Lombardi’s chairman and CEO Rod Favaron and Phil Gilbert, CTO and President, spoke about the condition of their own company with analysts on November 18. But they also had some interesting thoughts about the future of business process management (BPM) in the current environment. They think BPM may be countercyclical in the down economy. It makes sense when you dig down into their thought process. It makes sense to follow the flow with Lombardi clients.
Favaron says enterprises he's talking to are looking almost exclusively at managing more core processes, operations in both the front and back office at this time. Peripheral processes such as HR and IT Lifecycle Management (ITLM) are not making the cut when it comes to projects Lombardi is seeing.
Counterintuitively, however, some deals are accelerating into the last three months of 2008 from calendar Q1 2009. Favaron admits that while he hopes that is unique to his products' features and functions, it’s probably happening so a client won’t lose budget in the new year.
Whichever way you cut it, Favaron says everyone is being very pragmatic, looking for a 12-18 month payback. I think that’s good advice in good times and down times. Phil Gilbert adds that the more mature companies that have been through down times before are using the current situation to make their company core processes work better so that they hit the ground running when the economy turns around again.
Gilbert, who has his own excellent blog by the way, says clients are “diving in and doing it” with fewer pilots. There is also more looking at outside-in view of processes with the nod going to workflows that enhance customer experience, increase customer touch points. In other words, there is more B2B than A2A. I think that is also a long-term recipe for success for BPM. (In fact, I don’t think you even need BPM unless you’re thinking about it from a B2B/supply-chain perspective.)
Oh by the way, the to executives said Lombardi is doing well so far in 2008.
-- Dennis Byron
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