Composite Business Services

Why IBM for CBSs IBM possesses the technical and industry knowledge required to deliver on the value of taking a service orientation approach to business with CBSs. With a deep and broad set of tools and a worldwide team of professionals, IBM has the rare combination of assets necessary to build complete CBS solutions and provide the supporting platform and tools like our WebSphere Business Services Fabric. You can already purchase an array of industry-specific CBSs from IBM, and we’re constantly adding more. IBM is has also launched two SOA solution centers, at each location of which up to 500 SOA experts will focus on developing repeatable industry services that are built on a standard platform. Solutions you can build and extend to more quickly provide the strategic competitive advantages of your dreams.

For the same reasons prefabricated buildings are gaining in popularity, so are Composite Business Services (CBSs). First, what’s a CBS? Essentially, it’s a collection of pre-built business applications, services, and processes that can quickly integrate your business internally, and with customers, partners, and suppliers. The foundation of CBSs is service-oriented architecture (SOA), which breaks down business applications and processes into component parts (business services), which can be combined and recombined, very fast (thanks to business and technology standards), to create new applications and processes. CBSs are pre-constructed combinations of these components that infused with industry understanding are of particular value to particular industries.

They’re valuable in much the same way prefabricated buildings are. Because of their modularization and standardization, prefabricated buildings can be built fast, relatively inexpensively, and changed fast according to tastes and needs. So can CBSs. They themselves can be reconfigured, and the way they’re integrated into businesses can be changed too. They’re the ultimate in flexibility, modularity. But unlike the physical parts of a building, business services can be reused in multiple places. The real point is this: CBSs and their underlying structure, SOA, hitch IT to business goals in a way never before possible. Now, what the business proposes, IT disposes.

That’s the theory of the matter. What do CBSs look like, and do, in practice?

A CBS platform can dynamically integrate disparate internal assets and even external third-party applications to address user needs.

To win new business, an insurance company needed to differentiate its services and speed new products to market. But in the accompanying effort to reduce manual touch points and operating systems, and to comply with regulatory requirements, it was stymied by an inflexible IT system.

So it deployed a CBS platform that let it build insurance-specific processes using pre-built and custom business services to connect applications and processes residing in different systems and domains. For example, the insurer can now quickly integrate mainframe applications, information management billing system software, single sign-on user authentication systems, agent authorization software, and even external, 3^rd-party applications in different configurations to meet changing needs. The results? Among them: improved agility, reduced costs (through reuse of 52% of services across multiple implementations), strengthened partner relations, increased quote volumes (to the tune of 5-10x), greater regulatory compliance, and reduced risks. All from IT modularity and flexibility.

Likewise, in the healthcare industry, a regional health plan with more than two million members needed to constantly improve its services – no mean feat with rigid, vertically-constrained IT systems. To streamline processes that required manual touch points – like telephone, facsimile, and paper-based transactions – and expose and personalize core administrative processes for healthcare providers, the company deployed a CBS. It not only conforms to HIPAA, but provides, among many other things, an automated online claims filing and error correction services.

The value multiplier of enterprisewide business services

Similar to the insurance company, the healthcare provider has experienced reduced time to market, greater IT reuse, reduced costs, greater performance visibility, reduced administrative time and costs, reduced error claims, and improved claim rates. Importantly, CBSs help to eliminate some seemingly iron tradeoffs – say between reduced costs and improved customer service. Now those things move together, not inversely.

How do companies get started with CBSs? Precisely because of its power and reach – its capacity to revolutionize a company and its industry – commonsense and caution should prevail. First, focus on a real business problem. The goal, actually, isn’t improved IT performance. That’s merely a means to a business end. Second, start small – but start now. There’s no sense in waiting when competitors are jumping aboard, with the results detailed in the examples above. But starting small is a good way to show the organization what’s possible with CBSs and to pass muster with the finance folks. Third, think long-term when measuring returns. Most of the cost and effort in CBSs is in the first implementations. It’s in the reuse and reconfiguration of assets over time that the real pay-off kicks in.

Article by IBM Global Business Services.

For more information concerning this article, contact Scott Neuman (sneuman@us.ibm.com)