BPM keeps CIOs awake at night

The Society for Information Management`s latest survey says the top three IT management concerns of CIOs in 2006 are the alignment of IT and business; attracting, developing, and retaining IT talent; and security and privacy issues, reports InformationWeek.

The survey, which polled 139 CIOs, listed - among the other top 10 concerns of business tech leaders this year - speed and agility, new to this year`s list. As for technology priorities, half of the top six applications and technology developments on CIOs` plates in 2006 are new to this year`s list. Debuting on the list are Web services, business process management (BPM), and customer portals.

Other top IT management concerns include IT strategic planning, project management capability, introducing rapid business solutions, true return on individual IT investments, measuring the value of IT investments, and IT governance. Falling off this year`s top 10 list of IT management concerns is business process re-engineering. Business intelligence, security technologies, and systems integration remained on the list.

An Onyx white paper has come out in favour of converged BPM, writes TMCnet.

The paper, "Customer process management: The real-time enterprise depends on the merging of CRM and BPM," states that merging BPM and CRM will create a better approach to process management, which delivers the flexibility to manage complex customer processes in real time.

This white paper provides a compelling case for converged implementation of BPM and how it can strengthen inter-departmental information sharing, improve customer relationships and ensure the consistent adaptation of internal systems to changing customer needs.

Experts are predicating major changes ahead for BPM as a result of companies` struggles to meet US federal compliance regulations for securing customer data, reports Sci-Tech Today.

Experts say companies realise they can do a lot more with new BPM products than just get better organised to meet new compliance rules, which will boost take-up of BPM.

Lubor Ptacek, director of product marketing for EMC`s software group, says while BPM is a niche domain, this will change. Ptacek also predicts that BPM software will gradually cease to be positioned as a unique category of products, as the concept of BPM becomes more integrated into the overall business infrastructure.