Recent IT Investment Research (see link to right) work found increasing agreement among all types of BPM software suppliers, no matter what their heritage (see Table): Business process management (BPM) needs to automate all types of business processes. Arbitrary distinctions between workflow vs. straight-through processing (STP), between Intranet vs. Internet, and so forth, are beginning to disappear.
Table. Comparing heritage of BPM software suppliers
(If you are not on the above list and want to be included in our research, email me at dennisb@ebizq.net.)
As a result, many of the heritage ERP/ECM suppliers have exposed their workflow and integration features to everyone, not just those "in the know," in order to provide their BPM functionality. Many of these providers are willing to sell you these capabilities even if you do not purchase their applications. The best example of that mindset change is SAP. The ERP giant says limiting BPM to a part of the software stack "automatically means limiting its potential for real business impact."
Many of the suppliers surveyed descend from an integration-server technology perspective. Sun (via its 2005 SeeBeyond acquisition) considers decomposition of monolithic packaged applications into composite applications a key to getting BPM that covers the waterfront. Sun also says this move towards distributed application services will increase the need for BPM's orchestration role.
From the "new-breed BPM supplier" perspective, IT departments should look at BPM as a "new development paradigm," grounded in service-oriented architecture (SOA) methodologies. In this view, the goal is to deliver functionality that can be controlled and visualized by business users, and also enable re-use. In this mode, IT is less of a bottleneck when it comes to providing the thousands of industry-specific and even enterprise-ecosystem-specific services. Cordys, not coincidentally founded by ERP pioneer Jan Baan, has such a view. Cordys says BPM's process layer provides a level of abstraction, and removes the processes from the control of applications in much the same way that middleware removed data. But to do this well, Cordys says, BPM must support all the attributes of a business process, which it defines as
• Manage applications in parallel as well as in series
• Manage people-intensive applications
• Decouple the process from the application
• Work inside and outside the firewall
• Allow processes to change over time
• Put the process into the hands of the busines
-- Dennis Byron
The 'new breed' of BPM software suppliers has indeed taken an outlook that suites should be all encompassing and be as functional as possible. I work of a company that looked at a number of BPM suites and the brass had one main issue with them - they weren't all encompassing. we were looking for a product that allowed us the adopt an SOA approach, that encompassed risk management, compliance, controls, and a number of other modules that could accomodate all of our business needs. Finally, and I mean finally, we came across the Enterprise Process Center, and we never looked back. Painless and fast implementation - our company has actually SAVED money during this financial crisis. I suggest taking a look!