But what can BPM do?

Business process management (BPM) won't change the world. Not for everyone, anyway. It may make a big difference to some companies, though, particularly those that need to innovate to compete.

Says SAP chief technology architect Alvin Paules: “One of our clients is building a new global strategy and they're saying that if they're going to survive long-term, they need to be able to standardise yet innovate in each local market. So they have standardisation and governance on the back-end, and the ability to be different on the front-end, and are looking at BPM to get them there. They see it as a five- to 15-year journey, and we're saying things will be possible in 12 to 18 months if we do it properly.”

And this is the time most organisations would look to see at least a first win. Says K2 VP (Africa and Middle East) Eugene van Rensburg: “Two years ago, companies were looking at, for example, HR processes - low-hanging fruit to get BPM into the business and then be able to scale it out and get ROI. Today, they're more focused around something in the bus that's business-critical that they can take, get people comfortable with and then scale out. These days we're talking to the business.

“Companies are looking at where they can be more effective at grabbing market share. Depending on the customer, they may focus on customer onboarding and the customer experience; others have looked at identifying the procurement process and making sure all checks and balances are in there to monitor and help with cash flow. We're starting to see a lot of people focusing on business challenges and making it work for them, either growing their business or being very effective in the way they operate,” he says.

DST Global Solutions' head of Solutions Engineering John Flynn says the recession has hit pretty hard in the UK, US and Europe and, “as a result, organisations have woken up to the fact that they may have to work in different ways in the future, optimise processes and do more with less. It's not about wholesale headcount cutting; it's about being more effective with the people and resources you have to do the work the organisation requires. Implementing automation at the right points of the process comes into that. It's a way to take jobs away from humans where the human is adding no value, eg, capturing data by scanning.”

Said organisations are all aware that it's more expensive to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones, he adds, and are looking to improve customer service and renew contracts. “For telcos and consumer-based business, there's a lot of competition for the end-consumer's business. And it's the little things that help. So, ensuring a customer is notified on an ongoing basis - via SMS and e-mail - as to what is going on with a process will not only ensure the person feels included, but stop them from calling the call centre. This has two upsides: it's part of a retention strategy as it makes customers feel special, and it reduces the load on the call centre,” he comments.

Companies are looking at where they can be more effective at grabbing market share.

Eugene van Rensburg, VP (Africa and Middle East), K2

“And then there's the self-service aspect, where you empower the customer to initiate or interact with a process, for example, asking for an insurance quote by pushing a button on a Web site.

“Similarly, once a process is under way, you can SMS or e-mail the prospective customer if there's a piece of data missing, or to keep them updated. You can send them links to go to a Web page and provide further information, for example, if they've applied for a mortgage and the query doesn't have sufficient details. You can direct the applicant to a Web page where they can fill in the blanks and move onto the next stage of the process,” he says.

Flynn says organisations have started right-sourcing, meaning they're getting rid of the specialist skills they only need occasionally and hiring them on a contract basis, rather than having to fork out hefty salaries full-time. While this wouldn't have been possible, even recently, today, he says, it's no longer impossible or inconvenient to have these skills working remotely. “Using wikis, blogs, mashups and contemporary BPM applications makes the whole collaboration paradigm simpler to implement. For example, you may need a specialist loss adjuster in a motor vehicle claim process in 20% of claims, so rather than having them idle 80% of the time, buy on demand. Potentially you can do this intelligently by sending more work to the better or cheaper ones too. Organisations can use business activity monitoring tools to see where they're getting the best ROI and get business to right-source in the right way.”

And so the potential uses multiply.

BPM holds potential for many industries, specifically process-intensive ones like insurance. According to Gartner: “BPM solutions, including workflow and rule engines, hold promise for insurance, because it enables companies to model, analyse and test business processes independent of core systems. Process problems can be easily identified, and companies can manage process variety (offering various processes for a single task for different user groups). The use of BPM suites will result in insurers being more customer-centric, driving improved user experiences through the Web channel, faster transaction processing, staffing productivity improvements, lower cost of transaction processing, more-consistent decisioning, improved risk management and improved customer service.”