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BPMS WATCH Column

BPMS Watch: Engaging the Business in BPM

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As BPM begins to expand beyond isolated projects to mainstream programs at the division or enterprise level, there is a need to engage a far greater number of business people in the...

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Key Drivers for BPMS Growth

By: Ken Vollmer, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
Thursday January 11, 2007

This article originally appeared in the members-only quarterly BPM Strategies Magazine. Join today to receive your own copy.

Forrester has predicted that the BPMS (business process management system) market will grow from $1.2 billion in 2005 to over $2.7 billion in 2009. What is driving this growth? The tools are forging tighter links between IT and business users and significantly enhancing the effectiveness of process improvement efforts. Specifically, BPMS tools support:

Capturing process models as business metadata. A key function of BPMS tools is to support the documentation of business processes in a tool suitable for business users or business analysts. Earlier tools were able to document process models, but not in a format that could support easy reuse and/or modification. BPMS tools capture processes as business metadata and store the metadata in SOA-enabled repositories for use by IT and the business.

Connecting the physical and digital worlds. Advances in process-related standards are making it possible to directly connect what a business analyst models to the code that actually executes within the process server. This linkage minimizes a significant barrier to successful process improvement efforts: misunderstandings that arise from inherent limitations in communications. Expect this situation to improve even more as modeling tools and repositories become more tightly integrated, providing business users, business analysts, system architects and developers with process modeling views that are customized for their individual roles, enabling them to directly reference shared artifacts and services stored in the underlying repository.

Enabling real-time, end-user process monitoring. BPMS tools provide business activity monitoring (BAM) features that let business users monitor their executing processes in real time. This means that operational problems can be detected and corrective action can be taken much sooner than in the past. For example, a supervisor in a loan processing operation could detect a spike in workload causing a bottleneck in a particular operation and temporarily assign more resources to it.

Process optimization. Several BPMS products support the ability for end-users to change business rules on the fly, thereby enabling them to directly optimize operations without having to involve IT. This is done through the use of a library of pre-authorized and pre-tested rules that are restricted to “power users.” As opportunities for additional process optimization arise, it is a simple matter of modifying the original process model to implement improved features or functionality.

Using an SOA registry/repository. The ability for organizations to capture and effectively re-use their business metadata is a key requirement for achieving their digital business architecture. BPMS products directly support these efforts. Process models, business rules, semantic data and pre-defined business services are examples of business knowledge that can be captured in SOA-based, metadata repositories and accessed by BPMSs using Web services. By making process models and business rules readily accessible to business users, the business side of the house can be more actively involved in the definition, monitoring and optimization of its business processes.

BPMS tools are providing significant benefits for both IT and the business that stem from the improved ability for both groups to collaborate more effectively. At the same time, the business personnel obtain more direct control over the design, monitoring and optimization of their core operations.

Ken Vollmer is a principal analyst in Forrester’s Application Development & Infrastructure research group, covering trends, issues, and strategies related to all forms of integration, including business process management (BPM), enterprise application integration (EAI), B2B integration (B2Bi), and electronic data interchange (EDI). He has assisted hundreds of clients in North America and Europe with their integration projects, drawing upon his knowledge of vendor offerings and emerging integration trends, including the latest developments related to Web services and SOA. He is a frequent speaker at technology conferences on a wide range of technology subjects and has 18 years of management-level experience in the IT industry.

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