The Abstraction of BPM Maybe It’s Not That Difficult After All

Whew. There's ALL kinds of implications underlying that little trick.

 "It's the normal evolution of software," insisted Scott Byrnes. "Software always starts off as very siloed, very focused applications. As great as these applications are at what they do, they fail to address the fact that business process spans ALL those various, specific applications. In order to get synergy in an organization—say, between sales and marketing—you better be able to collaborate and have those two things communicate.

"Buying decisions are being made at a much higher, senior, level because executives realize the performance of their organizations depends on communication among all the silos. And they need visibility across the silos. I can't make a decision with just my finance hat on if I don't realize what impact that decision might have on my manufacturing or my sales environment," Byrnes said.

Brett Stineman added, "Customers do not ask for an enterprisewide solution that will change everything they do. They're going after more specific areas. But the great thing about BPM is reusability, as opposed to a point solution that addresses a specific problem—like a loan origination application. With BPM, they quickly see the value, and how it can be used many different ways across the organization."

Sanjay Kumar uses an example of a customer to illustrate the synergy between a process of one department affecting the results gained by another: "The wholesale division of one of the world's largest banks is required to submit a large number of corporate documents as part of the new account request. Before, the bank would collect paper documents in their central office and move boxes of paper among various employees for verification and approval. This process required a large army of people, and it also created a long customer-service cycle time. Now, via an automated workflow, users from various remote operational departments can access the documents by Web interface, provide easy verification of application documents and approve or deny the requests very quickly. This automated access has drastically reduced the bank's operational costs, and at the same time has greatly improved its customer-service experience."

Adding a different view, Laura Mooney described a basic approach her company has taken toward merging the action with the means. "Through acquisition, we have taken our human-centric BPM focus and added system and integration capabilities on the back-end to have visibility into an end-to-end business process. Those customers we gained are now looking the other way, at the human end of the equation. Customers who were once focused on system integration hadn't really realized they could leverage their human capital, too."

Ben Cody added: "We see an emerging demand for what we call ‘process intelligence.' Historically, BPM vendors make money through selling process-based applications. There will continue to be a demand for that. But we also see the need for intelligence about the processes—call it ‘BI for BPM.' Especially for companies that are coming up the maturity curve and already have BPM suites or BPM-like applications within ERP or content management—they want visibility into those processes end-to-end."

Is BPM a function? I always imagine the guy getting up in the morning, and saying "Gee, I better get to work! I've got a lot of business process managin' to do!" It never rings quite true to me...

 Laura Mooney sets me straight: "All the things businesses do—finance, HR, engineering, even marketing—are all just conglomerations of business processes. So if you're a manager, your job is to optimize your business processes. And the managers are starting to term it that way; that's why BPM has been able infiltrate into businesses. They realize they have ‘processes' that are broken, and BPM is that answer to how to fix them. Once they realize how applicable the solutions are across different types of processes, then BPM starts to proliferate."

Brett Stineman of EMC Documentum helped me put it into perspective: "Vendors are realizing that BPM isn't ‘integration-centric' versus ‘human-centric.' It's not just about automation; it's really trying to bring it all together and handle human activities as well as process execution."

As you read the following essays, keep an eye out for emerging trends, such as shared service options, hosted BPM offerings and the further integration of IT with the business side of the house. These are the things that leading businesses are looking at, and should be on your radar as well. But the fact is: BPM is, at its very core, simply another term for "sharing information, knowledge and expertise" in a way that improves your company's performance, saves money, increases competitiveness and makes everyone happy when they go home at the end of the day.

And if that's not a good and fitting description for the KMWorld magazine mission, I don't know what is. Please keep reading these white papers; this is the magazine's 10th year of trying to deliver this message; it is the KMWorld Best Practices White Paper Series' seventh year. Here's the deal: We'll keep creating a space for buyers and sellers of business process improvement to get together if you— valued readers—keep coming here to join the marketplace.

Here's to the next decade! Thanks!

Cast of Characters

Michael Beckley
Vice President Product Strategy, Appian

Scott Byrnes
VP Marketing and Product Management, HandySoft Global Corporation

Ben Cody
VP Product Management, Global 360

Sanjay Kumar
Director, CDM—Strategy & Application, Interwoven

Laura Mooney
Senior Director, Corporate and Product Marketing, Metastorm

Brett Stineman
Senior Product Marketing Manager EMC Documentum Process Suite

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