The Success Package: Social Media and Business Process Management
Students model business processes in the Horus Social BPM Lab
+++ Horus Social BPM Lab Video - Have a look here! +++
Ettlingen, June 7, 2011 – On May 13, 2011 the first Horus® Social BPM Lab took place. Renowned universities and institutions with multidisciplinary teams of students worked successfully at three locations. The Institute for Applied Computer Science and Formal Description Methods (AIFB) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the HTWG Konstanz (University of Applied Economics and Design), and the Horus software GmbH in Ettlingen worked together online. The aim was to work together to model the business processes of a fictitious company and to process them under practical conditions. The students used the new Business Process Management tool Horus®, which combines the advantages of Web 2.0 and social networks. In the Horus® Social BPM Lab, the participants networked, shared their knowledge with each other and solved problems - collaboratively and effectively, with Social BPM.
Prof. Dr. Marco Mevius laid the foundation for such a project in a lecture at the HTWG Constance, in which he used the freeware version of Horus® in a hands-on team project. With the help of the software and the related structured approach, they already analyzed procedures and finally re-implemented business processes then. "After we had worked so successfully with Horus in Constance, the team was immediately excited when it came to start a multi-site experiment. It is becoming increasingly important in projects to benefit from the knowledge and experience of all participants. That's the basic idea of the Horus Social BPM Lab, which was implemented by the students with joy," says Mevius.
The teams in Constance, Karlsruhe, and Ettlingen had the task to map the business processes of the fictitious company "Lab Tech" in graphical models and to optimize them. Since the company was formed through acquisitions in the present case, there were different locations with different business processes. These had to be coordinated and optimized purposefully. Approximately 30 students from different disciplines such as Information Technology, Business Information Technology or Business Administration, introduced themselves to the challenge and worked in a network on the joint project. The students slipped into roles, according to their field of studies, just as they would encounter them in real companies. Therefore, they were able to contribute valuable business knowledge. Using the modeling software Horus®, they had to determine the various divisions, for example, logistics or distribution, in graphical models. Modern Web 2.0 technologies such as web conferencing, wikis, forums or chats helped with the communication. The "Horus Expert on Demand" was available to help with words and deeds, both online and by phone.
"From our project work at PROMATIS software GmbH we know the situation that a colleague from Asia or South America is working with us in Ettlingen together on the business processes of our customers. Horus® helps us in cooperation, communication, and in modeling the processes. This new software offers unprecedented opportunities that the students as digital natives have implemented easily in the Social BPM Lab," says Thomas Karle, Division Manager of the Horus Alliance partner PROMATIS and project manager of the Horus Social BPM Lab.
At the end of the day, the students succeeded to model the business processes of the Lab Tech AG in detail and to optimize the internal workings of the fictional company based on synergies. The students finally took home a certificate and valuable experience. All participants drew a very positive conclusion of the day and look forward to the next Horus Social BPM Lab – in which already other higher education institutions from home and abroad are interested.
You will find the Video documentation of the Horus Social BPM Lab here.
