Competitive Analysis for Decentralised Business Process Management

Competitor landscape has been analysed with the help of two frameworks. Figure 1 uses the classical ambition matrix positioning Decentrlised Business Process Management or simply DBPM as a rather further out than closer in innovation. We positioned multiply version of DBPM on the market segment, because creating a cross-company business process between two companies should not necessarily be regarded as a new market, perhaps not even emerging. However creating business processes between companies, individuals and IoT devices surely manifests as a new market segment.

Figure 1. Industry and competitive analysis with ambition matrix

Figure 2 summarises the competitors on a rather architectural way concentrating on two dimensions:

1.  At the dimension of high trust architecture the question is if the technology is based on Blockchain, providing a scalable high-trust architecture by design, or on a classical client-server framework (or perhaps old fashioned mainframe).

2. The diversity of actors analyses how many different parties should be considered for a business process, ranging from a one-company process to the processes of multiply companies, individuals or intelligent gadgets.

Figure 3. Solution segmentation

Based on the two orientation diagrams as well, we would argue that enterprise ready classical Business Process solutions should be regarded as direct competitors of DBPM. They do not necessarily focus directly on a cross-actor market, apart from some examples like Kofax, but enterprise ready basically means that they can be extended with some further development on a cross-company or even cross-intelligent gadget scale. For example some of the ‘big players’, like Oracle, IBM, or SAP implement cross-company functionalities as well. However on the one hand they are not based on Blockchain solutions on the other hand they require that the same solution is installed and licensed in all of the trusted companies, like SAP processes between subsidiaries of a company. Enterprise business process solutions can clearly compete on a markets where processes between a few previously trusted companies should be implemented, but they will have the weakness as soon as processes between a larger numbers of untrusted actors should be set up.

As indirect competitors we regard the whole smart contract market, including general platforms, like Ethereum, Counterparty (Bitcoin based smart contract system) and systems like Hyperledger. These platforms clearly provide the possibility to set up trust between different untrusted actors based on smart contracts and Blockchain, however they have rather a general focus and not a BPM specific one. As an example a specific decentralised business process can surely be implemented as a set of hard-coded smart contracts, but hard-coding one such a company cooperation is completely different from providing a whole platform on which such processes can be practically clicked together. Nevertheless the risk that someone develops a competing solution on top of these frameworks is surely bigger than zero.

Companies who do something in the direction of multi-party trust system or business rules can be regarded as potential competitors. The range is here pretty big, starting from business rule engines like Decision, through digital business logic platforms like Drools, to general IoT solutions, like Ritc. They seem to be pretty far from DBPM at the first sight however they have a similar and strong technology basis that can be further developed in the direction of decentralised business process management without too much effort.

Based on the previous analysis our competitive strategy is based on two major building blocks:

1.  Decentralised processes among large number of possibly different kind of untrusted parties, including companies, individuals and intelligent gadgets.

2.  Low code solution in cooperation with local consulting companies of different industrial fields, making possible that decentralised processes are set up directly by the local experts of a certain field or even by end-customers in a self-service way.

We see that the market is pretty much in the emerging phase, hence the strategy is based on segments, like IoT communication that are emerging markets themselves. As a consequence we see the market and our competitive strategy as a blue ocean one.

Financial Framework for Decentralised Business Process Management

Setting up a financial framework for analysing DBPM (Decentralised Business Process Management) we are going to use the following considerations: 

From a unit economical point of view the most important element that directly carries the cost and indirectly generates revenue is an atomic t transaction. A p process is set up as executing and validating a sequence of t transactions.

In the business model, we distinguish two levels of the business. Core platform is responsible for executing decentralised transactions and processes. On the top of the core platform industry specific solutions can be delivered with the help of partner companies. On a long run industry specific solutions could be implemented directly by partner companies, however it is probably not realistic on a short run. As a consequence initial financial models consider both the development of the core platform and some of the industry specific solutions.
Costs structure is based on the following elements [Figure 1]:

1.    Variable cost:

a.  CoGS is mostly based on executing and validating the transactions on a decentralised consensus. It can be easily scale up or down depending on the customer needs. As opposed to a general Turing complete Blockchain system where executing a transaction might be pretty expensive due to the possibility of the infinite loops, at DBPM runtime of the atomic transactions are always limited from above, implying O(|T|) execution cost for a set of T transactions. The exact cost pretty much depends on the consensus mechanism, implying different numbers at proof of work, at proof of stake or at majority voting.

b.  CoGS is also influenced by storing the states of the validated transactions of a p process. It is manifested as a general storage cost that will be increased as the process itself is used. It requires further considerations if the whole state between two transactions is directly and fully stored in the Blockchain itself or rather off-chain solution might be used and only hash of the state is stored in the Blockchain.

c.  Supporting the system to partner companies or end-users is manifested as an additional variable cost.           

