Innovatech

“Each company’s unique way of doing business is captured in its business processes. For this reason, business processes are rapidly becoming the most valuable corporate asset. BPM provides companies the ability to model, manage, and optimize these processes for significant gain.”

Vivek Randivé Chairman and CEO TIBCO Software Inc.

Executive Summary

Business process management (BPM) has dramatic business and technology effects. It provides organizations with the ability to save money, save time, and deliver value through real return on investment (ROI). This paper defines the BPM concept and highlights its importance to an enterprise’s ability to stay competitive and remain agile in a constantly changing global marketplace. It also summarizes the technology underpinnings of TIBCO Staffware Process Suite™ and how they enable organizations to achieve real value.

Demand for Improved Business Processes

After several years of heavy investment in technology, many organizations are cynical about the capability of IT functions, and the technology vendors and consultants that support them, to deliver the benefits they promise. They are wary of investing more in IT, yet continue to expect more out of IT departments. Not only are organizations placing greater demands on IT, they are also expecting IT to respond faster and faster. Many of these requirements are driven by the demand for new or improved business processes. Improving customer service, bringing new products to market, and reducing cost inefficiencies all push business processes and their effective management to the top of the priority list. One aspect of the response to these pressures on IT has been a change in the way that organizations are looking to approach process automation. Increasingly, CIOs are looking for a different way of improving business processes, avoiding investment in large, expensive, and risky new application projects that have so often led to disappointment in the past. Instead, they want to leverage the existing assets and investment and concentrate their efforts on the automation of processes across those assets. This new approach has been labeled business process management (BPM), and is being addressed with a collection of technologies that make up the BPM suite.

What Is BPM?

BPM is about change management and system implementation methodology that enables the continuous comprehension and management of business processes that interact with people and systems, both within and across organizations. It is a methodology based on the following assumptions:

Business processes are ever-changing and developing.
Processes cross-cut each other.
Processes must flow between multiple organizations and interested parties.
Processes interact with systems, and people. Those people can be employees, partners, customers, or suppliers.

Successful deployment of a BPM suite can benefit both lines of business and the IT department.
For the organization as a whole, BPM can ensure business process transparency and visibility, which can lead to higher productivity, reduced errors, and tighter compliance with legal requirements. This directly impacts an organization’s ability to adapt to changes in the market place (e.g. introduce new products), reduce operational costs, and improve customer service.
In a random survey of TIBCO BPM customers, conducted by independent agency Intercai Mondiale,

100% reported increased productivity
95% improved quality of service
82% reduced operating costs
82% saw faster process cycle times

For the IT department, BPM can connect disparate systems, thereby squeezing more value out of current investments. Successful deployment of BPM can also allow IT to future-proof the infrastructure so that additions or changes to the system do not require re-invention or significant changes to the business processes. The service-oriented nature of such an infrastructure allows quick development and deployment of new applications and processes. This allows IT to be more responsive to the changing demands of the organization.