When people think of workflow, their thoughts naturally tend to shift toward the movement of various documents across the organization. Unfortunately, that approach tends to result in a fairly stilted set of business processes that can make it difficult for the business to dynamically change those processes as new business conditions emerge.
The folks at EMC want to introduce significantly greater amounts of flexibility into how workflow processes are management with the release this week of EMC Documentum xCP 2.0, a framework for managing workflow via a series of case management tools that can be deployed in the cloud, including an EMC OnDemand cloud platform managed by EMC.
According to Danny Pidutti, EMC director of product marketing, EMC Documentum xCP 2.0 goes well beyond current portal technology that is often clunky to actually use. EMC Documentum presents the users with a series of graphical images that represent various processes. To alter those processes, all the end user has to do is connect various widgets and gadgets to create a new workflow. Pidutti says that capability represents a significant jump in productivity because it means that IT organizations do not have to hire a developer to create new application code to customize a business process. That’s critical, says Pidutti, because businesses of all sizes are demanding more agility from IT systems in order to respond faster to new business requirements.
Launched alongside a raft of updates to the EMC Documentum portfolio at the EMC Momentum Europe 2012 conference, EMC Documentum xCP 2.0 represents an effort to separate the management of a business process from the underlying code that enables it. The goal is to make it possible for business users to dynamically adjust business processes or simply deal with the occasional exception that occurs within every business process rule.
Business executives of all stripes are decrying the lack of innovation that afflicts their organizations. The real issue, however, isn’t a lack of desire to innovate; it’s just that too many of the processes that need to be changed are hard-coded inside a particular application. Taking a more modular approach to isolating processes from underlying code is the first step towards unleashing the potential for business innovation.