In a recent blogpost, Lombardi's executives gave us some good feedback on the status of business process management (BPM) in the current economic environment. They felt almost all enterprises were looking exclusively at managing more core processes involving customer, supplier and partner contact; peripheral processes such as HR and IT Lifecycle Management (ITLM) are not making the cut when it comes to projects Lombardi is seeing.
But actually my initial question to them was framed a little differently:"Was the type of BPM solution changing in the down economy? Were users more interested in stovepipe solutions than integration solutions or vice-versa? "
View imageThe illustration shows some of the characteristics of the two extremes of BPM that I was thinking of. Jim Sinur of Gartner, who was attending the same online meeting added another possible characteristic by which to measure the ebb and flow of BPM: "Are enterprises adding BPM for competitive advantage (or simply to cut costs, be more efficient, or meet another internal need)?"
So ask yourselves those questions and let us know by the comment box or email reply what you think.
- Are there particular characteristics of BPM that you think make more sense in a down economy?
- Are you likely to change process flow (by adding new technology) during a recession or sit out until the economies improve?
- Are any of your suppliers or partners/customers asking you to implement new flows to help them out in a down economy?
- Are these the right questions?
Are there particular characteristics of BPM that you think make more sense in a down economy?
* BPM solutions can relatively easily improve departmental-scale processes using resources that are in place (without a major or enterprise scale change to the way IT solutions are being delivered).
* Similarly, single process solutions across multiple departments can be tackled without having to reconsider the whole enterprise.
* Conversely, it is easier to take stock and plan how a whole enterprise should deal with the business processes that drive to the organisation's goals when the overall activity is lower.
* The technology of BPM solutions is inherently simpler and easier to scale up (and down) - solutions that work now can be built without fear that they will not be able to respond in an upturn.
Are you likely to change process flow (by adding new technology) during a recession or sit out until the economies improve?
* and the economies are magically going to improve how?
* looking at the BPM solutions from Intalio, ActiveVOS and the like, "new technology" does not appear to be the major investment in the way previous generations of ERP change were.
Are any of your suppliers or partners/customers asking you to implement new flows to help them out in a down economy?
* can you pro-actively offer improved flows with suppliers/partners/customers for mutual benefit?