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BPM Elevator Pitch

February 16th, 2011

If you try to search for the right elevator pitch for BPM, you would come across bunch of hot discussions with complementing (some times even contradicting ) statements. You would come across many situations where you need to let the prospective know what you have in your plate quickly . So its important to explain BPM in 30-60 seconds. But it looks like there is no silver bullet here. Remember the story of elephant and the blind men? BPM sounds similar. We cannot do the same elevator pitch for all the situations. Eventhough the impact of BPM on businesses is quite high, it is difficult to explain. So the best approach would be to understand the customer and business issues and highlight the different aspects of BPM.

For those who don’t understand BPM technology , Wiki and Gartner explains it as follows:

· Wiki version:  “Business process management (BPM) is a management approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients.”

· Gartner version: “BPM is a management practice that provides for governance of a business’s process environment toward the goal of improving agility and operational performance. BPM is a structured approach employing methods, policies, metrics, management practices and software tools to manage and continuously optimize an organization’s activities and processes.”

The different scenarios in business where BPM would fit as a perfect technology enabler are given below:

An Organization might have too many systems in place and might have made huge IT investments without a proper road map. In such cases, it might be looking for a solution that would get the most out of existing investments. For such scenarios a BPM solution can be strongly justifified, if we consider the following aspects.

o ” Concept of information moving between enterprise software packages”

o “As you know, over the years we have invested too much on many Enterprise Applications, and that’s all been good. But while these apps have helped us automate many functions, we think we can be more competitive if we could make all those functions and apps work in better symphony. We found BPM the perfect way to work across those silos and plug all those gaps - not just gaps from apps, but also in business coordination! Business will be able to influence the solutions more directly. BPM can help us not only in automation but also in addressing the cost and efficiency of our operations”

To those who understand the fact that the maturity of business is in the maturity of its processes and in the continuous improvement its good to say that BPM software would help in:

o “modeling to create the ‘perfect’ process,”

o “facilitating business process change throughout its life cycle”

o “becoming an enabler for our business innovations”

If there are concerns about team performance, accountability etc. BPM is the best tool to bring transparency, speed, accountability and consistency among the team members.

o “streamline and automate [expend effort] the processes that underpin those areas to get a reliable, quality outcome. The resulting reduction in administration efforts and irritation releases profits back to the bottom line every time.”

o “enable continuous improvement that builds on reengineering, activity based costing, business intelligence and other prior business efforts.”

For those who believes customer is the king here goes a set of different views

o “Business process management (BPM) can streamline customer interactions and realign overworked employees with a new aura of process efficiency.”

o “BPM increases customer satisfaction and reduces costs”

o “BPM reduces customer irritation and recovers margins lost to the business”

If somebody is planning for a custom development for the requirements that sounds like a process automation then the following suggestions can be given confidently:

o “With a BPM solution we can get the development and production environment enabled wihtin a week at a third of the normal cost.”

o ” The reasons for doing this with BPM are that we get there faster and cheaper, and we end up with a solution that accommodates easy changes. “

For those who worry about Compliance and Regulations  ”With BPM you can comply with all the international trade regulations without increasing the time and cost of the import and export processes and you will reduce the risk of the operation as well”

To those who are very much result oriented, KPIs like Pega gives the following suggestion “In as little as 90 days, Pega BPM can deliver dramatic business results that include revenue growth of 30%, cost reductions of 40%, and customer retention improvements of 5 points or more”

In short ,  WYSIWYG is best way to understand BPM. Contact us for a quick demo on popular BPM products like Intalio and Oracle BPM Suite!

Bijith BPM, Custom Application Development, Featured Blogs, Quality & Process

Key Findings AIIM’s 2009 Industry Watch report on BPM

December 7th, 2009

Key Findings AIIM’s 2009 Industry Watch report on BPM

  • 63% of responding organizations consider the importance of BPM to be significant or imperative.
  • Hard-dollar savings from “Improving process throughput” and “Reducing process steps” are the two biggest drivers for BPM, followed by “Improving accuracy and repeatability”.
  • 49% of organizations achieved payback of their investment in BPM tools within 18 months and a further 23% within two years. Additional projects are taking around 8 months on average to complete.
  • 62% of those polled consider they have only addressed 1/5th of the potentially profitable BPM projects.
  • Accounts payable and accounts receivable processes showed the strongest success factors, followed by customer support cases, proposals and contracts, and claims processing.
  • In a third of organizations, BPM projects are likely to be initiated by Line of Business managers, whilst in another third,IT take the lead.
  • Integration with other systems is the biggest technical challenge faced by our respondents.
  • The strongest indicator for successful BPM processes is the presence of an existing process owner.
  • 35% report that they have applied BPM to scanning all incoming mail.
  • 6% are currently extending managed processes across the supply chain, but 19% have plans to do so.
  • Just 4% of organizations are currently outsourcing BPM-enabled processes but this is set to rise to 18% in the future.
  • In this sample, organizations are most likely to use BPM functions within DM/ECM systems (26%), followed by those using specific BPM functions in enterprise suites. Third is custom development and middleware, ahead of dedicated BPM suites (13%).
  • 11% of organizations currently use BPM functions in SharePoint, and this is set to treble to 34% in the future, largely from new BPM users, and particularly in mid-sized organizations.
  • Spending on BPM licenses looks set for a net increase over the next 12 months, with spending on BPM services and consultancy set to increase significantly.
  • 36% look to buy their BPM tools from their existing ECM supplier, with 25% buying best-of-breed tools, and 23% preferring dedicated BPM suites.

Read more…

Admin BPM

Top 5 Questions on BPM Adoption

November 19th, 2009

Recently I came across a blog by a Gartner Analyst which discusses about top 5 questions that lingers over the minds of decision makers in different organizations. The answers for the top 5 questions are explained in simple manner which will clear the air over the BPM implementations.

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Dinesh BPM , ,

Why BPM and Why not ERP?

November 5th, 2009

Initially ERP was introduced as a package composed of best practices frameworks. ERP takes care of all the core business processes across the departments. But it failed miserably to integrate with other external systems and business partners. Another major drawback of ERPs is its rigid structure which gives little scope for customization. Hence the organizations are forced to adjust their business processes to fit the standardized process models embedded in the ERP. This puts IT ahead of business where it should be the other way around.

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Dinesh BPM ,

Hints to select between Model-Driven and Model-Based Development!!!

August 28th, 2009

Model-Driven Approach and Model-Based Approach of Development!!!!. Have you ever thought about what these two terms really mean? In this blog I will brief the differences between these two frameworks which might be of some help in selecting the best option that will fit your requirements to achieve the strategic goals.

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Dinesh BPM, Custom Application Development , ,

Peek into the future of Application Development!!!

August 13th, 2009

Stop learning programming; Get trained in system analysis“- In 70s, this was the advice given by a famous futurologist to the young students who were interested in software programming. Some of the ongoing trends in the industry may support this theory but still there are proponents who anchor the traditional application development ship from sinking. Experts are jumping out with different opinions about the future of application development. Let me just give you a gist of these discussions. Read more…

Dinesh BPM, Custom Application Development, Technology Snippets , , ,

Cloud BPM: Whats in it???

August 11th, 2009

BPM vendors are flying and trying hard to get themselves cloudy. i.e. to provide their BPM offerings packaged in cloud model. Apart from few concerns like security, confidentiality and lose of control, cloud is getting good traction among CIOs and other IT communities. Since BPM will take role as an extended arm of secured on-premise systems, being cloudy seems to be very promising. Below are the points which prove Cloudy BPM to be a boon. Read more…

Bijith BPM ,