BPM from a Business Point of View

From a 2009 AIIM Study on Business Process Management...

 63% of responding organizations consider the importance of BPM to be significant or imperative.

 Hard-dollar savings from 'Improving Process Throughput' and 'Reducing Process Steps' are the 2 biggest drivers for BPM, followed by 'Improving accuracy and repeatability'.

 49% of organizations achieved payback of their investment in BPM tools within 18 months and a further 23% within 2 years.

 62% of those polled consider they have only addressed 1/5th of the potentially profitable BPM projects.

My Thoughts...

Like with many topics, BPM has its supporters and its detractors. BPM Vendors will have their positive stories. You will likely find pundits on either side of the topic. This was a study put out by AIIM - hopefully it is somewhat neutral.

The 'hard-dollar savings' supports Peter Drucker's statement: Efficiency is doing things right; Effectiveness is doing the right things.

Efficiency - Improving Process Throughput

Effectiveness - Reducing Process Steps

You could say that managing business processes is about removing non-value added activities [doing the right things] and automating the mundane activities that can be performed by software. Further, as you analyze your processes it only makes sense to make sure that you are 'doing things right'.

I would have expected the payback numbers to be shorter, but if you take on the complex processes first the payback will take longer.

BPM is significant or imperative because it should lower costs, lead to increased revenues, and improve customer relationships and that makes it worth the effort. It can differentiate you from your competitors. It can be the key that allows your company to break out as the market leader [increased market share].

Your Thoughts...

What steps has your company taken to be a market leader?