashup services.  The mashups may or may not involve workflow.  In any case, Cordys provides the underlying orchestration engine and design tool.  If you are familiar with the Cordys product from the BPMS Report, you might think that certain aspects of the designer, such as message mapping, are too complicated for the target Webex Connect user, so they are planning a simpler Cordys-Lite interface there.  Probably could use that in the regular Cordys product as well.

Entry Filed under: BPM