BPM must integrate people, documents

The integration of business process, people and documents plays a key role in business process management (BPM) deployments, according to a senior executive from BPM provider Global 360, says ZDNet Asia.

Bhavesh Vaghela, the company's head of international marketing, said 80% to 85% of a company's operations involve these three elements.

"There is a huge requirement for the ability to manage those types of processes but there is still the large unknown of how people interact," said Vaghela.

BP Logix is increasingly addressing BPM at a project management level, according to SearchSOA.

The company's latest release, BP Logix Process Director, is designed to integrate project planning and business process management. It joins other BP Logix products such as Workflow Director.

"We target the business analyst," said Joby O'Brien, vice-president of development, BP Logix. "Our software is geared toward the graphical interface. It also comes with an embedded SDK for .NET developers that want to expand beyond the out-of-the-box capability."

According to recent research by AIIM, half of organisations using BPM tools achieve a payback of their investment in 18 months or less, states SourceWire.

In all, 72% recoup their BPM spend within two years. Once the tools are in place and understood, further projects take an average of eight months to complete. In addition to cost savings, users report faster process throughput and improved compliance from more consistent processes.

A majority of respondents feel they have only addressed one-fifth of the potentially profitable BPM projects in their organisation, and consider BPM to be “significant” or “imperative” to their business.