BPM Outside the Firewall

In July 2006, BPMInstitute.org initiated a survey of its 24,000 member community to gain an understanding of how enterprises across a range of industries are pursuing business process innovation and improvement and to what degree these activities are strategically aligned to the companies’ business transformation and growth objectives.

This webcast – the second in a five-part series – will review the findings of the survey, with a specific focus on the issues, challenges and solutions associated with extending business processes outside the firewall to customers, partners and suppliers. It will explore the desired goals of efficiently and securely capturing critical information as part of business processes that are extended to members of a company’s value chain, including its remote employees. It will describe what successful strategies are common to enterprises currently extending the reach of their core business processes.

The survey, entitled BPMInstitute's State of Business Process ManagementSM, obtained critical insight into how corporations approach business process management and improvement initiatives, evaluate and acquire BPM infrastructure and deployment expertise, and manage and deploy BPM-enabled solutions. In addition, it examined current and future requirements, deployment stages and time frames, budgets and allocations, and perceived benefits and drivers.

The survey surfaced business process management trends and established benchmarks for enterprises to evaluate their process improvement programs against industry best practices. It learned what role BPM is playing for improving composite application creation around business processes, how process-driven and rules-driven application customization has been improved, what metrics are being designed to measure business results from BPM initiatives, and what specific technologies, methodologies and standards are being using for BPM projects.

Featured Speakers

Tom Dwyer, Editorial Director, BPMInstitute.org & Industry Analyst

Tom Dwyer leads Yankee Group's Business Application and Application Infrastructure practice, which covers Enterprise Business Applications, B2B, Enterprise Application Integration, Business Process Management and Application Development and Deployment.

As an industry analyst for the past six years, Mr. Dwyer has conducted primary research and published extensive reports on the Application Software Infrastructure markets. He provides consulting services in the formulation and validation of go-to-market strategies for Application Software Infrastructure suppliers. His prior experience in product development and marketing, channel development and expansion, direct and OEM sales, and professional services assists clients in choosing the appropriate strategies and business approaches.

Before becoming an industry analyst with Aberdeen Group, Mr. Dwyer spent 28 years in the computer industry in various engineering, marketing, professional services, and sales functions. He was a co-founder and general manager of a new software venture at Xerox, which became a wholly owned subsidiary. Mr. Dwyer has held senior management positions in marketing and engineering at Wang Laboratories and Prime Computer and has developed and launched more than 15 software products.

Alan Tam, Product Marketing Manager, Enterprise and Development Business Unit, Adobe Systems Incorporated

As product marketing manager for the Enterprise and Development Business Unit at Adobe Systems, Tam helps drive product direction by acting as the voice of the customer within Adobe. Specifically, Tam is focused on Adobe’s Process Management Document Service (PMDS) for the enterprise. He frequently meets with customers to understand their business requirements and pain points. Tam uses this input to help Adobe align PMDS with the needs of its customers, and to identify new market opportunities.

Tam joined Adobe in 2003 after spending five years with Cardiff Software, a firm that specialized in content capture and business-process automation. Tam was a product marketing manager. Prior to Cardiff, Tam held various marketing positions at I-Bus Corp. He has also been an active member of the Business Forms Management Association (BFMA) for the past seven years.

Tam is a frequent public speaker, including regular speaking appearances at BFMA, AIIM and FOSE events. He has also spoken at trade shows worldwide, participated in panel discussions, and often talks with the press and industry analysts. His areas of expertise include Java, PDF, XML and electronic forms.