the agile enterprise: a welcome change · 6 avon’s failed sap implementation a perfect example of...

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The Agile Enterprise:A Welcome Change



K2 SoftwareSourceCode Technology Holdings, Inc.5150 Village Park Drive SE, Suite 200 Bellevue, WA 98006, USA 1-844-452-2777k2.com

AIIM1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100Silver Spring, MD 20910 1 301.587.8202 www.aiim.org

© AIIM 2016 www.aiim.org © K2 2016 www.K2.com

IntroductionToday, in the enterprise, nothing is ever at rest; everything is fast, and getting faster. From critical business processes, ECM and capture, to human resource management, marketing, or email—everything seems to be running at a breakneck pace. Work is always working, even if we aren’t.Attempts to keep up with the increasing speed of the enterprise by many organizations have, conversely, slowed things down. This is no truer than when looking at information management in isolation. Notably, these organizations apply the same strategies and deployment architectures to govern their data that would have been used a decade ago.

How would you best describe your current main ECM/DM/RM system?1

For example, recent AIIM research finds that 72% of those polled are using single-vendor general purpose suites as their main ECM systems, compared with 13% using integrated best-of-breed. The main problem with the most popular configuration, centralized, single-vendor ECM, is that it is not conducive to changing environments, especially the highly kinetic, dynamic enterprise we find ourselves in today. Even when multiple systems are in place, they remain isolated from each other and from the line-of-business systems they are intended to support.

Single-vendor file-share-and-sync/cloud

collaboraon, 3.3%

General purpose suitewith produczed customizaon

for our industry sector, 5.6%

General purpose single-vendor ECM

suite, 17.8%

General purpose single-vendor suite

plus add-ons, 25.6%

General purpose suite specifically

customized for our needs, 13.3%

Sector-specific supplier, 2.2%

Integrated set of best-of-breed

components, 11.1%

In-house developed soluon set, 8.9%

N/A, 12.2%

http://www.k2.com/?utm_medium=Content_syndication&utm_source=AIIM&utm_campaign=SC_Online_2016_WeGetYou_AIIM-Response-to-Goodbye-Enterprise-Software-Hello-Apps&utm_content=AIIM-Response-Goodbye-Enterprise-Software&utm_term=ContentSponsorship






With a more agile enterprise businesses can:% Leverage existing technologies to solve

new problems through reuse.% Outsource business processes to the

cloud.% Improve collaboration among an

unbound workforce. % Implement incremental change and

operational improvements across the enterprise.

Increasing the agility of the enterprise can occur in several ways. These include, cultivating and supporting a culture enabling the mobile workforce, embracing and approving use of the Cloud,

implementing best of breed ECM tools, and exploring adaptable technologies, such as rapidly developed business app solutions. Business app solutions are the subject at hand in the following article titled: “Goodbye Enterprise Software, Hello Apps with K2,” created by our underwriter K2. In this article, K2 presents, their viewpoint and approach to business apps in the enterprise. Here K2 discusses the pain points faced by today’s organizations, and how in K2’s view, flexible business applications not only address these problems, but build a more agile and productive enterprise in the process.

Integration and InteroperabilityThe enterprise needs to become more agile, and responsive to customer needs – both internal and external. ECM, BPM, and other business critical systems, must be nimble enough to deal with problems that didn’t exist yesterday, and take advantage of the opportunities of tomorrow. This must be done without massive investment, such as acquiring an entirely new system to gain a minor functionality, or full scale modification of an existing suite requiring lengthy downtime. The agile enterprise leverages its flexibility for efficiency, finesse and recycled value.


Goodbye Enterprise Software, Hello Apps with K2

2GOODBYE ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE, HELLO APPS WITH K2

The era of enterprise software dominance is mercifully nearing its end. Business apps — fast, flexible, easy-to-build applications that streamline work and pull your information and systems together — introduce an entirely new way to deliver viral efficiency.

For better or for worse, enterprise software has expanded its footprint at a staggering clip over the past few decades, reaching $308 billion in 2015. This number includes enterprise application software totaling $137 billion (ERP, CRM, BI, etc.), as well as infrastructure software (database management systems, middleware and custom application development) totaling $171 billion. These two markets behave almost symbiotically — each fueling the other’s growth and dependency on one another.

Packaged enterprise applications are inherently inflexible — they place a stranglehold on important data and leave business processes constricted. In the meantime, custom application development, while bridging process gaps within organizations, is expensive, inefficient and often hugely painful to maintain — especially as technology and software environments change.

All hope is not lost, however. There is a reality where innovation and efficiency, power with flexibility, and integration with simplification can co-exist. The future of enterprise software is made up of fast, flexible business applications that deliver no-compromise solutions for a new world of work.

