[uengine.org]process codi – a smartwork platform based on social patterns
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uEngine.org
White paper
ProcessCODI – A SmartWork Platform based on Social Patterns
JaeHoon Lee, Ph.D
uEngineSolutions, Senior research engineer
June/2011
1. Why social pattern?
It is the AGE of Social Network! We see exploding social network articles, conferences, services, and
experts everywhere. As usual, media and newsmakers are forcing companies to have interest in social network.
Will the social network be the final goldmine of business or disappear as another fad?
Before having tools of social network services (SNS), we already have used social network naturally in our
daily life. We make relationships with people, communicate and interact with them, share useful information.
Although modern business processes in companies are specialized and standardized, it is always required to
utilize the resources and information existing outside organizations. Now they are visualized and digitalized by
the social tools, and our interest is how to utilize them in business effectively.
Figure 1 Role of ProcessCODI for smart works
Technically, there are two views on utilizing social networks. One is “How to raise the value of a company
through social networks” and the other is “How to reduce and prevent potential problems from use of social
networks”. Using social networks is undoubtedly promising, but need to be managed at the same time. To
manage them, they should be “discovered”, “visualized”, “standardized”, “defined”, “planned”, and finally
“improved”. Interestingly, these concepts are closed to those of BPM methodology. Moreover, because social
networks are bigger structure than an enterprise, the patterns of social business processes may be much more
complicated. In this article, we call them as “Social Patterns”.
Social patterns make an important role in decision-making when a business unit tries to utilize social
networks. According to the types of social patterns that a company has, their management can either create
values or cause losses. For example, use of social networks for managing customers is a great trend for recent
on-line B2C companies. On the other hands, companies that have severe security policies have to be prudent
when to adopt social networks. In the previous paper, we figured a social pattern named “Smart worker’s
business process”. As shown in Figure 1, business environment consists of the inside of an organization which
has hierarchical structure, formal data and tasks, enterprise systems, and the outside which has horizontal
networks, informal data, and distributed systems.
One of the biggest obstacles of smart works is that these two areas are separated by the firewall of an
organizational boundary. ProcessCodi makes pipelines into this wall so that smart workers can retrieve
information through them. In addition, ProcessCodi controls the issues on the outer flow which is related to
security and the inner flow which is related to information quality or copyright. As a consequence, social
patterns refer to the flow of value in using social networks by companies.
2. How social patterns are created and used
Social patterns are categorized by the target to be mainly utilized by a business unit. They can be human
networks or opened information outside a company. Human networks are used to encourage participation of
domain experts or promote a product or a service to potential customers. Patterns using opened information are
to capitalize open contents as knowledge of a company through mash-ups. Let’s see examples.
Issue tracking through collective intelligence
Figure 2 Issue tracking through collective intelligence
The pattern shown in Figure 2 can be used in an IT service company or a consulting firm. 1) An employee
who encounters a trouble will raise an issue by updating “My status” on a SNS. 2) Experts who have interest in
the topic may respond to it and suggest their opinions. 3) After verification of the suggestions by related
departments, 4) the issue will be finished.
Claim handling process based on SNS
Figure 3 Claim handling process based on SNS
This pattern can be utilized in manufacturing or sales industries. Also, this is one of the improved types of
business process in brand marketing. 1) If a customer complaint in SNS appears, 2) a CS department may detect
and analyze it, and 3) raise an issue to the related departments. 4) These cases are stored in the database, and 5)
the results be notified not only to the customer 6) but also to SNS to prevent similar claims.
Product image analysis
Figure 4 Product image analysis
This pattern is for a company which uses open contents frequently. 1) To analyze the image of a product, 2) a
company searches the related slides from Slideshare, 3) blogs, 4) movie clips from Youtube, 5) and makes a
report by mash-ups to make as an asset of the company.
Document management in open source project
Figure 5 Collaborative document management in open source project
This pattern may be used in a SW company or community based on open source. 1) After starting a project,
the PM group opens the project documents to Wikipedia. 2) These documents may be supplemented by
participants and 3) open content mash-ups. 4)5) When they have matured quality, they will be published
officially by PM groups.
3. How Social BPM implements social patterns
Social patterns span over organizations, users, and systems in wide area, thus they have to be implemented
by integration of SNS, e-mail, knowledge management, BPM. Social BPM is a powerful tool to provide these
integrated functions. Let’s see examples through ProcessCODI - the Social BPM tool.
Integration of SNS and business processes
Figure 6 Integration of SNS and business processes
The basic function of Social BPM is to get external workers involve into the internal business processes. To
do so, the organizational chart of BPM should include information of SNS users. Figure 8 shows a contact list of
ProcessCODI which can include potential users for a task. If you have an expert about your job among
Facebook friends, he/she can be involved into the task. At this time, ProcessCODI can control security problems
by forcing the participants to get steps of approval.
Communication and seamless business processes
Figure 7 Communication and seamless business processes
Business tasks are often to start from a time point when he/she gets an email. ProcessCODI provides an
integrated work list including workitems, emails, chatting, and SNS communication. A business process can be
triggered at the point of taking a workitem. In this point, participants for the process can be added flexibly, and
the whole contents are stored and managed as process instances.
Figure 8 Strategy mind-map and knowledge mash-up
The core knowledge of a company is an enterprise strategy. A mind-map enables smart workers to
implement, understand, and share a strategy. The practical method to connect a strategy to business in
ProcessCODI is to connect processes from a node of a mind-map. Also, key nodes of a mind-map can be
transformed as a strategy map so that they can view in a Navigator, which allows managing knowledge and
processes in an integrated environment.
4. The goal of ProcessCODI: Smartwork
Figure 9 ProcessCODI as a smartwork platform
Social patterns are a way to SMART USE of resources and information in both the inside and outside of an
organization. And ProcessCODI is an integrated approach and tool for smart work. ProcessCODI provides a
smart worker right resources at right time so that he/she can concentrate his/her own value added jobs.
Consequently, ProcessCODI aims at integration of technologies and methodologies, and finally a total platform
for smart works.
About the author JaeHoon Lee, Ph.D
Dr. JH Lee has spent almost five years in the area of BPM in both theory and application. He has the records
of academic research papers for BPM in various industries such as medical, quality engineering, and applied
statistics. Recently, Dr. Lee has been working with uEngine.org, which is one of the world famous open-source
BPM projects.