How Does SOA and Business Process Management (BPM) Accelerate Lean?

A business built on a solid SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) foundation can thrive easily in cases where its different components undergo changes that make the whole system unstable. At the same time, applying proper BPM (Business Process Management) techniques can make it easy to transition from one state to another, and to drive the whole system towards a more stable situation. Clearly, combining the two holds great potential benefits for an organization and they’re perfect for applying to a company relying on a lean model for its work.

Collecting Data to Make the Right Decision

Data collection is becoming more and more important in modern business environments, and you’ll want to consider it in your operations if you don’t want to fall behind current trends. There are various ways to gather information about your operations and integrate that into your future decisions, and modern technology can be of great help in putting all the pieces together.

Just make sure that you don’t overspend on data collection technology in the wrong areas of your business, as that could end up detrimental to not only your budget, but also the speed of your operations. Sometimes, gathering too much data can slow things down on multiple levels.

Analyzing Your Results to Better Understand the Direction You Should Move In

A common mistake is to cut things short after gathering enough data, considering it an important asset for the future. That’s wrong though data is most valuable at the point of its collection, and you should analyze it as thoroughly as possible immediately after your systems have picked up new data points. Otherwise, you risk working with outdated information that could push you in the wrong direction, or alternatively, falling behind your competition when you don’t manage to use that data in time for it to impact your business properly.

Ideally, you’ll have your data collection and analysis systems tied closely together, with an integrated verification process that allows you to prevent the pipeline from getting filled on either end. You’ll also want to make sure that the data collected is properly sanitized too, as this is another problem that many discover far too late. Sometimes, one wrong entry into the data set can completely corrupt the whole thing, forcing you to start all over again in gathering information and applying it to your future processes.

Applying Lean Correctly

Last but not least, you’ll obviously want to make sure that lean is applied correctly to your operations as another layer on top of SOA and BPM. SOA can help ensure that your services are independent of one another, making the company more resilient in the long run once changes are implemented. And on the other hand, BPM will ensure that you have a constant stream of changes ready and waiting in the pipeline.

Lean, on the other hand, goes hand in hand with the data collection and analysis points we discussed above, making it an ideal candidate for something that can be improved through proper application of SOA and BPM. As long as you follow appropriate lean practices and know what you’re doing, you should see solid results from your use of both techniques, and you’ll find them viable in the long run when it comes to expanding your operations.

Conclusion

Lean is already meant to make your processes fast and optimized, but it can be taken even further when combined with the right auxiliary technologies. SOA and BPM are two great tools for addressing many of the issues that can come up along the way, and studying them in detail is a good idea for any responsible leader.