2.   Fix cost factors are mainly the SG&A expenses for running the company itself. As the primary focus is on the partner business, the most important is the professional business development as CAC.

3.    Investment: For a successfully start both the core framework and the first two or three industry specific solutions must be ready. They requires a certain amount of development and initial investment.

Revenue structure has the following factors [Figure 1]:

1.   Core services: customers get the value of using a certain business process itself. As executing a business process practically means executing a set of state changing transactions, it makes sense to charge money after transactions.

2.     Extended services might be possible as well, as providing training or consulting. It might be however a possibility that the company concentrates only core functionalities and every extended service is provided only by partner companies.

Figure 5. General cash-flow schema.

Business Model for Decentralised Business Process Management

Decentralised Business process management or simply DBPM is intended to be a strong infrastructure oriented solution, business model is based on an intensive partner network. The platform is not planned to be sold directly to the end-customer, instead partner companies having the industry specific know-how set up solutions on the top of DBPM [Figure 1]. A more detailed description of the ten types of innovation is covered in chapter plan as general operation model.

Figure 1. Business Model with Ten types of innovation

As DBPM is based on a Blockchain protocol, both cost drivers and profit should be based on transactions. It is certainly a question which digital consensus is applied, at Poof of Work model each transaction or block validation cost directly a certain amount of energy and money called the mining. At Proof of Stake or at general consensus mechanism like voting at Ripple rather a general hosting and participation cost is manifested. In any case profit model should be based on charging the customers after usage for individual or branch of transactions.          

From the network perspective DBPM solution would not be offered directly to the end-customers, instead the service would be sold with the help of strong B2B cooperation via partner companies. Examples can be:

-   consulting companies for setting up cross-company contracts and processes
-   IoT solution providers for setting up decentralised processes between hardware devices, for example for smart-homes.

Structure and process of the DBPM company would be pretty much similar to the classical enterprise software vendors. The core solution is continuously developed; based on the core solution industry specific features are developed. Instead of internal development, a possible way is to work with a strong open source community and develop the framework either with freelancers or with partner companies, just as at Ethereum Foundation. Another aspect that must be taken into consideration is the Network of hosters or miners who actually run the whole system. Depending on the Blockchain solution miners and hosters are paid in either by an internal cryptocurrency system or directly based on revenue.

In the middle of the product performance the core platform can be found: A decentralised P2P process management platform, in which each workflow state transition is validated by a consensus of the whole network. Apart from the core, the product system will contain industry and branch specific solutions and features.

One of the most important feature from a customer point of view is that DBPM is a no-code solution. It means that business processes can be ‘clicked’ together; in most of the cases no software developer is required. It makes a strong impact both on the service and on the customer engagement side. As a consequence of no-code development, distributed business processes can be directly built and modified by the knowledge workers of a specific industry. In this way rapid solution development and continues process improvement can be realised, instead of having long-running development life cycles. 

As a consequence of no-code development, sales channels are the best to realise in cooperation with local consulting companies. As an example on of the Big Four or Big Three companies can be an excellent candidate to use DBPM with local consultants realising indirectly common sales channels as well.

Branding must suggest the core business idea in a way and must suggest a strong and stability. From a technology point of view, name of the core technology can remain DBPM however it is adequate only for strong technical audiences.

Decentralised Business Process Management

Reaching slowly to the second machine age, cooperation and trust between different actors will be an always increasing problem. We did have previously difficulties as well as processes had to be set up including several companies but the situation will be much more challenging as several million more or less intelligent IoT devices start to communicate with each other.

Decentralised Business Process Management (or briefly DBPM) is a customisable process management platform to set up workflows among different untrusted parties, independently if these parties are companies, end-users, end-customers or intelligent gadgets of the IoT revolution. The processes are set up on the top of a Blockchain, as a consequence trust is evaluated by the decentralised consensus itself, making possible to implement complex trust scenarios among many fundamentally different actors. DBPM provides a no-code or low-code way of configuring processes, meaning that most workflows can be clicked together with the help of a web based tool. It implies on the one hand that end-customers without prior development or deep IT knowledge are able to customize processes on their own. On the other hand, consulting companies of different industrial fields are able to set up industry specific process solutions as well; again without the need of coding or deep IT know-how. 

Considering current achievements and technological platforms of the Blockchain Revolution , setting up a DBPM framework and the full business around can be feasible from a couple of million dollar financing.   .