Listen up, executive leaders, IT professionals, software developers and business managers.

To get there, we need a solid understanding of where we’ve come from, where we’ve been and where we’re going.

1 Forecast: Enterprise Software Markets, Worldwide, 2013-2020, 1Q16 Update. Gartner. MARCH 17, 2016


A Look Back

2 Bidgoli, Hossein, The Internet Encyclopedia, Volume 1, 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 707.

3 Digital Business Design Is the New Integration. Forrester. NOVEMBER 8, 2012.

During the ‘90s, computing power expanded exponentially while hardware prices dropped dramatically. It was the perfect storm that enabled enterprise software to make great strides.

Enterprise software’s roots are in manufacturing and aim to drive efficiency and cost savings in supply chain logistics. The realized benefits were near immediate for organizations with low to no software automation.

While early enterprise software was designed with the noble goal of “facilitating the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and to manage the connections to outside stakeholders,”2 the outcomes didn’t always deliver.

Enterprise software had ballooned into a hodgepodge of acquired technologies, and integration required extensive infrastructure services and customization. Instead of creating bridges, enterprise software systems had created walled gardens.³

IT organizations were faced with a dilemma. Should they centralize and standardize their enterprise software architecture at extensive cost and time commitments? Or should they opt for best-in-class line-of-business (LOB) systems and custom software that require costly maintenance and fragment data and systems?


Cracks EmergeMost organizations opted for a center-heavy model, but inherent issues with this topology proved to cause problems — massive, in some cases:

4 10 Famous ERP Disasters, Dustups and Disappointments. CIO. MARCH 24, 2009.

5 The Scariest Software Project Horror Stories of 2012. ComputerWorld. DECEMBER 10, 2012.

6 Avon’s Failed SAP Implementation a Perfect Example of the Enterprise IT Revolution. Forbes. DECEMBER 17, 2013.

7 The Evolution of Enterprise Software: An Overview. ZDNet. MAY 1, 2013.

IN 1999

Hershey Foods’s problems with its $112 million investment in SAP’s ERP, Siebel CRM and Manugistics supply chain applications prevented it from delivering $100 million worth of Kisses for Halloween and caused the stock to dip 8 percent.

IN 2008

Select Comfort’s multi-module implementation of SAP’s ERP, CRM, supply chain and other apps resulted in eventual shareholder pressure to put the $20 million project on hold.4

IN 2012

the U.S. Air Force pulls the plug on it’s ERP project called the Expeditionary Combat Support System after it racked up $1 billion in expenses but failed to create “any significant military capability.”

IN 2013

Avon’s new management order system disrupts regular operations and is so difficult to use that Avon representatives left the company in “meaningful numbers.” Avon was forced to write down between $100 million and $125 million.6

These failings were the result of a gross underestimation of the challenges and complexities in delivering organization-wide change management software.

Unfortunately, the challenges in these examples were not unique. Enterprise software adoption is often painful and slow, integration is expensive, and the end result is a rigidness that can stifle agility and innovation.7


On June 29, 2007, Apple introduced its first-generation iPhone. The compact power of this device, combined with a sleek user design and intuitive interface, helped spur rapid adoption. Less than one year later, Apple’s App Store was unveiled.

At the same time, the Web was erupting with powerful SaaS-based applications that came with low barriers to entry and highly useable interfaces. Suddenly, employees were sharing files on Google Apps and Dropbox and storing content in Evernote.

Technology consumers, rather than IT, were bringing technology into the workplace, and end-user expectations of technology had established a new baseline — one that was beyond what most IT organizations were capable of delivering.

Business units and business owners were calling the shots, and IT was losing control. Gartner pointed out in 2012 that just 12 years earlier, technology spending outside of IT was just 20 percent of total technology spending; that number will become almost 90 percent by 2020.8 In 2016, more than $100 billion dollars worth of IT outsourcing contracts will be renegotiated, says ISG partner Stanton Jones.9

A Sea Change for IT

8 Gartner Says Every Budget is Becoming an IT Budget. Gartner. OCTOBER 22, 2012.

9 10 Outsourcing Trends to Watch in 2015. CIO. JANUARY 5, 2015.

There was little doubt that traditional IT would never be the same. The new role of IT would be that of an enabler to and collaborator with business units who creates new value.


By 2015, the iPhone had gone to work. Seventy-five percent of enterprises had a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy and 70 percent of enterprises were using two or more apps beyond email.10

Business applications were filling the gaps where enterprise software fell short. They moved manual processes to autopilot, eliminated barriers and gave access to the real-time information needed in order to make optimal business decisions. Plus, they enabled an enterprise to keep up with constantly evolving customers, competitors and technology.

