Business process management (BPM) is a discipline in operations management in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyse, measure, improve, optimise, and automate business processes and business activity flows, in support of enterprise goals, spanning systems, employees, customers and partners within and beyond the enterprise boundaries. Any combination of methods used to manage a company’s business processes is BPM. Processes can be structured and repeatable or unstructured and variable. Though not required, enabling technologies are often used with BPM.

Think of EA as an ASSESSMENT of APPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS, TECHNICAL AND COST FITNESS.
Enterprise Architecture is an organisation’s holistic blueprint for planning to develop a view of an organisation’s strategy, information, processes and IT assets and is responsible for using this knowledge to ensure IT and business alignment wherein it connects organisation’s mission, methodology and processes to its IT strategy and established in-depth documentation with the help of an array of architectural models, or views, which provide a picture of how an organisation’s existing and future requirements may be accomplished in an effective, agile, sustainable and flexible manner.

Its goal is to create a unified IT environment (standardised hardware and software systems) across the firm or all of the firm’s business units, with tight symbiotic links to the business side of the organisation and its strategy. More specifically, the goals are to promote alignment, standardisation, reuse of existing IT assets, and the sharing of common methods for project management and software development across the organisation. The end result, theoretically, is that the enterprise architecture will make IT cheaper, more strategic, and more responsive.

The purpose of enterprise architecture is to create a map of IT assets and business processes and a set of governance principles that drive an ongoing discussion about business strategy and how it can be expressed through IT. There are many different suggested frameworks to develop an enterprise architecture, as discussed later on. However, most frameworks contain four basic domains, as follows:

• Business architecture: documentation that outlines the company’s most important business processes;
• Information architecture: identifies where important blocks of information, such as a customer record, are kept and how one typically accesses them;
• Application system architecture: a map of the relationships of software applications to one another;
• and The infrastructure technology architecture: a blueprint for the gamut of hardware, storage systems, and networks. The business architecture is the most critical, but also the most difficult to implement, according to industry practitioners.

The term ‘strategic management’ is used to represent a branch of management that is concerned with the development of strategic vision, setting out objectives, formulating and implementing strategies and introducing corrective measures for the deviations (if any) to reach the organisation’s strategic intent.

Performance Management is about aligning the organizational objectives with the employees’ agreed measures, skills, competency requirements, development plans, and the delivery of results. It also creates measurable performance-based objectives and expectations.

In goal setting, there is one method that has stood the test of time.

The main definition of SMART is an acronym for the five components of an effective goal. An effective goal should be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Result-focused
• Time-oriented

The emphasis is on improvement, learning and development in order to achieve the overall business strategy and to create a high performance workforce.

Once your performance management is in place, you will need innovative tools to foresee the outcome of your organisation.

A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organisation or of a particular activity (such as projects, programs, products and other initiatives) in which it engages.

Often success is simply the repeated, periodic achievement of some levels of operational goal (e.g. zero defects, 10/10 customer satisfaction), and sometimes success is defined in terms of making progress toward strategic goals. Accordingly, choosing the right KPIs relies upon a good understanding of what is important to the organisation. What is deemed important often depends on the department measuring the performance – e.g. the KPIs useful to finance will differ from the KPIs assigned to sales.

Since there is a need to understand well what is important, various techniques to assess the present state of the business, and its key activities, are associated with the selection of performance indicators. These assessments often lead to the identification of potential improvements, so performance indicators are routinely associated with ‘performance improvement’ initiatives. A very common way to choose KPIs is to apply a management framework such as the balanced scorecard.

A KPI is good to measure but to complete the appraisal cycle and to reach excellence, you will need a solution to prudence, elevate and upraise your organisation. Palmira provides you with the right tool to foresee the future.

According to Gartner, Corporate Performance Management (CPM) is an umbrella term that describes the methodologies, metrics, processes and systems used to monitor and manage the business performance of an enterprise. Applications that enable CPM translate strategically focused information to operational plans and send aggregated results. These applications are also integrated into many elements of the planning and control cycle, or they address BAM or customer relationship optimization needs.

