The Process Excellence Network (PEX Network) makes some salient points on the impact of process in a new video posted last week. Using statistics about changes in the global economy, the video brings home that point that, in the end, it’s all about service. The business process should serve the customer, making the customer experience more efficient and less frustrating. Customers don’t care if a call center’s applications aren’t integrated. They just get tired of repeating their phone number over and over again, just so an agent can work their way through different applications to find the information they need to answer a question, fulfill a request or solve a problem.

We who focus on process efficiency all day can easily get caught up in an internal view. We employ six sigma and other process excellence techniques to remove the time and cost from business processes, with a laser focus on how things can work better for the company. The PEX Network has reminded us to look outside our office windows and refocus on those we ultimately service. It’s important to always remember, as Henry Ford said, it is the customer who pays the bills.

 Estimates Indicate Successful Customer Deployments that Resulted in an Aggregated $1.6 Billion in Cost Savings and an Individual Average Productivity Improvement of 21 Percent in 2011

OpenSpan has released the results of business process improvement assessments of the company’s customer base, which indicates an estimated overall improvement in efficiency that saved customers an aggregated $1.6 billion across 1.1 billion processes in 2011.  On average, OpenSpan deployments give customers an estimated 21 percent improvement in productivity. Some customers experience productivity improvements as high as 44 percent in more complex, heterogeneous environments. Estimates of the impact of OpenSpan technology deployments are customer-validated and are based on formal process improvement assessments conducted by OpenSpan’s Lean Six Sigma process consulting team.

Increased efficiencies in OpenSpan customers’ call center implementations resulted in an estimated average productivity gain of 19 percent.  Customer back-office process improvement projects resulted in an increase in productivity estimated at 29 percent.  OpenSpan customers who deploy solutions in the back-office achieve significantly higher improvements due to the history of efficiency initiatives in front-office vs. back-office scenarios, according to OpenSpan CEO Eric Musser.

“For example, in contact center environments, our assessments indicate that OpenSpan technology saved our customers as much as a dollar on every call handled,” Musser said.  “Contact centers are among the most tightly-managed work environments in the world, where a few seconds on a call can quickly add up to a significant impact on the bottom line.  Our assessments show that OpenSpan solutions make a real difference in our customers’ ability to perform in terms of customer service improvement, reductions in average cost per call and the ability to drive increases in net promoter scores.

“Many corporations are just now applying the same rigor to the back-office that has driven efficiencies in the call center,” Musser continued.  “There’s more fertile ground for finding and eliminating waste in terms of manual, redundant and error-prone tasks in the back office.  As a result, our customers see real value in the form of exponential returns on investment, and previously untapped opportunities to improve their operations and better serve their customers.”

Additional results of OpenSpan’s customer success assessment indicate:

• Over 1 billion calls impacted by OpenSpan technology
• Individual worker tasks processed of over 8 billion in contact centers and almost 790 million in back offices worldwide.

New Business Attributed to Demonstrable Process Improvement Payback with In-Year ROI, And Growing Interest in a New User Process Analytics Solution Introduced in 2011

OpenSpan announced record-setting revenue and net income for the fourth quarter of 2011, resulting in a record revenue year. The company sold 47 percent more user licenses in 2011 compared to 2010. New customers included several Global 500 companies in financial services, telecommunications, insurance, healthcare and other industries. Organizations in 16 countries turned to OpenSpan in their efforts to increase efficiency and improve operations.

The company’s success is attributed to increased adoption of its user process improvement technology in both customer-facing and back-office scenarios where time-to-solution and return on investment are paramount. New customer engagements were also accelerated by the introduction of Desktop Analytics, an automated user process monitoring and operational performance measurement solution. Economic pressures are prompting organizations to look for new ways to discover opportunities for improving efficiency by measuring user activity, then simplifying or automating those processes within their existing infrastructure, according to OpenSpan CEO Eric Musser.

