Recently industry analyst firm Gartner, inc. unveiled 5 Business Process Management predictions for 2010 and beyond, highlighting important changes and trends that we will soon see in the BPMS space. In this post, Greg Carter, Chief Technology Officer and EVP of Product Development for Metastorm, weighs in on two of these predictions.

 Gartner Prediction: “By 2014, 40% of business managers and knowledge workers in Global 2000 enterprises will use comprehensive business process models to support their daily work, up from 6% in 2009.”

 Not only do we see this as being true, we see that business process models as we know them today are just the tip of the iceberg.

 Recently we were working on a visualization tool and new UI proof of concept that took information from our process integration engine and used a map of the continental US to display process activity meshed with business metrics (dollar values in this case) and system status information. We started talking about other forms of visualization and which models we should use – I thought the map was a bit passé. But deeper thinkers pointed out that the map is one of the oldest forms of models, and one that is almost universally understood – thus it is a great way to add context to information. I had not really thought of a map as model, but it surely is, and a very effective model at that.

 For example, in San Francisco you receive a call from the manager at the account servicing center in Richmond who is very concerned because there are 20 inches of snow due at the same time that mid-month renewals are being processed. From your portal do you open up a bunch of spreadsheets to try and figure out the possible effects? Nope.

 Instead, you locate the Richmond office in your locations and facilities model, drill into the different processes that run at that office – renewals, closings, automatic billings. You quickly navigate to other locations that also provide those services – in Phoenix – and begin to formulate a plan to relocate the work to another site. From the process you can jump to a systems model that shows all the supporting services. Are they available in Phoenix? Yes. Suddenly those 20 inches of snow are not a huge deal.

 As we uncover more and more of the modeling ‘iceberg’ I think we’ll discover that the possibilities for modeling technology are endless. So far the BPM community has failed to really tap into its true potential, but we are getting there. However, while reading Gartner’s prediction it struck me once again how narrow and limiting the view of models is today.

 At Metastorm we are broadening this view, and would instead say that by 2014 managers will not be using just process models, but all different kinds of models as well– information flows, communication models, strategic planning models, etc., to understand and control processes and to capture, plan, and execute on a daily basis – and we’re working hard to make this a reality.

 Gartner Prediction: By 2013, dynamic BPM will be an imperative for companies seeking process efficiencies in increasingly chaotic environments.

I think dynamic BPM is already very much here. Almost every process we see deployed has a significant dynamic aspect to it. We are not talking about automation, but allowing the managers and process owners to change the process in flight, adjusting operating parameters, building in new process elements, and creating collaboration groups on the fly.

Of course Metastorm is both a modeling and an execution company and we feel that the key to making all of this work without creating ‘chaos across the organization’ is to express all of the variables in these dynamic processes – the people, the capabilities, the integrations, the goals and measurements – as models. And for that matter, also making adjustments using models – simply seeing a chart or a report with someone’s workload is different than being able to see where a person sits in the organization, and to be able to drill down, connect to and see all the processes they participate in and what goals rely on their performance – enabling much more informed action, whether that action is taken by a person or by invoking a pre-defined business rule.

Gartner’s position is a valid assumption and is reflected in the plans of Metastorm and other BPM providers. Key to the developments and application of trendy discovery, social software, and mobile applications is making sure we focus on making these technologies relevant while ensuring that they help organize the chaos, not exacerbate it.

Take social software for example – how do we make this relevant to solving process problems?

We use the key attributes of social software – presence, capturing of interests (or skills and competencies), etc. –and then leverage these to accomplish skills-based routing, dynamically organizing communities of interest to solve problems, and assigning work to people online and in real time.

By incorporating our evolving attributes we can allow processes to adjust—dynamically generating dashboards and watch lists based on interest, or automatically suggesting who to talk to if there is a question at any step in a process. This work environment is reflective of the way people are communicating with each other today. In order for businesses to be successful, they need to adapt to the way systems and processes communicate with and through the employee – not vice versa.

After all, let’s face it – the drivers that caused BPM to be born – sluggish and inflexible response by traditional development approaches, too slow time to market, etc. – all still exist. The business will always be pushing for new areas of flexibility and self-modification to meet dynamic requirements, and communication will continually evolve and change – and since BPM is dynamic in nature, it is the perfect tool to respond and adapt to all of these things.

The way we define Business Process Management is expanding every day. Today other technologies like Business Process Analysis (BPA) and Enterprise Architecture (EA) are becoming synonymous with process management, and are an important part of any Business Process Management Suite (BPMS). Social networking and other internet capabilities are also becoming important to the holistic management of business processes. Metastorm is committed to being a leader in the BPMS space, and is excited to be at the forefront of these changes and trends as we discover more and more the awesome potential that these technologies really have to offer.

Learn more about Metastorm Enterprise, Metastorm’s integrated software suite of Business Process Management, Business Process Analysis and Enterprise Architecture here.

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