It is  an area of business intelligence (BI) involved with monitoring and managing an organisation’s performance, according to key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue, return on investment (ROI), overhead, and operational costs.

CPM is also known as business performance management (BPM) or enterprise performance management (EPM).

Historically used within finance departments, CPM software is now designed to be used enterprise-wide, often as a complement to business intelligence systems. CPM software includes forecasting, budgeting and planning functions, as well as graphical scorecards and dashboards to display and deliver corporate information. A CPM interface usually displays figures for key performance indicators so that employees can track individual and project performance relative to corporate goals and strategies. Some companies use established management methodologies with their CPM systems, such as balanced scorecard or Six Sigma.

CPM must be supported by a suite of analytical applications that provide the functionality to support these processes, methodologies and metrics.

The utmost value that Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solutions bring to organisations is that they reduce the finance department’s time and effort spent on data collection and manipulation, freeing them up to undertake more value-added activities such as analysing data.

The software tools that support good performance management enable organisations to:

Produce timely and accurate information.
The key to unlocking the value of CPM is to have the ability to report using useful and meaningful information and have clearly structured performance metrics to highly support your decision-making process.

Increase standardisation and automation of processes and Eliminate reliance on spreadsheets.
A CPM solution will streamline the collection, aggregation and reporting of data from multiple sources, with consistency and increased accuracy – providing faster results with shortened period end close.

Have more control.
As CPM utilises information from one source it enables greater control, improved data security and governance around the numbers produced from it.

Have greater visibility of financial information.
The finance team can develop cost, revenue or resource modelling to help them understand implications of their forecasted numbers.

Reduce operational risk.
CPM enables trust and confidence in financial data, with traceability of actions and seamless workflow capabilities. 

In addition to the benefits that good CPM brings to an organisation, it also addresses the following business issues:

A disjointed budget.
A CPM solution will align corporate strategy with the execution of operations to bring about improved cash flow and budget control.

Manually intensive and time-consuming financial processes.
CPM software shortens the time required to collect information, consolidate financial data and generate reports.

Multiple versions of the same data from a variety of sources, or limited visibility of data.
CPM software provides a ‘single source of truth’, and by doing so reduces the risk of errors and gives greater insight into your financial status through improved reporting facilities.

Non-standard and inconsistent financial data.
By using the reporting facilities built into the heart of the CPM software, managers are able to review standardised financial information right across the organisation.

If you are looking to replace or reduce your organisation’s reliance on spreadsheets and achieve greater visibility of your company’s performance, a CPM solution could be right for you. Palmira can help you to develop your short-term or long-term strategies and even support your digital transformation journey with quick assessments for remarkable improvements and accelerated results.

There are many CPM (Corporate Performance Management) in the market, however none fulfil the full picture of CPM according to GARTNER. Our solution is now available to bridge the gap and help you foresee the future, upraise and elevate your standards, with continuous improvement and enhancement using Artificial Intelligence and machine learning algorithms. Our solution is a CPM based on AI and long human experience converted to machine learning.

Business Excellence is often described as outstanding practices in managing the organisation and achieving results, all based on a set of fundamental concepts or values.

These practices have evolved into tools and models for how a world class organisation should operate. These tools and models have been developed and continue to evolve through extensive study of the practice and values of the world’s highest performing organisations.

With business excellence, your organisation can enhance innovation and idea generation, increase customer satisfaction, synthesise organisational growth within employees, increase employee satisfaction and involvement, improve efficiency and effectiveness, and product reliability.

With the non-stop digital disruption and transformation, there is a wide variety of business tools and models now available in the market in which Palmira can help you handpick the best and most suited for your organisation. To achieve excellence, you need intelligent solutions that help you monitor and foresee the future, Palmira an innovative solution to cater your excellence requirements.

Excellence is a complix program that needs a tool to help analyst as well as decision makers cascade and aggregate different type of critiria and KPIs and MetrixPlus provide with creative capabilities to your excellnec objectives.

Palmira implementation methodology SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) is a framework defining tasks performed at each step in the software development process. SDLC is a structure followed by a development team within the software organisation.

