Business Process Integration revolves around three pillars: Information, Human/Machine, and Communications. Disruptive technologies result in waves of innovation that bring one of these pillars to center stage from time to time. When one takes the lead, it pressures the other two to ebb forward. It’s a race. It’s symbiotic. It’s a self-balancing act.
Successful companies are the ones that adapt to and benefit from these advances. They embrace these changes and seize the opportunity to act quickly to gain early advantage, to create market demand, and customer satisfaction while driving profits higher.

Starting with the Information pillar, we saw the good-old Internet giving way to Search Engines, then to Social Networks. This was partly possible by Humans and Machines finding ubiquitous and always-on broadband access to the Internet through convergence and evolution of computing and communications devices. In the meantime, the Internet Protocol (IP) provided a much higher scale of economics within the Communications pillar, first for the incumbent communications needs: voice and text, and then followed by visual communications rather recently.

Communications help disseminate newly found interest in fresh information. When this triggers new behavior in the form of social interactions or commercial transactions, new insight is arrived at.

Following the invention of Search Engines, for example, consumers realized that even the not-so-popular books, tunes, or goods not afforded the privilege to be stocked on a store shelf were just as easily discoverable. They could be acquired with as much of a click. This so called Longtail effect doubled the size of certain consumer markets. The Longtail invited even more intensive use of Search Engines. Thought of searching for friends and family naturally followed suit. Social Networks were born. Then there came the sharing/posting of photos, views, videos, tweets … the ability to reach out to and influence masses.

You may have guessed that with the explosion of information, insight, preferences, and the trails of surfing the Net, the Big Data paradigm emerged. We have seen companies investing in big data analytics and integrating new heuristics to their business processes to better understand and chase their target customer.

Business Process Integration (BPI) however can only go so far in automating business reasoning and decision making. Nowadays we are witnessing the Communications pillar responding to the opportunity presented. The next frontier is to engage the human element, the elite talent, more effectively with the business process. This will be possible by following the basic principles of unified communications coupled with visual collaboration and persistent communications … to assure fast and accurate business decision making.

Visual collaboration is the most effective way to bring decision makers together. Fostering visual interaction enables more productive meetings and helps decision makers reach a consensus more quickly. Not all critical information can be acted upon with automation and strictly defined workflows. Decision makers often need to bring their own insight, and share their own data to drive timely decisions. Visual collaboration is the vehicle that can accelerate the business process cycle ultimately leading to quicker, more effective outcomes.

Visual collaboration is also increasingly becoming a necessity with the new marketing and sales paradigm shaping up in the post Longtail – Big Data era. Many Independent Software Vendors (ISV) have recently popped up to offer demand and lead generation software, marketing and sales automation tools in pursuit of more effective sales. Companies implementing this new way of selling realize the power of visual interaction and its importance in closing a sale. Face to face communications is more personal, and establishes a rapport that is not adherent with simple text, or voice communications.

Osman will be speaking about Business Process Integration (BPI)  and visual collaboration at ITEXPO in January 2016.

Find out more about eZuce's Viewme visual collaboration tool and start your Free Trial.