Comments on SFH Blog: Social Actors

Hi RG, Yes, unfortunately I am finding myself dra...

2011-04-16T10:19:06.792+05:30

Hi RG,

Yes, unfortunately I am finding myself drawn into these nomenclature & definition wars again & again. Guess am a sucker for such stuff. :(

Taking a social world view in systems design which has a place for social actors is certainly one way we can try & build better systems that might garner more end user adoption. Users will finally have a system that will not make them feel constrained and let them work in their near natural manner.

But the bigger trouble is with managers giving up control, which comes from data visibility & decision making. Systems of Engagement are about to break through this dam. Change management is going to be HUGE.

Thanks a lot Julie for brining up ACM. :) I have b...

2011-04-16T10:08:21.846+05:30

Thanks a lot Julie for brining up ACM. :) I have been told that ACM could do a lot of what I have described, but I have never seen a demo or worked with an ACM system, so I left it out of my post consciously.

I am yet to fool around with tibbr though I have access to it. Soon, I must promise myself to take the plunge soon.

And thanks a LOT for bringing up that point about exceptions! This is one aspect I have had a LOT of trouble explaining to BPM people (though I am one too) who have no clue to what ACM or social systems can do about exceptions.

I agree social streams are an important addition, but the concept of social actor hits at such a fundamental level that it can make even these social streams finally useful without the trouble of having to filter, etc.! :)

Marcio, It was not my decision to create a new te...

2011-04-16T10:01:25.251+05:30

Marcio,

It was not my decision to create a new term in social BPM ... there are so many others already talking about it and I found them all inadequate since they took either the system integration approach (integrating wikis, blogs, forums with[in] a BPM system) or process optimization approach (collaborate on process modeling & execution). Some notions were outright atrocious - like integrating twitter with a BPM system being called a social BPM.

So I had to start from something very fundamental. A flaw that is so gaping & readily accepted that any requirement coming from the users that makes this flaw evident was ridiculed & put down as an exception scenario.

And when I thought more on that flaw which we BPM folks had become so accustomed with that we didn't consider it out of place, I felt the need to look into sociology. And then the chance mention of social modeling by Graham Hill and I had some new idea bone to chew on. Still chewing on it, so you see such half baked ideas in my posts of late. :(

Hi Rawn, Yes, Actors are not unknown in any syste...

2011-04-16T09:53:50.780+05:30

Hi Rawn,

Yes, Actors are not unknown in any systems design, not just BPM. However, I try to bring to the notice the difference between the mechanistic world view considered during all such system designing/modeling versus the social world we actually live in where we have to use these systems.

Social Actors from a systems design perspective has been explained in this paper on Social Modeling & the i* framework that I had mentioned in a previous post about it.

I will write a new post to explain the concept. If anything, just to make it clearer to me. :)

Hi Prem, Great Post!! You had touched upon two im...

2011-04-16T08:37:22.789+05:30

Hi Prem,

Great Post!! You had touched upon two important points in your above post.

1. "At least the employee better behave as a social actor for faster & more satisfactory response to the social customer."

2. "..Systems of Engagement can allow decentralization of decision making by taking it to the front line."

For most of us who implemented Enterprise CRM, we saw that despite implementing CRM, both the organization and the customers were not significantly benefited.

For most parts, organizations looked at CRM as a technology and not as a strategy as you rightly mentioned in your earlier post.

Given that the importance of customer delight was missing in the earlier round, there has been reluctance amongst the employees in the use of CRM system. Coupled with the fact that the most organizations stuck to very hierarchical teams which meant that decisions were taken at much higher level in the chain of command.

Most customer service/support organizations have 2 or 3 levels support even where they have CRM as a system of record. Such a model is unlikely to help delivery quick resolution of any customer issue or demand.

Personally, I think SCRM is a great opportunity for organizations to revisit the two items listed above and ensure that they use this opportunity to instill the need for a superior customer experience and also simply the hierarchical structures internally.

Empowering the front end employees is absolutely important just as much instilling the culture to drive superior customer experience within all teams internally. When these are addressed and suitable measures taken then SCRM will become successful. Or let us say implementation of SCRM as an extension of processes from Enterprise CRM will follow quite naturally and effortlessly.

I am consciously skirting the terminology discussions as I think addressing the core value proposition both for the business and the customer should be paramount.

Once again, thanks for the great post.

Cheers
RG
@subramanyanrg

Hi Prem, Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Your ...

2011-04-16T07:13:28.555+05:30

Hi Prem,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Your discussion hits on a couple of areas that are important to organizations: true collaboration and adaptive case management. Collaboration particularly comes to mind with the discussion of social actors and relationships – I like that you are including customers in this context.

Your closing comments hit the mark for adaptive case management, which is tech-enabled but also dependent on ad hoc/situational decision-making: Systems of Engagement can allow decentralization of decision making by taking it to the front line. Consistency & flexibility, both together. Paradoxical yet possible. The consistent in ACM comes from the pre-built infrastructure for a particular business situation; the flexibility coming from how ACM supports the ad hoc. Frequently business processes are more defined by the exceptions rather than the rules.

Tibco’s tibbr may be an interesting example for your post. While tibbr intersects with “social” by consolidating and managing various streams, it is also oriented to worker roles and context (social actors and relationships). As Dennis Howlett puts it: It intelligently marries people, process and context, delivering information the way people want to consume. With its integration capabilities and bi-directional feeds in and out of business applications from various vendors, Tibco connects tibbr to business processes and event-triggering that are then made available in tibbr for taking action.

If we look at what’s happening in solutions that tie together Business Intelligence and Collaboration in workflows, we see that much more than picking up social streams can be done. These solutions are coming closer all the time to bringing true collaboration into BI processes, with interactivity and exchange between the social actors, as well as adding content from social streams.

I agree with Mark Tamis, commenting in your previous post, that the term “social BPM” isn’t particularly useful. I do find “systems of engagement” far more promising.

Now ready to see where you go next with your thinking – looking forward to more!

Cheers,
Julie
@juliebhunt

Prem: I've just read this and the previous po...

2011-04-16T03:45:40.329+05:30

Prem:

I've just read this and the previous post.

We model business so that we can analyze them. We analyze them so that we can separate the threads of tasks (processes) and assign them to workers or machines.

There is no specific reason why we do that. This way of doing business evolved because communication and collaboration are expensive and inefficient. So natural selection made the model that minimized dependencies and the need for interaction.

Social technologies are changing the equation by decreasing that cost. If they can deliver on the promise of frictionless collaboration, then could enable other business models that are less analytical to become competitive.

So, to me Social Collaboration and Analytical Processes are two ends and the business pendulum is moving from the second to the first.

Unless there is a very compelling reason (other than marketing) to define SBPM, I would stick to the existing terms. There is process-oriented business models and people-oriented business models and everything in between.

@Marcio_Saito

Hi Prem, Actors as a concept are not unusual in ...

2011-04-16T03:06:04.753+05:30

Hi Prem,

Actors as a concept are not unusual in BPM and workflow modelling. I'm not clear if you state a distinction between the "social" actor concept as having particular properties that are different. Your description does factor in 'input from others' as part of how they do their process step but that is reasonably vague too.

To your point, I've seen Day in the Life scenario modeling that describe social interactions with such actors in different roles. Other than how they communicate and complete the task however, they don't serve a purpose any different than actors in a traditional workflow.

I feel there needs to be something different about social actors, and you may have it but I'm not sure if it helps me understand more about how they work differently.

-rawn