Implementation Methodology

Palmira helps agile and scalable implementation methods based on Agile SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle) to break the solution development into small incremental builds which are provided in iterations (2-3 weeks per iteration).

Documentation and Solution Design

Defining Requirements required to set Critical Success Factors and Success Criteria of the implementation, defining requirements includes the following:

Define Business Requirements

Defining business requirements is a critical activity that must be performed to meet the client objectives. The outcome of this activity is the Business Requirements Document (BRD) which details the business solution for the selected process(es) and sets Business needs and expectations.

This work package include the following

Understanding AS-IS situation

Perform Gap Analysis

Develop To-Be Concept

Develop To-Be Design

Define Solution Requirements

SRS[1] is a description of the solution that will be developed and it is lays out Functional Requirements [2] and Non-functional requirements [3] and a set of use-cases that describe users interactions and systems interactions (Integration Points) that the system must provide and comply with.

This Work Package provides the proposed solution based on an approved BRS [4], which fits with the current needs, and solve the existing problems.

The SRS will contain all or some of the following deliverables according to assigned tasks.

HLD[5] covers System Architecture and Data Architecture.

LLD[6] which is detailing the HLD. It defines the actual logic for each component of the system. Class diagrams with all the methods and relation between classes come under LLD.

ISD[7] includes the technical specifications of the functions to be integrated.

SDD[8] :includes the design of the flow that covers both the business and technical requirements along with the desired business rules that shall govern the flow. Navigational prototype will be also considered in this document where it will describe how navigation will be presented.

Test Strategy Definition which include Test Cases and Test Scenarios which will be used by Solution Testing Teams which will include the Critical Success Factors that will give the green light to go-live for the developed solution.

UI[9] Design

During this Phase, Palmira will capture User Interface Requirements form related project stakeholder and design a UIS[10] explain the user interface design process used in designing a graphical user interface. This document will give an overall idea of what was done during user interface design and explain how we came up with the ideas that appear in the final user interface. The screens at this phase are mockups for approval from Client to be developed, later, under the development work order.

[1] SRS: Stands for Solution or Software Requirements Specifications

[2]  Functional Requirements are those requirements that support the main process functions and objectives

[3] Non- Functional Requirements are those requirements that supports environmental conditions under which the solution must remain effective or qualities that the solution must have. These can include requirements related to capacity, speed, security, availability and the information architecture and presentation of the user interface.

[4] BRS stands for Business Requirement Specifications

[5] HLD: Stands for High Level Design

[6] LLD stands for Low Level Design

[7] ISD Interface Specification Document (this document should be prepared by CLIENT IT)

[8] SDD: Stands for Solution Design Document

[9] UI stands for User Interface

[10] UIS stands for User Interface Specifications

Solution Development (Build Phase)

This phase is the most important phase where the real work begins. The technical project team will use the produced Documentation in the earlier phases to build the designed solution using webMethods. In other words, it is the realisation phase of Digital Transformation in CLIENT.  The Outcome of this phase is:

webMethods Deployment assets: Process files and Supporting ESB packages. If applicable UI Tasks and UI application project.

SIT results document, which states the results of System Integration Testing activities.

Deployment Guide, which enables webMethods platform operations team within CLIENT to deploy webMethods Deployable Assets in production environment.

Process Operations Manual which will enable Support Team to take over the to maintain and support developed solution after Product release and handover.

Solution Testing and Roll-out (Test Phase)

Quality Assurance (QA)

The QA Tests is a quality gate to test the exit criteria from the Development Phase.

During this Phase the QA Professionals will use design Test Cases and Test Scenarios to ensure that the developed solution fulfils the identified success factors.

The Output of this phase is the SIT Results document which states the accomplished tests.

User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

During this phase, the Project team along with business owners and concerned stakeholders will work closely to Test the built solution and ensure successful implementation and fulfilment of the requirements and expectation stated in BRS and SRS. This Phase is the second Quality Gate that gives permission to release the built solution to the production environment and closure of development iteration.

