From Rashid N Khan, President of Leadership BPM ...
He sees the future of BPM in the three S's: Socialization, SaaS and Simplification.
If the market evolves towards socialization and SaaS, then it is necessary for BPM solutions to be simplified because both of these trends demand simple solutions. He sees that BPM has become too complex for its own good and vendors will be well served by narrowing their scope.
A complex BPM solution cannot be used by a large number of users. In the era of social networking, customers would rather use a simple workflow tool that is easy to use and adopted by a large number of people instead of a complex product with bells and whistles that is only used by a few.
My Thoughts...
Again, BPM is about managing business processes. The goal: manage processes to increase revenues, decrease costs and improve customer relationships. You can manage business processes without using any software or websites - it has been happening for years.
When I apply 'simplify' to business processes I am thinking about removing non-value added activities, automating activities and improving the process to shorten cycle times - real business process management.
Whether the process is a simple workflow tool that is easy to use and adopted by a large number of people or a complex product with bells and whistles that is only used by a few really has no bearing. Select from the processes that are of high value to your company. Recall my 80/20 argument - improving 20% of your business processes will provide 80% of the benefit. It is most important to manage one of the 20% of your processes.
Back to my mantra - if you want your company to be one of the companies that breaks out of this 'depression' stronger, then you must get more efficient. Don't we all want to increase revenues, decrease costs and improve customer relationships? This should lead to increased market share and increased profits.
Your Thoughts...
Has your company begun any process management activities?
Keeping it Real!
On Simplification: Agreed - this is a prerequisite for socialization of business processes to be worthwhile. Engagement with business users is essential, whereas so much of what's written about BPM seems to be facing towards the needs of the automation brigade.
A little gem of an Article here - http://tinyurl.com/yevgbl3
“Sensible BPM for sensible times�, by Martin Atherton, Freeform Dynamics.
Martin says; “Our research in this area highlighted several factors of relevance to anyone seeking to make improvements to their business processes ‘without making a big fuss'. The first is simply acknowledging where the opportunities for improvement lie.�
Well worth a read, as this quickly gets to the heart of why a simple (aka sensible) approach to BPM is inseparable from business led process improvement and how that links into socialization etc.