Before the advent of business process management systems (BPMS), there was a clear distinction between business process modeling and BPM application design. “Modeling” involved a set of tools for business analysts used to discover, diagram, analyze, and optimize business processes, often in concert with some formal methodology. The ultimate output of this effort, if used to create an automated BPM solution at all, served mainly as a “requirements document” that would (hopefully) be referenced by IT in the solution specification and design.

Companies seeking to incorporate BPM into their culture are integrating and optimizing end-to-end business processes that span traditional IT systems’ boundaries. This trend mandates the adoption of process orientation and the exploration of BPM as a technology to orchestrate, optimize and increase the flexibility of business processes along with the overall integration strategy of the organization. However, the current BPM space is not mature, and getting started is difficult.

Business process management is a top priority for organizations today. The BPM market is hot and it is important to know what the basic steps of BPM strategy are and who the vendors are and what they offer. The scope of what BPM is and what it can do for your organization is changing. There is still a lot of hype, so everyone needs to know who is doing what, and how well it works. Every organization needs a BPM strategy and a comprehensive deployment plan.

How does a conservative government organization fast track a paradigm shift? One method that has worked well is to keep the change process so simple that the lure of it is irresistible. This is precisely how it happened at the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS). The paradigm shift is one towards Business Rule Management (BRM). The change process is the User-defined Function Approach (UDFA). The measurement of success was provided by Barbara von Halle, founder of Knowledge Partners, Inc (KPI).

This is the first installment of a monthly column. My focus is software technology dedicated to automating, integrating, and managing business processes, the building blocks of so-called business process management systems (BPMS). I readily admit that within the BPM community there is a contingent that believes BPM has little to do with software, that it’s really a new way of thinking about the business.