Business apps enabled a new reality where technology solutions are imagined and built by the people who need them, and then reimagined and recreated as business needs change.

THE ANATOMY OF BUSINESS APPLICATIONS

Forrester calls business applications “the technology heart of today’s enterprises” and the lynchpin of “digital business design.”11

Modern business applications:

Are inherently agile

Leverage the power of existing investments without the pain of custom software development

Allow for rapid and collaborative composition of process-driven solutions that are highly customizable

Can be applied to nearly any type of business process

Meet the varying needs of unique environments

Are designed with the end user in mind

Give real-time access to offsite and onsite users alike

Achieve seamless integration with existing lob applications

Retain the security and integrity of underlying sources of information

Enter the Rise of the Business App

10 Mobility Index Report. Q3 2015. TechTarget. NOVEMBER 2014.

11 Forrester defines Digital Business Design as “[a] business-centered approach to solution architecture, implementation, and integration that brings business and technology design together by placing design priority on user roles, business transactions, processes, canonical information, events, and other business aspects that embody a complete definition of a business.”


But it’s still not enough for data to be surfaced, accessible and coherent. In order to truly impact business change and drive process improvement, data must also be made useful, and in order to do that, it must be put to work.

Business process management (BPM) software has historically filled this role, but falls well short of the needs of today’s organizations. Forrester has defined an entirely new category of software called

“smart process applications” (as an extension of traditional BPM)12 to describe technology that will allow companies to act fast, alter course quickly, and empower their people to collaborate, make quick and informed decisions and make the adjustments necessary for business to succeed. Analysts at Research and Markets predict this market will reach $43.28 billion by 2020 and that the growth expected comes at the expense of traditional custom software development.13

That’s because software development, while delivering the most custom-fit solutions for enterprises, is slow and costly, and it comes with a high burden of ongoing support and maintenance. When the software environment is upgraded or changed, the code must be altered to fit the new customizations. Good developer talent is hard to find and retain, and there is overhead associated with aligning business requirements to development timelines.

Smart process application platforms circumvent these impedances by allowing apps to be built quickly and without code. Business analysts and traditional developers alike are able to build powerful applications and roll them out fast.

Moreover, smart process applications are intrinsically designed with agility and flexibility in mind. Because they are made up of pre-defined data objects, form views and actions, subsequent apps can be assembled even quicker than the first — and they can be changed on the fly without impacting application design or infrastructure.

They also put people at the center by eliminating the need for end users to access multiple applications and interfaces to get work accomplished. A single interface, that is purpose-driven and customized to the specific task and user at hand, enables more efficient transactions and eliminates waste and bottlenecks within a given business process.

A Smarter App

12 Smart Process Applications Fill a Big Business Gap. Forrester. NOVEMBER 5, 2012.

13 Smart Process Application Market by Solution, by Service, by Deployment Type, by Organization Size, by Verticals, & by Region— Global Forecast to 2020. Research and Markets. APRIL 2015.


Hello, Business Apps with K2

2 Bidgoli, Hossein, The Internet Encyclopedia, Volume 1, 2004, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 707.

3 Digital Business Design Is the New Integration. Forrester. NOVEMBER 8, 2012.

Business applications have the power to span an organization, drive business outcomes and deliver true competitive advantage. They can be rapidly built, easily adapted and are powerful enough to scale across siloed business systems and data.

With K2, more than 1.5 million users in over 84 countries, including 30 of the Fortune 100, are turning complex work into powerful business process applications.

These organizations use K2 to rapidly build and deploy low-code business applications that are agile, scalable and reusable. Modern processes that quickly and easily connect people, data, decisions and system are the new reality.

K2 empowers enterprises to Build, Run and Future-Proof business processes.

BuildBuilding a business process app can be compared to building a car — first comes the frame, then the engine, connectors and, of course, the fuel to run it with. When building a robust business process, workflow is designed and structured, then a processing engine that can power that workflow must be identified. This processing engine will fuel the business by connecting to the systems of record, assembling the information and delivering it to the right people.

Just as cars are not built for traffic-less roads, a business process must span people and systems if it is to be effective. According to Gartner, an enterprise organization has over 2,000 applications to support their business. Connecting these silos of systems and data is daunting and often results in gridlock. Recognizing this, K2 was founded on the basis of automating business processes by:

Reaching across siloed systems and people to create comprehensive workflows with little or no coding — from small, departmental approval workflows to complex, mission-critical applications that span an entire organization, on premises or in the cloud

Assembling apps with extensive out-of-the-box events and tasks

Saving workflow steps and common functions as a template for sharing and reusing across many applications and departments.


