The Business Process Broker use case identifies typical business episodes of potential SMEs in different application domains such as eHealth, Manufacturing, Photonics, Government, Security, e-Commerce and Retails which share a common set of business processes.
The main observation in these scenarios is that most of the potential end users of the CloudSocket have the potential need of generic business processes that may be individualized during the business process maturity growth. In essense, the flexible configuration of business processes, by hiding the complexity of the cloud infrastructure and by providing easy to use solutions, is a promising market segment.
As in the previous usage case scenarios analysis, the ICT/Robotics cluster of Tuscany selected ICT companies as potential candidates for early CloudSocket adoption with two representative potential cases being introduced below.
Internet Research and Procurement Process
An SME sells software and integrated appliances/electronic components that make devices “Internet ready” in a few seconds and employs 10 people.
Initial situation:
The SME continuously verifies prices of the electronic and mechanic components in the market and buys only products that match specific requirements in terms of customer needs and pricing. Monitoring the prices and the quality is a costly activity, which requires an ongoing analysis and trade-off between quality and price.
CloudSocket technology intervention:
The company needs a solution that reduces the costs for procurement activities by improving the effectiveness of the procurement process. Generic self-management infrastructure or special designed research processes including crawler and result databases have the potential to run in the Cloud and to raise the productivity of this SME.
Potential BPaaS solution:
This is a representative sample where the BPB (Business Process Broker) can offer consulting services which take the form of a business process aiming to optimize the way the SME conducts its business. Internet Research can be realized in many different business processes, ranging from pure manual to full automatic, from structured to non- structured or from ad-hoc to regularly triggered processes. Different business processes require different cloud support, ranging from no support, to SaaS support until personalized configuration of workflows.
Kiosk Distribution Process
A company with 180 employees aims at distributing newspapers and magazines to kiosks and, in general, points of sales in an Italian town. Every day, about 250 different Italian and foreign newspapers are delivered to 600 points of sales.
Initial situation:
Current customers are small kiosks with very limited IT infrastructure. Often the order is realised via Facebook comments. In order to improve the maturity of the ordering and interaction process with those kiosks, new but still light-weighted Web-applications can be provided.
CloudSocket technology intervention:
A new order process can be handled in the cloud, without IT installation on both – the supplier and consumer – sides. The scaling of the application with the expected peeks in ordering at the end of the working day or triggered by a special event indicates the use of cloud solutions.
Potential BPaaS solution:
The process of ordering can reflect a better understanding of the distribution process due to the transparent business process model and raise awareness on IT difficulties – e.g. peek handling – and hence improve the distribution process. Business processes can also be used for a collaborative improvement.