FAQ

OpenSpan User Process Improvement Overview

What is User Process Improvement?

Many business processes, even if they are orchestrated by enterprise BPM software, still have manual tasks that are undertaken by users - knowledge workers such as Contact Center Agents, Claims Administrators, Bank Tellers, Order Entry Clerks, etc. These manual tasks are typically executed on a Windows desktop with many disparate applications from multiple sources which were not designed to work together and consequently enterprises have extremely limited visibility and control of these user processes.

User Process Improvement is the ability to monitor, analyze and automate these manual tasks.

Why does User Process Improvement matter?

Effectively managing user processes can have a significant positive impact on a business in many ways.

Increasing visibility into what is happening on a user's desktop provides opportunities for process improvement that can lead to increased productivity and efficiency from the users as well as increased revenues from cross-selling and up-selling, reduced risks from fraud detection or compliance adherence, optimization of the usage of expensive enterprise applications, etc.

The opportunity for productivity increases alone can have dramatic impact in terms of increasing the number of transactions processed correctly in a given timeframe and/or reducing the number of individuals required to complete a given workload. Even seemingly simple process improvements such as reducing data entry, streamlining navigation and eliminating copy and paste can save millions of dollars in high volume areas such as contact centers and back office processing.

How does User Process Improvement differ from Business Process Management?

User Process Improvement uses many of the same principles as enterprise BPM, in particular the goals to enable the orchestration and governance of tasks that are important to an enterprise. Primarily, User Process Improvement differs from BPM in terms of scope. Enterprise BPM looks at tasks and "macro-flows" across an entire organization while User Process Improvement focuses on the tasks and "micro-flows" associated with users that are outside the scope or reach of Enterprise BPM.

Why hasn't anyone focused on User Process Improvement before?

Many organizations have focused on how to manage their user processes but the approach to solving the challenges was often too complicated, too expensive, too risky, or would take too long to implement. Gaining visibility into user processes and making all the applications on a user's desktop work seamlessly together can be a massive undertaking.

Now OpenSpan's User Process Improvement software is available to assist.

Why should I focus on User Process Improvement now?

The reasons to focus on User Process Improvement are the same reasons that you invest in any IT-based process improvement initiative - the primary business drivers tend to be the opportunity for reduced costs, increased revenues, reduced risk and improved customer loyalty. There are many, many examples:

• Costs can be reduced by increasing productivity from your user community
• Revenues can be increased through improved cross-selling and up-selling as well as increased efficiency from your customer-facing staff
• Risks can be reduced by increasing compliance, providing more opportunity to detect fraud and eliminating data integrity errors
• Customer loyalty can be increased by providing exceptional customer service and this in turn can be aided by providing a streamlined and efficient environment for customer service staff

And why now? The benefits of improving the management of your user processes can be seen extremely rapidly and achieved with low cost. So why not now?

How do organizations use OpenSpan for Process Improvement?

OpenSpan's technology is an excellent platform for process improvement whenever user processes are involved.

Organizations simply deploy OpenSpan Desktop Analytics to their users' desktops to monitor the applications being used. The events data can be sent in real-time to a Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) or Business Events Processing (BEP) engine or can be stored in a database for later analysis and to provide an instant audit trail.

Organizations can then use OpenSpan Desktop Analytics or any major Business Intelligence (BI) package to analyze the user processes and identify inefficiencies, potential risks, etc.

Once inefficiencies and risks have been identified, organizations can then improve their processes appropriately, potentially using OpenSpan Desktop Automation to automate their processes, including eliminating manual steps, triggering server-side business logic and BPM processes, managing application behavior, applying new business rules and services to legacy applications, etc.

In many cases, the visibility provided by the monitor and analyze phases can also lead to process improvement without the requirement to use OpenSpan Automation, for example by improved training, application enhancement, deploying new enterprise middleware, etc.

After a process has been improved, organizations continue to use OpenSpan to monitor results as part of a continuous improvement strategy.

User Process Improvement for Technology Executives

I am responsible for maintaining and updating dozens of applications. How will OpenSpan help me?

There are many areas where OpenSpan user process monitoring and analytics can assist with respect to improving your application portfolio. For example, it is now easy to identify which applications are actually being used, which areas of your applications are used the most, how much time is spent in each area, which users are using the applications appropriately, areas within the applications that cause the most errors, etc.

I'm rewriting my applications to take advantage of the latest technologies. How will OpenSpan help me?

Before you rewrite your applications, OpenSpan's user process monitoring and analytics can help you identify what areas of your applications are not used efficiently and allow you to spend your money and prioritize more effectively by focusing on those areas. After your applications have been rewritten, OpenSpan can enable you to add process guidance to assist with the correct usage and adoption and also help you measure the improved efficiencies resulting from your updated applications. Ongoing monitoring can also help you increase adoption by identifying additional training requirements following deployment.

I'm integrating all of my systems at the back end. How will User Process Improvement help me?

There are many areas where being able to accurately monitor and analyze what your users are doing can help with all sorts of integration efforts, for example, identifying additional integration points that are needed between applications based on what data your users' copy and paste or re-enter between applications or prioritizing your integration efforts based what applications are used the most.

