Five Reasons to Like BPM

Earlier today I published a post about business process management, sharing some good tips from Gartner and other sources on successful BPM implementations. I offered the tips after noting that many observers predict 2010 will be a big year for BPM.

Of course, many of the folks that are bullish on BPM are vendors and analysts, all of whom will benefit if companies come to them seeking professional advice and/or other products and services related to BPM. Past discussions I've had on BPM (some of which are referenced in my post) have convinced me it's a good idea. But I understand why CIOs and other executives might be a little wary of vendors' efforts to portray BPM as the next big thing.

Skeptics might want to read an eWEEK column by Joerg Heistermann, CEO of IDS Scheer in the Americas, who lists five good reasons for adopting BPM. They are:

• BPM is an ROI winner. Heistermann notes 450 BPM users recently surveyed by the Association for Information and Image Management received a full payback in less than 18 months. Also, more than half the nominations to the 2009 Gartner BPM Awards received a full payback in less than a year.
  
• BPM works. When Gartner examined BPM projects among its clients last year, they found 95 percent of them were a success, says Heistermann.
• BPM is about standardizing business processes. It's pretty hard to argue against that.
• BPM complements many other enterprise software initiatives. Gartner (again) sees a growing convergence between BPM and CRM. Better end-to-end business processes should result in greater satisfaction, says Gartner. An executive from Appian Corporation made a case for using BPM to improve BI when I interviewed him in 2007.
  
• BPM can be fun -- really. Think modeling business processes sounds dull? Heistermann points to members of the ARIS community, who have produced process models for such tasks as making coffee and winning the first level of Super Mario Brothers.