SAARBRUCKEN, GERMANY—Business process management (BPM) vendor held its two-day ARIS userDay 09 event in Saarbrucken, Germany, this week. Here are just some things seen and heard at the conference.
1.A little more than one hundred ARIS users from across Europe attended the presentations and hands-on workshops at ARIS UserDay 09. The choice of locale of IDS Scheer AG corporate headquarters in Saarbrucken was to bring users back to the birthplace of the ARIS idea and methodology. “It really is a good idea to come here as the title of this event is ‘BPM is coming home,’” said Wolfram Jost, the company’s executive board member responsible for product strategy.
2.There are a handful of new innovations: ARIS Express, ARIS Community, ARIS Process Governance, ARIS MashZone, ARIS Rocket Search, and ARIS Process Performance Manager version 5. Jost said this is the first time the company has had the opportunity to introduce this number of new components at one time.
3.IDS Scheer CEO Peter Gerard described the planned acquisition of the company by Germany-based infrastructure software vendor Software AG as a “successful fit.”
4.IDS Scheer’s vision is for everyday end users to be involved in business process management (BPM), in some capacity, within their organizations, said Jost.
5.One marketing initiative at the event was quirky postcards that the company will mail out free of charge. Some read: “Pimp Your Process”, “Kiss Me, I’m a BPM Expert”, “I Love Your Process”.
6.The first version of the ARIS product was shipped 17 years ago, and started with a development team working in just two rooms.
7.ARIS Community, a forum launched several weeks ago, already boasts 1,600 daily visits and 5,000 registrations, and witnessed one marriage proposal. “I don’t know what the answer was, but hopefully they come together based on the ARIS Community,” said Jost.
8.Things like ARIS Express and the quirky postcards are free of charge, but don’t mistake IDS Scheer as a company that is free of charge, joked Jost. “But we are still a company that has to make money … so I think the new components will give us the opportunity to get more money from you,” he said, referring to the audience of users.
Read more: ARIS to remain independent despite Software AG merger, IDS Scheer says