Finding a lack of content relating to small businesses in the BPTrends archives, Tom decided to share his experience in starting a new soap business with our readers. The Process Startups is the first of several Columns in which he will describe his progress and setbacks in his and his team’s effort to launch his new business. Follow the first installment of the process.

Although The Internet of Things provides users and businesses a great opportunity to make life a little easier, Tom Bellinson warns that, left unattended, these devices have the potential to do great harm. Read his concerns and his suggestions for making these devices more secure.

The process of building software applications and making them available to users over the internet has evolved over time. In this Column, Tom Bellinson presents a brief history of web hosting to see how we arrived at our present state and why. Details inside.

Tom Bellinson asks “what is the difference between an ERP system that is cloud based and one that is not?” He argues that the answer is more about the architecture of the software and less about the software vendor. Read this edition of Process Solutions for Tom’s insights on selecting the software solution that best fits your processes.

In his initial Column for 2016, Tom Bellinson describes the process he and his partners followed in launching their 100% web-based enterprise. They began by setting up the domain with their hosting service and doing a baseline installation of WordPress. Tom takes us through all of the steps in the process and highlights the do’s as well as the don’ts in building your web presence.

As both a technologist and process professional, Tom Bellinson often finds himself considering the cost/benefit ratio of acquiring new technologies. In this Column, he urges caution before replacing your existing ERP software with newer software solutions and details his reasons why.

When Tom Bellinson took a position at a large public university, he was exposed to some process management challenges that were considerably different from those he encountered in the small and medium size businesses he had worked in for most of his career. Universities tend to have far more processes than do small to mid-sized organizations which led to some using automation tools such as Microsoft Access and Apple’s FileMaker Pro. In this Column, Tom defines the four sets of integrated capabilities present in both tools—Data Modeling, Interface Design, Report Builder, and Programming Logic, and demonstrates how each tool can be used to automate processes.

Having participated in several debates on BPTrends Linkedin forum about how BPM derives its value, it became clear to Tom that there is considerable disagreement among experts and practitioners regarding what BPM is and what constitutes a good BPM approach. In this Column, he presents his views regarding what BPM is and the value derived from a properly implemented BPM initiative.

In this installment of his software development series, Tom Bellinson discusses a category of agile development called Scrum. Using this technique, a Development Team sets out to create a functional product early on rather than writing a large design document. The Product Owner plays a critical role in the success of a Scrum project, and, to illustrate how critical the role really is, Tom presents a real world scenario where the Product Owner was not fully engaged and defines the resulting problems that resulted.

In his previous Column in the Software Solutions series, Tom Bellinson presented the Agile Manifesto and introduced the basic principles of how the philosophy aligns with good process management techniques. Recognizing that getting the “soft stuff” right is one of the biggest challenges of any operating philosophy, he sought the expertise of fellow Columnist Keith Harrison-Broninski in providing the solution to that challenge.