Press Release
Intrum Justitia increases efficiency sixfold by implementing the first purely model-based business application in the world
Combination of BPM and SOA technologies from IDS Scheer and E2E enables direct execution of ARIS models
Saarbrücken, Germany and Basel, Switzerland, February 14, 2008
Intrum Justitia, Europe's leading service provider for debt collection and receivables management, succeeded in transforming its legacy business application ReCash into a flexible service-oriented architecture (SOA) in just nine months, thanks to directly executable models. Efficiency of day-to-day work increased by a factor of six. This is the first time in the world that a complete business application based solely on executable UML and ARIS EPC models has been implemented. As the company explained today at ARIS ProcessWorld in Orlando, the "ARIS Bridge integration" from IDS Scheer (www.ids-scheer.com) — the world's leading supplier of Business Process Management (BPM) — and E2E (E2EBridge.com) — the world leader in model execution—ensures complete transparency in communication between the specialist departments and the IT department.
As part of the project, all of Intrum Justitia's cash flow processes were completely modernized. On the new platform, the business processes are efficient to maintain and flexible to develop. Diego Zanini, who is responsible for process and project management at the financial services company had the following to say: "Initially we were very skeptical about whether this totally new approach would work in practice and whether we would be able to achieve real results with it in a short space of time. But we were convinced by the capabilities and maturity of the ARIS Bridge integration when the very first tests were carried out in our own application environment in November 2006."
At that time, Intrum Justitia wanted to significantly increase process automation, in order to meet new requirements from the specialist departments within the shortest possible time. To do this, Intrum used the ARIS Bridge integration to document the processes in its in-house ReCash application and migrated the existing PL/SQL code into around 1000 directly executable UML models. These map the exact logic of the event-controlled process chains (EPCs) in the ARIS process models and the complete SOA implementation including data integration. The documentation and code for the business processes and the business application are now identical. Thanks to the transparency achieved in the SOA development cycle, Intrum is able to cut costs for changes to processes and maintenance of the ReCash application considerably. Daily work is now six times more efficient than before.
Project implemented in record time
In December 2007, the transformation project went live in Switzerland and Austria — just nine months after it was kicked off. The rollout in Germany is currently underway and additional projects based on the purely model-based E2E platform are also planned for this year. On the basis of the strong increase in efficiency of business activities, Intrum Justitia has decided to use the ARIS Bridge integration as a strategic application platform in the future.
"We wanted to give Intrum a level of IT flexibility never before achieved in the industry," explains Karl Wagner, Head of ARIS Product Management and Development at IDS Scheer. "We are proud to have achieved this in record time. This makes Intrum a worldwide role model for the successful combination of BPM and SOA — without programming."
The ARIS Bridge integration is a joint development between E2E and IDS Scheer. In almost all organizations, it will bridge the gap that exists between the specialist departments and IT. The E2E Bridge 4.0 it contains and provides the first—and as yet only—integrative development, operating and test environment based on directly executable models for UML, BPMN and the EPC format in ARIS from IDS Scheer.
Serge Gansner, Chief Executive Officer at E2E, explains: "We originally developed our technology for the direct execution of model languages purely for integration tasks. Yet what began as an experiment at Intrum has now become a technological breakthrough in the development of corporate software: the first business application to be based exclusively on executable models without any code or code generation. This is the basis for transparency in dialog between the specialist departments and IT."
About E2E
Swiss based E2E Technologies Ltd. is a global software company offering the ultimate breakthrough in enterprise software engineering. Its flagship product, the E2E Bridge, unifies design, execution and maintenance and, as an industry first, offers Model Execution based on UML, BPMN and other modeling languages that are used as the exclusive source to implement and manage distributed software assets in support of automated business processes. This pioneering methodology called MDI - Model Driven Integration enables existing software assets to be integrated, migrated and consolidated with unprecedented efficiency and quality.
E2E supports end user organizations, software vendors and service providers to leverage the combination of BPM, SOA and EDA, otherwise referred to as Advanced SOA – rapidly and predictably. Founded in 1996 with headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, E2E operates offices in Portland and Denver and has partners and resellers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, USA, Asia and Australia. Customers include Antalis, Deutsche Post, DKSH, EVN, Intrum Justitia, Swisscom and UBS. Global technology partners include IDS Scheer, Oracle and SAP.
For more information about E2E, please visit www.E2EBridge.com