“Despite difficult economic conditions worldwide, OpenSpan enjoyed a successful 2011 as call centers and back-office operations looked for ways to improve user processes quickly and cost-effectively,” Musser said. “We saw an increasing emphasis on project payback, with companies looking for solutions with in-year ROI. The more companies are focused on achieving demonstrable results quickly, the more successful we are. We’re pleased to enter 2012 with a healthy pipeline and growing interest in our solutions.”

OpenSpan also released initial results of implementation assessments measuring the impact of its technology on customer productivity and efficiency. Results show an estimated cost savings for customers worldwide at more than $1.6 billion. Increased efficiencies in contact center implementations resulted in an estimated average productivity gain of 19 percent. Customer back-office process improvement projects resulted in an increase in productivity estimated at 29 percent. Estimates of the impact of OpenSpan technology deployments are customer-validated and are based on formal process improvement assessments conducted by OpenSpan’s Six Sigma process consultants.

OpenSpan also owes much of its success to the strong support of its business partners, who represented just under one-third of total revenue in 2011. New reseller relationships, primarily with call center solution providers, helped OpenSpan expand its footprint in seven countries. New partnerships are in place in the U.S., Australia, Germany, India, Spain and the United Arab Emirates. In addition, OpenSpan expanded relationships with business process outsourcers (BPOs) worldwide, leading to the company’s first deployment in China. OpenSpan sells direct, via resellers and through OEM relationships.

OpenSpan, a privately held corporation, is backed by FTV Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, Imlay Investments, Matrix Partners and Sigma Partners. OpenSpan also received new venture funding in 2011 from In-Q-Tel (IQT). IQT identifies, adapts and delivers innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader U.S. intelligence community.

Expands Insurance Industry Offerings To Include Claims Repair Process Automation for Payers

OpenSpan, Inc., an innovative provider of business process analytics, optimization and automation solutions, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Triangle BPA, LLC, headquartered in the Research Triangle region of Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.  The acquisition follows a year-long partnership between the two companies in support of insurance industry customers. OpenSpan has secured rights to intellectual property for Triangle BPA’s health insurance payer claim automation tools and techniques, as well as adding key senior staff with extensive industry expertise to the OpenSpan executive team.

According to Triangle BPA Co-founder Rod Dunlap, it became clear that combining the capabilities of the two companies created a comprehensive approach to the business process optimization and automation needs of the insurance industry.  “Working with OpenSpan, we quickly saw the power and value of a unified offering,” said Dunlap. “Together, we are well-positioned to have a dramatic impact on health payers’ efforts to reduce administrative costs, comply with changing regulations, accelerate service, and reduce waste and errors with a compelling, fully automated claim repair solution.”

Acquisition Completes Groundbreaking Business Process Automation Solution for Accelerated Auto-Adjudication of Insurance Claim Repairs

Triangle BPA’s Claim Control Engine™, a business process automation engine for accelerated health insurance claim auto-adjudication, is being rebranded and relaunched this week as the OpenSpan Automation Engine™.  It manages specialized, reusable components containing business rules and repair actions in a service-oriented architecture.  These reusable components are assembled into customized claims processes that automate repairs. Components can be iteratively enhanced and reused across multiple repair scenarios for fast time-to-deployment, giving insurance payers tremendous flexibility to react to changes such as claims inventory fluctuations, new regulations, and member or provider service needs.

The engine executes claim repairs via a foundational set of business process definitions and integration services called Reinacts, a Triangle BPA solution that is retaining its brand under the OpenSpan auspices. Reinacts are customizable process automation templates based on the most common claims adjudication practices.  Automations are configured and integrated with core systems in the insurance back-office using OpenSpan’s visual development environment.  OpenSpan accelerates business rule definition with a process analytics tool for automated business process discovery.

