Lombardi

For several years running, improving Business Process Management (BPM) has become a top priority for companies. CIOs and IT executives continue to place business process improvement as the top business priority for their IT organizations1,2,3. Of course, there are many options for improving business processes – ranging from complete process re-engineering to adopting new process management methodologies, like Lean Six Sigma, or adding new capabilities to existing systems. At Lombardi, we believe that an investment in BPM software, coupled with new approaches to project implementation, is the best investment companies can make in delivering sustainable business process improvement. This paper is intended for groups who want to make the business case for investing in BPM to drive process improvement. It provides an overview of the areas of benefit that companies can expect from BPM as well as concrete examples of value. It also compares the use of BPM to alternative approaches for driving process improvement. Finally, this paper provides a basic introduction to the costs associated with a BPM initiative.

In the 1990's, workflow vendors created quite a bit of confusion in the market when trying to define workflow and how it could best be utilized. Today, that situation is being replicated in the BPM industry. Ask 10 different vendors to define BPM or BPM suites, and you will likely get 10 variations of the definition, even though all vendors use the same basic terminology to explain it. Organizations need help sorting through this confusion in order to discover why a BPM suite is a different, and more important, application for process improvement.

These insights on Business Process Management (BPM) come from Toby Redshaw, the Group CIO that is leading a successful BPM program at Aviva plc, the world's fifth-largest insurance group. These remarks were made during Toby's keynote presentation at the Lombardi Driven 2009 User Conference.