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A Closer Look at BPM

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Introduction Business Process Management (BPM) is one of the hottest market segments in the software industry today. BPM is the discipline of modeling, automating, managing and optimizing business processes to increase profitability. With BPM, the focus starts with the end to end process, not the automation of a functional area like an Accounts Payable package would provide. The rapid growth of BPM is driven by the increasing recognition that success in todays economy is driven by the efficiency and effectiveness of your organization and its business processes. Depending on the process, a BPM focus improves organizational productivity, visibility and responsiveness; reduces costs and errors; and/or accelerates cycle times. Ultimately, a quality BPM focus is a key driver for profitability. To capture the BPM opportunity, it is important to take a detailed look at business processes, technology options, and choices that can improve your likelihood of maximizing value from BPM. Understand the BPM Opportunity To understand the BPM opportunity, it is beneficial to first take a close look at the definition of a business process by applying it to a real life situation and breaking it down into its key elements. Definition:A sequence of structured or semi-structured tasks performed in series or in parallel by two or more individuals or applications to reach a common goal. Consider the sample change order process diagrammed below. A customer requesting a change to a product or service initiates this process. Upon receipt of the request, the engineering manager can either reject the request, which generates an e-mail notification back to the customer, or request input from up to three other groups (software, electrical,and mechanical) simultaneously. When all the required groups have responded, the process uses Web Services to request that an estimation system evaluate the data provided and present time and cost figures for the change. This information is returned to the engineering manager for final review and adjustments. At this time, the engineering manager can once again reject the request if the costs or time estimates are too high. Otherwise, the information is provided to sales who can add more detailed information. The process will automatically generate a quote and send an email notification with the quote attached back to the customer.