Acquisition Signals Growing Strength In Back Office Business Process Solutions

OpenSpan has served customers in the insurance industry for years, with numerous front-line and back-office implementations. Increasingly, organizations across many industries are turning to the back office as the next frontier for accelerating enterprise efficiency and performance.  The acquisition of Triangle BPA is the first initiative of a strategic expansion into additional back-office environments, where more than a third of current customer implementations are found today, according to OpenSpan CEO Eric Musser.  “We have enjoyed tremendous success over the years helping contact centers and other front-office operations simplify and automate business processes across multiple applications on a worker’s desktop.  Our technology is also widely used in back-office environments that are perhaps less visible, but have just as much impact on customer relationships and operational costs as does the front office,” Musser said.

Can’t believe it’s been over a year since I posted. Things were busy. So here’s the latest:

I’m now CTO of OpenSpan. I’ve taken on a lot of additional responsibilities around product strategy and customers, which leads to…

Stephen is now Chief Scientist. He’s officially the undisputed god of the deep, dark, awesome, unfathomable underpinnings or our technology and is devoting himself full-time to internals and RE, which leads to…

Danny is now VP of Development. He’s taking over running our team operationally, delivering release and all that good stuff, which leads to…

We’re growing and we’re hiring. If you’re a data guru (NoSQL, MySQL, Hadoop) or a cloud guru (Ruby, AWS) or a web guru (HTML, jQuery, CSS) or a reverse engineering guru (injection, hooking, disassembly) let me know!

Every day, EVERY DAY, when I was at work I would have to copy and paste between multiple applications. And not just once or twice but over and over throughout the day. And it was always the same, first names, last names, addresses, phone numbers, etc. And even though I had gotten very good at it and could Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V and tab or mouse my way through with the best of them, I just new that they time it was taking must really add up, especially when multiplied out by all my co-workers who had to go through the same thing. I would always wonder, ‘why am I still doing this’ and ‘can there not be a way for me not to have to do this anymore’? I think it became one of those tasks at work that I, along with my co-workers and millions and millions of others I am sure, was resigned to doing.

So why was it like this? Why did I have to accept the fact that my SAP applications couldn’t talk, so to speak, to my Salesforce ones or my company’s custom built or legacy applications for that matter? I think two reasons contributed to this more than anything else. First, copying and pasting had become a natural flow of keystrokes or mouse clicks that I was just willing to accept as part of what I had to do. To me it was just an extension of typing. Second, and perhaps the biggest reason, is that I didn’t think getting rid of task like copying and pasting was even possible.

The first reason makes sense. I, like most of us, learned a task the way I learned it and then as it became more and more repetitive, I just became better and better at it to the point where even though I still had to do it, I was so fast at it, I didn’t really care about doing it or look at it as a real hindrance to my job performance. So copying and pasting of basic information between applications had just become an accepted part of the process. I could also look at the fact that copying and pasting the information rather than having to re-type it all from one application to another was in itself a significant process improvement. Now the second the reason, regarding it being even possible to eliminate the need to copy and paste all together, I guess it’s one of those things where I thought to myself, someone has probably figured this out, but it probably takes a lot of custom coding and wouldn’t be easy to implement especially not when dealing with multiple systems and even some that were custom built. Something like that just wouldn’t really seem a high priority for most IT departments who support multiple users of multiple applications.

It wasn’t until I came to OpenSpan that I found the way that there was an easy solution for this common task that affects millions of users on a daily basis. OpenSpan’s software has eliminated the need to copy and paste between applications has been solved and the solution itself can be implemented in under 5 minutes. Better still, once rolled out to all users who work with multiple applications and need to copy and paste information between them, it can really save a tremendous amount of time. To really grasp the amount of time it can save, imagine what solution like this could mean for a 600 seat call center or a bank with 50 branches. The more opportunities at the user level to eliminate copying and pasting, the more time is saved and the more productive your employees can become. To see just how easy it is, watch our short video demonstration using the OpenSpan technology and then register on our community site and try it yourself.