Harald Nehring of SAP, with whom we talked on ebizQ here, has announced availability of a joint SAP/Accenture white paper on business process management (BPM).
The first half is a good primmer on BPM basics, taking the reader through the lifecycle of a business process, a thorough explanation of business process modeling, and outlining the business case for BPM. The key sentence in this section--and the entire document from my world view--says,
"Notice that in theory no technology is required (to enable BPM)."
That shows a good understanding of BPM as a value proposition. That being said, I quibble with the premise of a headline in the same section that says "How are business processes executed with and without BPM?" If you argue that there is no technology required than it follows that there is no "without;" there is only implicit and explicit BPM.
Of course, the document is produced by two information technology suppliers. So, despite the theoretical statement about no technology needed noted above, the second half of the document is about technology. It does a good job of mentioning SAP competitors along with SAP in its examples but you can never win with such an approach. Too many products are left out. (Also note that the Haley Rules Engine mentioned is now an Oracle product.)
My quibble in this section is the statement that you can't have BPM without services oriented architecture (SOA). This is the IBM--and apparently SAP--view of BPM with which I disagree, especially because the white paper seems to equate the S in SOA with web services.
But those are both quibbles. Overall, this is a must read if you are just beginning your research into BPM. If you are just beginning such research, what you are going to find--and what the SAP/Accenture white paper will confirm--is that you are already into BPM even if you don't know it.
-- Dennis Byron
Dennis
Did you find any fresh content in the white paper?
For me it just demonstrates that SAP learned all the words about BPM and learned them right. Which is a kind of achievement actually if we look at stack vendors.
There is no reason for SAP to simply support the diminshing hype around BPM hence it must signal that from now on they are going to promote BPM quite agressively on all fronts, with BPX community not being the least one.
This is going to change the whole BPM landscape: I believe the lacking support from big ERP suppliers was the major stopper here. If SAP were successfull in becoming a leader here then other big ERP vendors should expect even tougher times in competing with SAP.
=AB