TIBCO Nimbus™ is a Business Process Management System. It presents easy-to-understand, visual representations of how people, processes and systems in an organisation interact. Nimbus™ has helped over 700 organisations including AstraZeneca, Barclays Capital, HSBC, JPMorgan, RBS, Novartis, Toyota, and ThyssenKrupp. It provides many features that support Quality, Compliance, and Operational Management and Continual improvement and can also be integrated with other technology and is available on–premises and in the cloud. In summary, it's an excellent tool.
Here in Torque Management, we chose Nimbus™ as our BPMS platform for our process-centric isolutions because it meets our technical and functional “mandatory” requirements, including: automated version control, change management, process modelling and process improvement tools, a process repository, feedback loop, capable of e-signature and compliance with security standards.
Areas where Tibco Nimbus™ adds tangible value:
- New facility start up: quickly developing new processes and procedures
- On-line visual SOPs and Work Instructions: 50% of the time required versus traditional text-based and with a significantly higher effectiveness rate (up to 87%)
- Business Transformation: Process architecture, visibility of end-to-end processes, RACI and metrics
- BPM Centre of Excellence
- PMO
- Work simplification and Business Process Improvement: toolbox
- Enterprise architecture documentation: business model, information model
- Supports community-based knowledge sharing: communities
- Operational Control and Risk Management: Framework
- Performance Management and Operational Excellence: integrated Scorecards and Metrics
- Software Implementation e.g. ERP systems
- SAP Change/Release Management
- Business Process Outsourcing and Shared Services: processes and 3rd party management
- Business Continuity Management
- Quality Management Systems: integrated on-line and automated workflow
- Integrated Management System: Management and Operational processes linked to multiple regulations, standards and/or policies e.g. FDA, Sarbanes Oxley, FSA, ISO
In the hands of an expert, the possible applications for a BPMS are endless.
Many companies don’t obtain full value from their BPMS investment.
They might have purchased the BPMS (at a not-insignificant cost) to support a specific project but they are not seeing the improvement levels they expected. Another scenario is where the initial project is completed and the tool falls into disuse because they either don’t have much understanding of the full capability of the BPMS, they don’t have BPM skills or they have failed to stand back and evaluate how the investment might be leveraged to add-value to other business activities. In each of these scenarios, knowing what the BPMS can and can’t do is critical.
For example: In a recent discussion with an improvement manager it emerged that he did not know Tibco Nimbus™ provided resource costing functionality that could support his annual budgeting exercise. Instead, he was reviewing the costs in excel and the processes in Nimbus – a clunky, semi-manual process that didn’t make any use of the modelling and scenario creation capabilities of the BPMS. This is a neat feature that would have really helped him. As the saying goes… in the hands of a novice, a chisel and marble can easily become a pile of chippings and dust. In the hands of an expert, the possibilities are endless.
On the other hand, It may be that your team received some training that met your initial needs but the training was rudimentary or not comprehensive so your team doesn’t have an understanding of all the functionality, or their view of the areas of the business is limited, or they don’t understand the integration possibilities that might improve adoption of a standard way of working with processes and systems across your business.
Here are three ways we can help you squeeze more value from your BPMS investment
- Develop BPMS Strategy and Roadmap: At Torque Management, we have a deep knowledge of Tibco Nimbus™ but we are also Quality, BPM and IT specialists. This combination of skills gives us a unique ability to see the “big picture” and to connect your BPMS with the business strategy to define specific BPMS goals to actively support the delivery of business goals.
- BPMS Project Support: It may be that you have a BPMS but you need help with specific tactical projects. In these cases, you will also find our capability invaluable. We can work with sponsors and teams to quickly establish scope, identify requirements and build realistic project or programme plans. In some cases we can also provide process accelerators: process frameworks and other tools.
- BPM, BPMS, Quality skills and services: Where necessary we can provide additional services such as training, coaching, mentoring, process maturity capability measurement, and/or quality assurance, we can enrich your team effort or provide key skills.
Have you experience of implementation of a system like Tibco Nimbus™ in an organisation? Was it well adopted and can you see and measure the benefits? Were there challenges you think could have been avoided with a little more foresight about the real business benefits you thought your organisation would see? Let us know in comments, or get in touch via email if you'd like to share an insight, experience, or request more information confidentially.