IT monitoring with a twist

Business activity monitoring tools strive to turn threatening events into non-issues.

Before law firm Hogan & Hartson can sign a new client, it has to make sure the addition won't create any conflicts of interest with its current business. An examination can turn up dozens of potential conflicts that typically require attorney attention.

"Among the folks who have to respond to these conflicts issues are our senior partners - some of the most time-pressed, mobile and expensive personnel," says Bill Gregory, CIO at the Washington, D.C., firm. "We can't proceed until they comment."

To speed along the business-intake process, Gregory rolled out workflow and business-process monitoring software from Metastorm and gave the attorneys wireless BlackBerries from Research In Motion to make sending and receiving comments easier for them. Built-in alerts remind attorneys and notify conflicts staff if an RFC has gone unanswered for a certain period of time.

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Before law firm Hogan & Hartson can sign a new client, it has to make sure the addition won't create any conflicts of interest with its current business. An examination can turn up dozens of potential conflicts that typically require attorney attention.

"Among the folks who have to respond to these conflicts issues are our senior partners - some of the most time-pressed, mobile and expensive personnel," says Bill Gregory, CIO at the Washington, D.C., firm. "We can't proceed until they comment."

To speed along the business-intake process, Gregory rolled out workflow and business-process monitoring software from Metastorm and gave the attorneys wireless BlackBerries from Research In Motion to make sending and receiving comments easier for them. Built-in alerts remind attorneys and notify conflicts staff if an RFC has gone unanswered for a certain period of time.

When a new business gets the go-ahead, the Metastorm software is designed to provide immediate notice to various internal teams so they can ready resources such as technical or administrative support. "In the past, there wasn't an easy way to dip into a bunch of paper file folders and get that information out to the proper parties right away," Gregory says. A few days make a big difference when trying to line up appropriate project resources, he says.

At Hogan & Hartson, the Metastorm software watches for bottlenecks - but not the kind Gregory is used to hearing about as CIO. Instead of watching for device failures or network slowdowns, the software is watching for lapses in the execution of a business process.

Business-activity monitoring (BAM ) is gaining ground among early adopters who want to more quickly become aware of and respond to changing business conditions. The technology provides the business equivalent of an e-mail notifying an airline passenger of a flight delay or a text message alerting an eBay customer he's been outbid.

BAM technology extracts operational data from multiple transaction systems, melds it, and compares it to historical data. Correlating all these sources helps companies assess the business implications, based on historical precedent, of events in real time. The sooner a company becomes aware of a problem - an inventory shortage, sales forecasting discrepancy, or increase in fraudulent transactions, for example - the sooner it can take corrective action to avert business-threatening conditions.

BAM also includes ongoing reporting capabilities. At Hogan & Hartson, replacing what were ad hoc paper-based methods with clear, auditable steps not only speeds the business intake process but also provides the firm with metrics such as how long it takes each matter to clear the conflicts investigation stage, how many matters are pending and how much potential business is turned away because of insurmountable conflicts.