A business process workflow may automate backend systems, but without incorporating the people, processes and information that drive it, a workflow ends up feeling like a car body frame that lacks its engine. Streamlined and simplified processes effortlessly connect the right parts that make a business process run like a fine-tuned engine that starts whenever a driver needs to get to a destination quickly and reliably.

Business processes than run quickly and reliably, and can be built quickly and reliably, are crucial for enterprises that need scalable solutions to fit continuously changing business needs. K2’s patented SmartObjects and SmartForms allow an enterprise to connect once and fuel the whole business to maximize ROI — from basic routing to complex solutions with policies, rules, escalations and exception handling that enables processing millions of transactions across multiple systems and thousands of users.

With K2’s SmartObjects an organization can:

Build an app once and reuse components in multiple new applications, reducing cost and time

Access disparate data (including in-house LOB) using a real-time, intuitive connection

Create and publish business entities, processes, forms and report designs

Fully and flexibly use existing security mechanisms without coding

Seamlessly share a SmartObject entity with existing web service apps and tools, providing full extensibility

Integrate with databases such as SQL and Oracle; LOB systems such as SAP, Salesforce, Dynamics CRM; content repositories like SharePoint, Box, DropBox; web service connectors such as SOAP, REST, OData; third party connectors for DocuSign, Adlib, Accusoft; and newer social platforms using RESTbroker — Facebook, Twitter, Yammer and Chatter.

With K2’s SmartForms an organization can:

Create mobile-ready, responsive electronic forms that are built once and deployed everywhere — from a mobile device to an internal employee, to a third party application

Create views that are built once and re-used across multiple forms and processes

Integrate forms within third-party applications, such as Office 365, SharePoint, SAP, Salesforce, Box and any other system that supports HTML5

With K2, users benefit from these robust capabilities without having to learn to work with each of the individual systems and their schemas. Across the enterprise, employees work where they are most comfortable without jumping between applications. K2 matches with how an organization does their business.

Run


As noted previously, setbacks are often horrifyingly public and can reveal a company’s weaknesses. To protect the integrity of workflows and business process designs, K2 uses Application Lifecycle Management to detect errors and simplify issue resolution before deployment. K2 eliminates the error-checking wild goose chase and reduces app creation time.

A failure to adapt and innovate can reveal just as much about a company as its defeats. Every organization now faces the same challenge:

“to navigate the industry wins and leave behind the institutional knowledge that once defined their organization’s culture and instead reach for new ways of thinking and doing that sustains relevance.”14

K2 supports the thought leaders who are adept at identifying innovations that both employees and customers expect by empowering them to actually turn these ideas into high-quality processes that reduce expense, increase engagement, increase productivity or generate revenue.

With K2’s SmartStarters, citizen developers and tech-savvy business users can:

Create and customize workflows without having to worry about IT backlogs or lengthy custom deployments

Build simple proofs of concept, such as travel request, defect tracking, change management request and much more

Start with common initial apps that can be adopted as is, or modified to meet an organization’s unique needs

Deploy on any device

SmartStarters helps enterprises get on the road to digital transformation and future-proofing faster.

Future-Proof

14 Three Ways Great Companies Maximize Their Innovation and Stay Relevant. Forbes. JANUARY 28, 2015.

Conclusion

© 2015 SourceCode Technology Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

SourceCode software products are protected by one or more U.S.

patents. Other patents pending. SourceCode, K2, the four squares

logo, K2 blackpearl, K2 smartforms, K2 connect and Appit are

registered trademarks or trademarks of SourceCode Technology

Holdings, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. All other

trademarks or product names are property of their respective owners.

K2.COM

Survival in the age of customer centricity necessitates building, running and future-proofing your business processes in a way that drives efficiency and flexibility. Traditional enterprise software can no longer address these obligations. With apps from K2, businesses can work smarter, increase agility and accelerate growth.

Learn how K2 can help your business say goodbye to software and hello to a new way of working.

