Global 360 Enhances Process Intelligence, BizTalk IntegrationGlobal 360 Enhances Process Intelligence, BizTalk Integration

You've heard of "predictive analytics," but what about "prescriptive optimization?" The latter is what Global 360 promises from Insight360, a process intelligence and optimization platform that complements the vendor's Process360 business process management (BPM) suite. Upgrades of both products were released this week – versions 2.0 and 9.5, respectively – with an eye toward improved end-to-end process integration, automation and workforce productivity.

Insight360 Release 2.0 includes components that support process analysis, process simulation and historic and real-time visibility into process metrics, variations, workloads and employee allocation. If the system spots process bottlenecks, either in real-time or in simulation modes, it can prescribe steps managers can take to optimize performance.

"With these upgrades we can do deeper analysis of workforce productivity, determining which people are the strongest performers and which are over- or under-utilized," explains Ben Cody, vice president, product management. " Optimization wizards then let you plug in desired outcomes in terms of cost variables or cycle-time variables, and the software will make prescriptive suggestions such as cross-training under-utilized workers, shifting peak loads or adapting the process to optimize performance."

By combining Insight360 with Process360 (or another BPM suite), organizations can achieve the proverbial "virtuous circle" of continuous process improvement, analyzing performance, simulating and implementing improvements, and then iteratively analyzing the delta to wring time and cost out of the process.

Global 360 has enhanced the Content Broker mechanism of its Case360 case management system to enable developers to build applications faster and help users focus on the case rather than finding and entering data. "Case-based applications are typically very document centric, and there's always metadata associated with those documents," says Cody. "We've made advances in being able to query enterprise systems, bring all that content and data together and automate the input of metadata so users don't have to flip over to green screens."

A Microsoft Business Process Alliance partner, Global 360 has upgraded integrations between Process360 and BizTalk Server 2006 R2 to take advantage of out-of-the-box adaptors to back-end systems such as ERP and CRM systems. BizTalk also extend processes outside the firewall for business-to-business integration, as required in supply-chain processes. Tapping Microsoft SharePoint and IIS, Global 360 has added a set of Ajax-based Web parts including to-do lists, work lists and document libraries so processes can be surfaced in the users' preferred work environment.

With Gartner's BPM Summit set for September 17-19 in Orlando, Fla., it's shaping up as a big month for product upgrades and other BPM news. BEA and SoftwareAG have already joined Global 360 with announcements this week. on the press release circuit.