Change Requests (CRs)

Once the product is released, some changes to the solution might be requested by the business owner to add additional features that were not specified in the BRS and SRS. Hence, managing changes is a critical task to control project scope.

CRs will be managed in accordance with Project Management Methodology incorporated with Approved Project Charter considering the stated assumptions in Project Scope herewith.

How do we tackle and move forward with digital transformation?

Palmira helps organisations on their digital transformation journey through the Palmira Methodology, “PRAM” (Plan, Realise, Accelerate, Monitor). 

Plan: We help you build your Enterprise Architecture including Business Layer (Strategy Management, Business Processes, Performance Management, Service Management), Application Layer (manage your IT portfolio), Infrastructure layer and Data Layer. in top of your EA we provide a comprehensive Governance model to manage your internal audit management and Risk Management.

Realise: Contain Integration (including Enterprise Management and API Management) and Automation using world class platforms in BPMS and Low-Code.

Accelerate: Today, we live in Robotics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) era. To accelerate, organisations should be ready to accept the Robotic world!

Monitor: Allow managers to visualise outcomes to explore and analyse data flowing through and stored. Providing interactive dashboards that show the latest KPIs.

software development (Dev) and information-technology operations (Ops) to shorten the systems-development life cycle while delivering features, fixes, and updates frequently in close alignment with business objectives.

As DevOps is intended to be a cross-functional mode of working, those that practice the methodology use different sets of tools—referred to as “toolchains“—rather than a single one. These toolchains are expected to fit into one or more of the following categories, reflective of key aspects of the development and delivery process:

What are our solution rates?

We deliver tailored solutions that meet your requirements, prices depend on your needs and requirements.

Contact us at info@palmira-itc.com

We deliver tailored solutions that meet your requirement, prices depend on your needs and requirement.

Contact us at info@palmira-itc.com

“Big data” is a field that treats ways to analyse, systematically extract information from, or otherwise deal with data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data-processing application software.

Current usage of the term big data tends to refer to the use of predictive analytics, user behaviour analytics, or certain other advanced data analytics methods that extract value from data, and seldom to a particular size of data set. 

Containerization is a lightweight alternative to a virtual machine that involves encapsulating an application in a container with its own operating system. A container takes its meaning from the logistics term, packaging container. When we refer to an application container, we mean packaging software.

In simple terms, Open Finance is the next step in the Open Banking journey.

Financial data such as mortgages, savings, pensions, insurance and consumer credit – basically your entire financial footprint – could be opened up to trusted third party APIs if you agree. Open Banking already allows regulated websites and apps to access transaction data from bank accounts and payment services so that you can ‘move, manage and make more of your money.

Why Open Finance?

The vision of Regulators in Finance Sectors be it a Central Bank or Finance Ministry in Open Finance for consumers and businesses as follows:

• To gain access to a wider range of financial products/services
• To have greater control over their data
• To engage with their finances and empower better financial decisions

The ultimate goal of central banks today globally is to improve financial health driven by market innovation and competition. Central Banks in Europe, Saudi and UAE are leading the talk in this subject. Introducing API Management to Open the Finance Sector and SupTech to introduce innovation to the Finance Sector.

Once rolled out, Open Finance will for example, allow for the development of financial dashboards, bringing together customer data such as investments, savings and cash flow all in one place.

By sharing financial data with trusted third parties, customers could be offered tailored products and services that represent a better deal.

Automated switching and renewals combined with advice and financial support services are also high up on the Open Finance agenda along with accurate creditworthiness assessments.

How will Open Finance affect me?

The personal and business implications of adopting an open approach to finance are many.

Access to cheaper and more holistic debt advice; product recommendations and increased engagement with your financial situation are just three ways in which personal finance management platforms (PFM) could evolve. But Open Finance doesn’t stop at recommendations and dashboards, or “read” permissions. Open Finance could also have “write” permissions, executing cost savings on your behalf. For example, moving that extra USD100 into a savings account or mortgage overpayment.

The Regulators are building clarity in their call for input that they consider open finance to have the potential to transform the way financial services work for consumers and business. The time is now to prepare for Open Finance.

