To achieve these goals, some organizations look to leverage a robust BPM suite, while others are simply trying to improve their processes using BPM.  Regardless of intentions or methods, organizations are investing more and more each year in BPM projects to improve flawed business processes, save money and boost productivity. 

Gartner asked 600 business process management users to rank 22 capabilities they wanted most from BPM software and then ranked the responses from most to least important in a report titled, Survey Analysis:  BPM Spending to Grow Significantly in 2011¹.

Here are Gartner’s top five and where we see the value…
 

1.  Business Process Modeling

Process is the foundation of an organization.  Exploring, modeling and analyzing processes is a reliable way to determine how to improve the way things are done.  By having an enterprise and business architecture modeling element, you can develop a blueprint of your organization to understand the interrelationships, processes and behaviors that exist.  From there, you can model out exactly how the process will change and actually see how it would work in a real-world scenario.   

2.  Business Rules Management

Organizations need to make decisions based on rules and policies and they are looking for a way to edit and approve expectations and claims on a case-by-case basis.  A business rules management capability within a BPM suite allows non-technical business users to be directly involved with managing the rules and processes that are subject to complex and varied exceptions – making it easier for them to make the right, informed decision.

3.  Collaboration

With the continuing (and game changing) innovation of social networking, collaboration has become a critical part of our society and organizational fiber.  Removing communication barriers within organizations is an ongoing goal in the quest for optimal productivity and agility.  People use social networking tools to collaborate in every other aspect of their lives and are now looking for collaboration tools and techniques to be extended to the office.  When you combine advanced collaboration tools with business modeling, organizations are better equipped to easily engage more people in creating the right processes that offer the best value to the enterprise. 

4.  Process Optimization/Simulation

The ability to simulate process changes is one of the most valued aspects of a business process management tool – it allows you to make smart, well thought out decisions.  By simulating processes you have the ability to understand interactions and design the best processes to maximize your resources. A business process analysis element allows you to analyze process performance and stage as is and to be analysis – which helps you compare the potential for increased service levels as well as time, error, and cost reductions.

5.  Human Interaction Management

People are the core of a business and they’re involved in some of the most manual, complex, and evolving processes that run the organization.  BPM suites help organizations support these human-centric processes by giving managers visibility into the interworking of the business and access to the content they need, when they need it. Organizations can document and analyze these human-centric processes, gather input from employees (hopefully using a robust collaboration capability!), and better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s practices so that business improvements can be made. 

Clearly there is a close match between what people are looking for in a BPM suite and what Metastorm offers.  This is likely because, as a long-time leader in the BPM market, we have spent years talking to industry experts, analysts, our partners and our customers about what they want and need from a BPM suite and how we can best help them solve their process problems. It’s clear that BPM isn’t going away and that people are turning to it more and more to help fix some very complex problems.

For more information about Metastorm BPM, read our solution sheet or check out some of our customer success stories. 

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The concept of collaboration and the incorporation of social tools in BPM have prompted a significant amount of dialogue within the enterprise software industry (see related blog posts below).  Many critics are not convinced of the industry need for integrating social components into BPM in a meaningful way.  In many cases people view social BPM as hype – people are talking about the concept, but not demonstrating how it can be utilized to produce successful organizational models or significant results. 

Applying social networking tools to BPM allows the organization to access a wealth of untapped resources.  Though BPM is designed to yield the most optimal solutions, it has the tendency to ignore variance of opinions, ideas and work styles within the organization.  Each person in a given model has unique characteristics, knowledge and skills, which lead to their ability to perform tasks.  Recognizing that each person is inherently different, assigning everyone to completely identical series of processes hinders the organization’s ability to efficiently optimize their workflow capacity.  Social BPM alleviates this problem because it provides a platform for individuals to express their unique abilities in a very real-time and interactive way.  The future of social BPM lies in developing the best way to leverage social media tools to promote collaboration and coordination in the workplace – on an enterprise basis with a meaningful contribution to the business.

Social media tools give individuals the opportunity to work together in an open space to seamlessly design and shape their specific business models.  When people are given the option to develop their own process, they are far more likely to efficiently use the model and be motivated to find additional areas for improvement.  The idea behind it being – If you develop it, you will use it (rather than build it, and they will come).

Adding a social dimension to BPM transforms the way organizations identify, manage and resolve issues within their processes.  Through these tools, an unlimited number of users are able to contribute their suggestions to the modeling process, thus creating the most successful, efficient processes for each organization and then interact with each other during day-to-day process execution to leverage specific skill sets as needed to make the best decisions.  Social networking is then about sharing information and insights and doing business more effectively, rather than just socializing for personal gain.

Stay tuned for more on Metastorm’s upcoming announcements in the areas of enterprise collaboration and social BPM – we will soon be empowering business users in unprecedented new ways!    

In the meantime, you can read up on the subject by perusing some of these recent blog posts on Social BPM:

Fast Forward Blog – Joe McKendrick

Forrester Research – Clay Richardson

Column 2.0 – Sandy Kemsley

Thoughts on Collaborative Planning – Keith Swenson

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