Paul

Founder, Executive Editor and Analyst Paul is a well-known editor, author, analyst and consultant who focuses on applying new technologies and methodologies to real-world business problems. In addition, Paul is a founder and chief methodologist at BPTrends, a professional services company providing educational and consulting services to managers interested in understanding and implementing business process change. He is the author of Business Process Change: A Manager’s Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes (2003) and he has previously co-authored several other books on software technology, including the international best-seller, Expert Systems: AI for Business (1985). From 1985 to 2000 Mr. Harmon served as a senior consultant and head of Cutter Consortium’s Distributed Architecture practice as well as the author of several Cutter newsletters, including Expert Systems Strategies, CASE Strategies, and Object-Oriented Development Strategies. Paul has worked on major process redesign projects with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Security Pacific, Prudential, and Citibank, among others. He is a member of ISPI and a widely respected keynote speaker who has developed and delivered workshops and seminars on a wide variety of topics to conferences and major corporations through out the world. Paul lives in Las Vegas. He can be reached at npharmon@gmail.com

  • Please Take the BPT Survey

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    Paul

    www.BPTrends.com is currently undertaking its bi-annual survey of the BPM market, and I’d like to urge everyone who hasn’t already taken it to take a few minutes and complete it. It located here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6ZHFK57 As in the past, we ask a wide range of questions to try to understand the current interest in business process…

  • A New Chance for Process Measures

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    Paul

    Business process advocates have always been in favor of measurement. More to the point, CMMI, which defines the levels organizations go through as they incorporate business process awareness and practices into their organizational DNA, suggests that level 4 involves “managing using process data.” Managing, using process data, requires, as a prerequisite that one have useful…

  • Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

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    Paul

    Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, is a technology that lets users capture routine sequences of steps and then automate them.  Used where appropriate, this bit of technology can capture and automate routine transfers of information from one application to another. In effect its “duct tape” than can be used to link to software applications together…

  • Let your customers crawl up the steps

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    Paul

    Vanilla Air (a low-fare subsidiary of Nippon Airlines) has just challenged United for the title of Worst Airline Provider.   Vanilla air initially explained to Mr. Hideto Kijima, who uses a wheelchair, that he couldn’t board their plane on the island of Amami, because they lacked a way to raise his wheelchair.  They explained that…

  • Malls Will Disapear?

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    Paul

    There have been several stories in the press this week about how malls are doomed to disappear.  It’s a sign of the continual spread of the waves caused by Amazon.com  It began with the retail book industry.  Amazon offered to sell books online.  You went to www.amazon.com and chose your book and Amazon rushed it to…

  • Process Mining Experimentation

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    Paul

    There is lots of academic interest in process mining — the use of tools to evaluate events and determine flow patterns (processes) and bottlenecks.  Recently a group of university people announced the free availability of Nirdizati — an Alpha release of a predictive monitoring tool that individuals and organizations can experiment with.  http://nirdizati.cs.ut.ee  Use of…

  • Meta-Process Analysis

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    Paul

    I’ve begun to talk about what I’ve decided to term “meta-process analysis.”  By meta process analysis I mean the analysis of a generic or abstract process — usually a specific type of process like an auto production line process, or a retail store sales process.  The focus of the analysis is to describe ways in…

  • Portugal in May

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    Paul

    I’m getting excited about the upcoming BPM Conference in Lisbon on May 25th.  The conference is going to focus on the impact of AI and Cognitive Technologies on Business Process Change and I’ve been asked to keynote it.  (For more information on the conference, please check:  lisbon.bpmconferenceportugal.com ) I happen to think that Ai and…

  • Transformation

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    Paul

    I’ve read many articles on “transformation.”  Older articles seemed to suggest that transformation implied a major change — rather like business process reengineering.  Recently, however, transformation has become popular and everyone now seems free to use it as the equilivent for process change.  This month I asked www.bptrends.info readers for their take on the meaning…

  • What do managers know about business processes?

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    Paul

    The current mini-survey being run on BPTrends asks readers to tell us what managers at their companies know about processes. One option suggests that an organizations know about processes, could help improve them, get data about them and use that data to make day-to-day management decisions.  For those familiar with CMMI, that would suggest a…