Managing Finances with Api Management and Suptech

With full support, API Management allows regulators to securely source and share data, While Suptech allows Central Banks to analyse data on-time. The Api Management authorises and authenticates the accessibility and eligibility for end users and partners. While Suptech stores data, analyse it according to statistical and ML models. This will provide a seamless digital experience for end users and allow regulators to analyse data in real time. The data sources could be any financial transactions in banks, insurance, pensions, investment, exchange houses, stock markets and many more financial entities.

The personal and business implications of adopting an open approach to finance are many.

Access to cheaper and more holistic debt advice; product recommendations and increased engagement with your financial situation are just three ways in which personal finance management platforms (PFM) could evolve. But Open Finance doesn’t stop at recommendations and dashboards, or “read” permissions. Open Finance could also have “write” permissions, executing cost savings on your behalf. For example, moving that extra USD100 into a savings account or mortgage overpayment.

The Regulators are building clarity in their call for input that they consider open finance to have the potential to transform the way financial services work for consumers and business. The time is now to prepare for Open Finance.

Managing Finances with Api Mangement and Suptech

With full support, API Management allows regulators to securly source and share data data, While Suptech allow Central Banks to analyse data on-time. The Api Management authorize and authiticate the accessibility and elibibilities for end users and partners. While Suptech store data, analyse it according to statistical and ML models. This will provide a seamless digital experiace for end users and allow regulators to analyse data on real time. The data sources could be any financial transctions in banks, insurance, pensions, investment, exchange houses, stock markets and many more financial entities…

Regulatory Technology (RegTech) is an innovation that enables firms to effortlessly adjust to the weight of expanding regulatory reporting, while at the same time being savvy and secure. This innovation enables organisations to automate the way toward monitoring information. Regtech improves the procedure of regulatory prerequisites.

Every new regulation creates opportunities for the regtech companies to work on new technology and offer it to banks, financial institutions and the fintech companies. 

Regulators can use the Integration (ESB) and Automation (BPMs) layer with Business Role engine to digitise Journeys in their Financial Regulation services. This will increase agility and speed, remove silos of heterogeneous banking regulation systems and improve the overall process. This is a key subject today by Central banks globally. 

Suptech is a short form of Supervisory technology. SupTech refers to the technology that supports supervisors. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) defines Suptech as “the use of innovative technology by supervisory agencies to support supervision”. Supervisory agencies typically lay down the rules and regulations. Though they follow different regulations, they need technology to check compliance by the constituents.

In the Suptech domain, Central Banks or regulators use API Management, Big data and data analytics platforms to enable innovation and reduce risk with AI capabilities. 

The API Management solutions opening up the financial sector for 3rd parties to allow the innovation. On the other side, Big data and Data Analytics Platforms to supervise and analyse data on-time. This will streamline regulators main processes and increase end users satisfactions with faster services and availability of more financial options. 

Fintech Variants

Besides regtech and suptech there are many other variations of Financial Technologies popularly known as Fintech.

Bankingtech – Also known as banktech refers to the new age technologies created for the banking systems typically using the methods like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Wealthtech – They offer a new way of investing money by leveraging technology and expert financial knowledge

Insure tech – Also known as insurtech is the use of technology innovations designed to improve the efficiency of the current insurance industry model.

Difference between Regtech and Suptech ?

Though there are different variants of Fintech, Regtech and Suptech appear similar in nature. However, the basic difference between both is that Regtech addresses the needs of Financial Institutions, Fintech companies and banks. On the other hand Suptech provides aid to Supervisors and Regulators.

Suptech enables supervisory offices to accomplish their goal of advancing trust by monetary specialists in financial institutions also, markets. Suptech is probably going to prompt supervision that can adjust all the more rapidly because of an always developing condition. Innovative Technologies can be connected at the plan phase of new guidelines to evaluate the potential effect of arrangement recommendations.

While Europe, USA, and part of ASIA are seeing massive results from their Regtech and Suptech initiatives. Other regulators in the EMEA region including UAE, Saudi and Jordan are building their ambitious vision and pipeline in Open Finance using Regtech and Suptech.