technology

What Technology Does MetaPower Use?

MetaPower’s Business Process Work Station is a state-of-the-art Business Process Management (BPM) technology that allows non-programmers to automate business processes. MetaPower has patented a proprietary information architecture that is based on the five generic object types that make up all business processes. MetaPower calls this the Universal Control Data Architecture (UCoDA). Three US and four Foreign Patents have been issued for UCoDA.

UCoDA has been used to develop an information technology platform for deploying automated business processes we call the "Business Process Work Station" (BPWS). The BPWS is designed to host web-based automated processes, tailor-made for your business. The BPWS includes a powerful tool set that manages the development, deployment, and continued update of business processes. We call this automated tool set the Business Process Designer (BPD).

What is Significant about MetaPower’s Technology?

MetaPower's Technology is a breakthrough in business computing that finally removes the difficulty of changing computer applications. The technology provides flexibility to rapidly change automated processes, and the structure needed to ensure that business details are executed in accordance with a specified intent. Computer applications using this technology can conform to your business’s latest practices, rather than conforming to 20 year old practices embedded in arcane software. Business Leaders can now rest easier knowing that their employees are executing to a consistent and reliable business design.  It's Your Business Your Way!

What Is UCoDA?

The UCoDA Architecture provides the fundamental paradigm necessary to build a universal database that can support any and all business processes.

UCoDA, as a theory, supports the concept that the "enterprise" is an interconnected web of processes that execute best business practices. At the most basic level, assets continuously change as business is conducted. We buy things that deduct from our bank account and add to our inventory. Organizations make things that reduce the material inventory and increase the product inventory. Training people consumes resources and adds to human assets, etc. Each transaction is evidence of a process in action that not only supports the making physical changes but changing the records we keep. This way we know what we have, what we bought, what we spent and whether we made money or not.

The “enterprise as a web of processes” point of view created a powerful paradigm that has allowed MetaPower to identify the structures inherent in all teeming activities. The enterprise process paradigm has helped us determine that each process is really moving a packet of information that keeps track of the changes. Purchase orders, material requisitions, invoices, training requests, and work requests are good examples. MetaPower labels the change information packets as “controls” because they control the discrete work necessary to make sure changes are accurately executed and recorded in a timely manner. We have further identified that each “control” is working to make changes to multiple assets and their associated records. You would recognize these assets as financial accounts, inventories, equipment, documents, people, etc. MetaPower labels these objects “bases” since they represent the foundation of business.

So each process “moves” information packets (controls) from one step to another until they ultimately change one or more assets (bases) from one state (or configuration) to another. When a Control is complete, at least one base is changed and its executing process steps are recorded. From an information point of view, we are interested in two fundamental data sets, Control Data, and Base Data.

MetaPower's UCoDA theory has five basic object types that are used to completely describe all business processes of any enterprise. In addition to Controls and Bases, there are Intersections, which record relationships between Bases; Observations that record time related information about a Base without changing it; and Transactions, which record the allocation of resources to Bases.

What Is The Business Process Workstation (BPWS)?

According to MetaPower's UCoDA theory, we now know that any and all business processes can be described completely using five basic object types. MetaPower's products and services provide a database that takes advantage of this fact. MetaPower has developed a Process Control Standard that provides the structure needed to ensure any process is under control.

We visualize business processes as a series of steps that move a "control" from one step to the next by adding information to it. Each individual step can be represented by a universal set of actions and attributes. Every "control" has entry requirements, execution requirements, exit requirements and routing requirements.

So how do we provide the support people need to ensure that they remember how to perform a step correctly?

The Process Control Standard includes a host of functions that provide control tracking, work backlog management and accountability.The Process Controls Standard provides the following major features:

• Process Step Requirements – Each process step has requirements that define when the work is complete and consequently when it can be moved to the next step. This ensures that each step only gets work that can be reasonably accomplished.
• Process Step Owner – Each process step has an Owner who is responsible for seeing that the work is done. The Owner can assign work to individual Responsible Users.
• Responsible User – Each process step can only be executed by a defined group of individuals (Responsible Users) who are responsible for doing the work assigned to the process step. 
• Available to Work – Each Control residing in a process step is available to be worked by the Process Owner or any of the Responsible Users for that step. The work can be assigned by the Owner/ another Responsible User or it can be claimed by an individual Responsible User. Until the Control is assigned to someone it is considered “ available to work”.
• Desktop – When a Control is available to be worked with, it will appear in the user's interface in one of the following locations:
  1. On My Desk - The controls the individual is currently responsible for processing.
  2. My In Basket - The controls that are currently available for the individual to assume responsibility for.
  3. My Team’s Work - All the controls for which the Process Step Owner is responsible for.
  4. “Show Like Items” - All the controls in a specific process step, and the data that has been determined to indicate the priority of work in that step.
• Process Routing – At the exit of each step, configurable rules determine the Control’s proper routing to the next step.
• Route Map – Each process step includes a route map that indicates the current location of the Control in the process, the destinations available to the control and the route history of the control. The route map can be used to select the next step for the control including rerouting to pervious steps if required.

The Process Controls Standard provides the mechanism for controlling the process by ensuring that nothing gets lost. It ensures that each individual knows the work for which they are responsible for. It further provides for a Process Owner who is responsible for all the work associated with the process step.

The two elements of MetaPower’s technology (UCoDA Architecture and the Process Control Standard) provide the foundation for assembling a universal software platform that automates multiple processes, one step at a time. The software can be configured to host many process steps for many Controls. MetaPower calls this software platform the Business Process Work Station (BPWS). It provides the technical framework for deploying comprehensive business processes that operate from a process perspective rather than a data record perspective. The BPWS is built on the UCoDA business process principles of controls and bases rather than relational data concepts of tables, rows and columns. 

The BPWS Platform provides users with two critically important capabilities:

1. The structure needed to ensure that the business is being conducted in a disciplined manner.
2. The technical flexibility for the organization to easily change the application to support business innovation.

What Is The Business Process Designer (BPD)?

MetaPower uses the BPWS technology in building a process for designing, developing and managing an organization’s portfolio of business processes. The Business Process Designer (BPD) provides a disciplined process for developing business processes, managing the details necessary to ensure that they continue to be updated and remain consistent as the business evolves.

During process automation the BPD provides specific steps for identifying the Controls and Bases involved. Once these basic elements are defined, the BPD guides the definition of the data structures associated with the Bases and Controls. It also provides the facilities for specifying the business rules and input screens that govern how Controls get processed and Bases updated. Once the processes are automated the BPD serves as the repository for all the objects that make up the processes. As the business evolves and the processes need to change, the Designer’s control of the process objects facilitates the rapid deployment of the changes.