OpenSpan can also enable a more rapid deployment (and therefore a faster ROI) of new services and applications being brought online through an incremental and phased approach to deployment. Example functionality includes being able to quickly and easily enable legacy applications to consume new services, hiding older applications while retaining access to their business logic for new application consumption, moving applications off the desktop and exposing as services, etc.

I already have a Business Process Management system; do I need a User Process Improvement system too?

With many process improvement exercises that you may be engaged in with your enterprise BPM software, there can be huge value in being able to monitor and analyze exactly how users are working before, during and after the new processes are implemented.

Additionally OpenSpan's User Process Improvement software complements your enterprise BPM software by extending the orchestration and governance capabilities to all applications used by your users, not just those that were designed to be BPM-enabled.

I already analyze usage metrics for each of my applications; do I need a User Process Monitoring system too?

Metrics from individual applications only tell part of the story. The opportunities for process improvement across applications are, in many cases, far more than the opportunities for process improvement within an application and individual application metrics will not reveal how your users interact with other applications in their environment. They will also not isolate which users utilize applications most productively and allow you to promote those users' efficiencies throughout your organization.

How does OpenSpan support change management/lifecycle management?

OpenSpan recommends that each customer creates a SLDC to manage the use of OpenSpan in their environments. OpenSpan is a development platform and customers should plan to design, develop and test any solutions that are developed with OpenSpan. Although OpenSpan simplifies and accelerates the development of complex desktop automations, it does not remove the need to design and test solutions. OpenSpan also recommends that customers utilize a source code repository to manage their OpenSpan solutions and files. OpenSpan Studio 4.5 is built on top of Microsoft Visual Studio and supports any source control plugin Microsoft Visual Studio supports including Microsoft Team Foundation Server, Visual Source Safe and Subversion. Finally, when possible, OpenSpan recommends that customers request notifications of any significant application changes within their environment so that they can appropriately regression test any OpenSpan solutions that may be impacted.

If an application changes, how does that affect OpenSpan?

OpenSpan identifies user interface objects using programmatic properties such as type, name, ID, etc. rather than visual properties like size, position, etc. Because programmers are less likely to change programmatic properties, OpenSpan is insulated from most visual and design changes and is only impacted by meaningful changes to an application such as the removal of a control or changing the type of a control. By default, when a control changes significantly, OpenSpan will no longer be able to identify the control and any associated automation will simply stop and notify the user that it cannot proceed. Even when an automation cannot proceed, the user can still continue to use the application manually, and any other automations not impacted by the change will continue to function normally.

Can OpenSpan solution files be modified or tampered with post-deployment?

OpenSpan packages are simply zip files that contain one or more .NET assemblies generated by OpenSpan. .NET assemblies cannot be read or modified by end users without special tools. Moreover, OpenSpan packages can be signed using an X509 certificate to prevent tampering. The OpenSpan runtime can then be configured to only run packages signed with specific certificates, thus allowing customers to ensure package origin and prevent tampering. If the runtime detects any that a package was not signed, signed with an unknown certificate or modified after signing, it will refuse to run the package.

Can features be disabled in OpenSpan Desktop Analytics (design time and run time) to limit the scope of event collection for security purposes?

Developers can configure exactly what events each OpenSpan adapter captures or even disable event collection entirely for an adapter. If sensitive data is a concern, adapters and individual controls can be configured to not send text or values to the collection service.

Can OpenSpan's automations inadvertently violate established business rules?

Because OpenSpan automations manipulate an existing user interface, they can only perform the same actions that a user is authorized to perform. Thus, OpenSpan automations cannot violate any established business rules that are already enforced by an application. In fact, OpenSpan is often used to enforce established business rules within applications that do not enforce those rules themselves.

Can Studio be license restricted to implement "Events-only" automations vs. full automations?

No. At this time there is only one version of Studio. However, developers can target either the Desktop Automation runtime or the Desktop Analytics runtime. Targeting will ensure that developers do not accidentally use automation functionality that will break when using the Desktop Analytics runtime.

How is OpenSpan different from screen scraping?

Unlike screen-scraping, OpenSpan does not utilize graphics hooks, character recognition, accessibility interfaces or test automation interfaces because they are fragile and unreliable when an actual user is interacting with an application. Instead, OpenSpan injects code into running applications that interacts with the same user interface controls the programmer who built the application utilized. From the viewpoint of a control, the OpenSpan code is indistinguishable from the application's own code as it executes within the process on the same threads as the application. Thus, OpenSpan can reliably access meaningful properties, method and events even for windowless, owner-drawn or non-standard controls. Moreover, because OpenSpan does not rely on testing or automation interfaces, OpenSpan is not limited to the functionality the control vendor has chosen to expose.

How is OpenSpan different from scripting?

OpenSpan utilizes an even driven architecture that separates matching and automation logic. Internally, OpenSpan maintains a state machine that tracks changes to the applications user interface. When controls are created or destroyed, OpenSpan matches or un-matches them in the background. At each step of an automation, OpenSpan automatically waits for the required control to be created and then executes the step immediately when it is created. By contrast, in most scripting systems automation and matching are combined. Scripts must search for controls and cannot react when controls are created or destroyed. Instead, scripts either pause or use polling to wait for a control which makes them prone to timing errors.