Butler Group believes Business Process Management (BPM) is being over-hyped by ambitious vendors with the effect that the technology could suffer a similar fate as ERP by failing to meet ROI promises. However, while the new report on BPM by the Butler Group is warning that expectations are being raised to dangerous levels, it also advocates the strategic implementation of the technology. In particular, BPM will play a critical role in enabling companies to meet compliance requirements.
The report makes the following points and recommendations:
· Only in the rare cases of a vanilla implementation should companies install an enterprise-wide BPM solution. Instead, companies should view BPM as an opportunity to extract greater process efficiencies in controlled, tactical environments where those processes have not been impacted by other systems, such as ERP. Importantly, any BPM solution must be implemented in relation to the impact on other processes.
· Many compliance issues, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, need a BPM solution, however this is only for those regulations that will require ongoing auditability and could change over time. The larger the organisation the greater the problem they are going to have becoming and remaining compliant if they do not have a BPM solution. The most astute companies will take the opportunity to recoup some costs of a compliance-driven BPM implementation by improving other processes at the same time.
· Whatever the size and scale of the BPM implementation, companies are advised not to believe vendor hype and be prepared for there to be little or no ROI. The main area of benefit is BPM ‘s ability to increase the efficiency of a core business process. However, in reality most processes have already been made efficient over time.
· Four solutions (IBM WebSphere Integration Server, Fuego, SeeBeyond ICAN 5.0 and webMethods BPM solution) outperform the competition. Unlike other applications, such as CRM and ERP, BPM is benefiting from the fact that many of its components are mature pieces of software that have been through multiple generations of development and deployment.
2004-01-29
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