Schedule a demo or Contact a K2 representative

http://www.k2.com/free-trial?home=request-demo

http://www.k2.com/contact-us






Successful organizations today depend on fluidity; solutions that are easily tweaked, fitted, and adapted to meet specific business needs. They want something impactful, but without leaving heavy footprints on their bottom line or resources; solutions that are developed fast and improvised, but without concessions in quality and stability. Businesses today need applications that are smart, reusable, and efficient.Access to cloud services, mobile device use, combined with best-of-breed ECM products, synergize existing technologies. This coupled with strong leadership encouraging change among staff do well to provide fluidity to enterprise solutions. These strategies and technologies make organizations more nimble, adaptable, and ready to face new challenges by enabling dynamic reconfiguration of the information

ecosystem, and the reuse of current technology and content assets. As presented in K2’s featured article, “Goodbye Enterprise Software, Hello Apps with K2,” business apps may provide another angle from which to augment enterprise agility. The goal of business apps being one of spanning the enterprise and bringing siloed data and systems together. In addition, business apps are easily customized, can be rapidly constructed to meet challenges in real time, do not require prohibitive technical knowledge, and therefore shift the focus from IT to project managers. As the future of business apps continues to unfold and evolve, the benefits of a more adaptable, agile enterprise are becoming more obvious and documented.

AIIM’s ViewAccelerating the enterprise through automation, technology, and change management is necessary in order to keep pace with the changing business and technology landscapes, as well as stay ahead of the competition. It is no longer feasible to arbitrate business decisions on a multiple month or multiple year timeframe. Technology obsolescence is fast, the market is difficult to predict, and solutions that worked yesterday may not cut it today. More pressingly, the cost of failure is high, and the risk of providing a solution that doesn’t solve the problem is higher still. So what kinds of solutions should be deployed to solve critical business problems and be successful?







Businesses should make every effort to increase these qualities in their organizations. To this end, here are a few considerations to take into account when evaluating how best to welcome change and heighten our organizations’ agility:

% Analyse your business ecosystem. How well do your systems synergize? How can your organization’s technology be better integrated?

% Review the typical timescale of your critical business decisions or renovation projects. What obstacles impede progress and speed? How can your process be made more efficient?

% Consider new technologies to support your existing systems. How best can they be positioned to provide the most benefit? Can they fill more than one role or provide multiple solutions for multiple challenges?

% Think about problems currently troubling your organization. Is it possible to reuse existing resources to solve new problems?

References 1AIIM Industry Watch Information Management - State

of the Industry 2016 www.aiim.org/research2K2 White Paper – Goodbye Enterprise Software, Hello

Apps with K2 www.k2.com/resources/downloads

About the authorsBob Larrivee is Vice President and Chief Analyst of Market Intelligence at AIIM. An internationally recognized subject matter expert and thought leader with over thirty years of experience in the fields of information and process management, Bob is an avid techie with a focus on process improvement, and the application of advanced technologies to enhance and automate business operations.

Thomas LaMonte is an AIIM Market Intelligence Researcher well versed and credentialed in the fields of ECM, ERM, and BPM with a heightened focus on solving the operational problems of today’s businesses.


http://www.aiim.org/research






About K2 K2 turns complex work into powerful business process applications. With K2, organizations can use visual designers to rapidly build and deploy low code business applications that are agile, scalable and reusable, resulting in modern processes that quickly and easily connect people, data, decisions and systems. K2 delivers information to the right people at the right time, empowering them to accelerate their work and become more efficient online, offline and from any device.Our technology strengths can be broadly defined by our ability to empower tech savvy users to Build, Run and Future-Proof business processes.

K2 was founded on the basis of automating business processes to help the business move faster, reduce errors, eliminate redundancies and improve IT efficiencies that ultimately enable people to work smarter. With K2, you can:• Reach across siloed systems and people to

create comprehensive workflows with little or no coding: from small, departmental approval workflows to complex mission-critical applications that span your entire organization, on premises or in the cloud,

• Assemble apps with an extensive list of out-of-the-box events and tasks, and

• Save your workflow steps and common functions as a template for sharing and reuse across many applications and departments.

K2’s business process apps platform offers improved agility and business acceleration, increased efficiency, automation and

productivity, by bringing together people, systems and information. K2 empowers customers with mobilization of workforce, freedom of deployment (cloud or on-prem), insights for continuous process improvement and analysis, all with the foundation of working with a customer’s existing infrastructure (no rip-and-replace needed) and ability to support futuristic demands.

K2 SoftwareSourceCode Technology Holdings, Inc.5150 Village Park Drive SE, Suite 200 Bellevue, WA 98006, USA 1-844-452-2777Web: k2.comDownload great content at: transform.k2.com



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AIIM (www.aiim.org) is a global, non-profit organization that provides independent research, education and certification programs to information professionals. AIIM represents the entire information management community: practitioners, technology suppliers, integrators and consultants. AIIM runs a series of training programs, and provides industry certification, including the Certified Information Professional. http://www.aiim.org/Training

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AIIM EuropeOffice 1, Broomhall Business Centre,Worcester, WR5 2NT, UK+44 (0)1905 727600www.aiim.eu


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the agile enterprise: a welcome change · 6 avon’s failed sap implementation a perfect example of...

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