The question about who should manage the BPM tool administration arises when it comes to the bridge that crosses the business/IT domain. In some contexts, this can be a “push-pull” situation between the business and IT teams to administer the tool. It needs to be clear that the separation between business and IT is on the administration components at the software level of the tool, and not the hardware piece (i.e. ARIS Designer & Architect server). The server management, including the hardware maintenance and database application backups, remains with IT.

Who should manage the ARIS Designer & Architect tool administration?  

Below we discuss four models using  internal/external resources (business /IT) to manage ARIS tool administration. 

Model 1: Administration solely by IT

The IT team, which is external to the office of BPM, manages all the administrative components. This is typical if the IT team governs both the hardware and software in the server. The IT team includes a dedicated department or personnel for:

• system applications/helpdesk
• server management (hardware/backup)
• network management (connectivity/IT network architecture)
• security management (user management/access)

In this structure, the administrative role is distributed internally into many pockets within the IT envelope. This scenario commonly exists in large multinational companies (e.g. financial institutions, retailing, and manufacturing industries).

Model 2: Administration by an individual project team and IT

This is a large BPM initiation (such as a system replacement project that involves business process and technical modelling from an “as-is” analysis to a “to-be” state).

• A project of such a scale may require differing methods and settings than the established conventions.
• A dedicated project team member is trained on the ARIS Designer & Architect tool administration to cater for the needs of the project. Meanwhile,
• IT takes on a reduced role, from hardware and backup perspectives, of server management.

Model 3: Administration by the Office of BPM

In this model, the Office of BPM centrally manages all the administrative components.

• The ARIS Designer & Architect tools administrator plays a pivotal support role in the office of BPM. This is in line with the purpose of BPM implementation, which gives an organisation the agility and efficiency to meet the business challenges.
• The continuous engagement in the tool administration provides leverage along the BPM maturity curve by tweaking the settings to meet the needs of the business users as of the office of BPM expands with the maturing organisation.

Model 4: Shifting the Paradigm – Outsourcing

Outsourcing has become a common model in the new business frontier. Organisations are moving their routine and complex activities to the managed service provider by the mean of SLA (Service Level Agreements) that mandate quality deliverables against the standard established in the SLA.

What can be outsourced in the ARIS Designer & Architect administration?

• Basically, the whole suite of administration components can be outsourced.

How does the outsource mechanism work?

• The ARIS Designer & Architect project team comes to an agreement with the managed service provider with a SLA outlining the components to be administered, together with their respective frequency and maximum response time. The frequency can be on a weekly or monthly basis.
• Meanwhile, the maximum response time indicates the allowable time for the task to be carried out, normally in hours.
• The communication to make any changes to the administration components is done via a service request by the ARIS Designer & Architect team to the outsourced company.
• The outsourced company may also provide helpdesk services packaged into the SLA.

So, instead of managing the complexity, the organisation manages the SLA levels. This may appear that the organisations are transferring their “pain” from the process to the managed service provider, which is absolutely not true!

Models 1 and 2 clearly show the “diluted” governance and control in the office of BPM. In fact, this situation can be a serious threat to the success of the BPM implementation itself.

It is ideal for any organisation to have the governance and control span within the office of BPM. This is demonstrated with even more advantages in Model 3. This is the more efficient model compared to 1 and 2, but now the question further boils down to the effectiveness. Organisations can achieve both efficiency and effectiveness by outsourcing as in Model 4 – it value adds to the BPM implementation efforts.