PEGA SYSTEMS SMART BPM SUITE (PRPC)

Company and product Background

SmartBPM offers a number of insurance-specific workflow frameworks that serve as thestarting point for developing SmartBPM applications: new business workflow for personaland commercial auto, businessowner’s policy, and term life; change of policy in forceworkflow for the same set of products as new business; and claims workflow for propertylosses.

Customer Base and references

Pegasystems BPM solution are its rules engine, “superb ability to integrate Java and vendorsupplied methods/utilities,” and “ability to allow for dynamic change.” They also cited thesolution’s SOA and other integration capabilities as real strengths.

Functionality

SmartBPM provides all the elements in a complete BPM solution. SmartBPM is completely unified with the PegaRULES rules engines. PegaRULES also serves as SmartBPM's execution engine. Microsoft Visio is used to design processes. Analytics are provided by an OLAP tool and by a process simulator for what-if scenarios. All three people and system interaction pairs are supported. For person:person interactions, SmartBPM offers a large number of routing methods including: route to manager, route by skills, and route by availability. Person:system and system:system hand-offs can be created in the design process through the use of an integrator shape in Visio.

Usability and Security

Users in service roles have customized views, worklists, and workbaskets. Managers have activity monitors and customizable reports. System administrators have a dedicated portal thatcontrols various user and performance functions. They also have access to the Autonomic Event Services Manager that can diagnose and tune SmartBPM’s performance. For security SmartBPM uses an authentication-authorization-auditing model. For authentication, it uses standard LDAP or JNDI (a standard Java API) to access an identification and security directory. Authorization is based on user IDs having appropriate role-based privileges to access functionality and information. Audit information tracks access to objects and to rules.

Technology

SmartBPM has a J2EE open, service-oriented architecture. It executes processes in a distributed J2EE architecture. It can interoperate with .NET systems through co-location on common servers or by using Web services to communicate with .NET applications. SmartBPM can run on pretty much any mainframe or server operating system platform, with the exception of OS/400. It can use Oracle, DB2, or SQL Server databases. It is written completely in Java.SOA is central to the design of SmartBPM. It views internal and external applications as exposed Web services, using WSDL documents, published on UDDI registries, and accessed via SOAP over HTTP. SmartBPM also offers quite a number of other integration and connectivity methodsincluding: MQ, JMS, EJB, .NET, CORBA, COM and SQL. It also supports insurance-specific standards including IAA; ACORD: XML, Messages Services; and XML Message Mapping to IAA. SmartBPM can import and export process definitions using BPEL. This solution is scalable both vertically on a single system or on a multi-node system. It can also be scaled horizontally homogeneous or heterogeneous clusters. Applications are developed in SmartBPM's design environment using Visio, rule forms, and wizards to define integration methods.

Costs and Implementation

First year license cost and implementation costs for a midsize insurer would be in the range of US$200,000 to US$1 million. The same costs for a large insurer would range from US$1 million to US$2 million, or possibly higher for a larger carrier with more complex business processes.Initial implementation is usually under 90 days. This relatively short cycle time is due to an emphasis on rapid iterative development and object reuse. Pegasystems calls its implementation approach “customer co-production.” A typical team would have a Pegasystems engagement leader, lead system architect, and lead process architect, working with a client project manager, and technical and business leads.