14 Trends that will change the way we do BPM

The BPM industry.
We have not reached “the promised land”, but we are slowly getting there.

Although BPM is a management discipline, it’s a software vendor driven market.
Most BPM suites offer a solid solution. They embed the required process design and process execution functionality that is needed for managing enterprise business processes, centres of excellence and change management programmes.

The way we “do” BPM is constantly changing. In the last few years simulation, content management and BPMN have been added. What can be expected in the future?

These are the 14 trends that will change the way we do BPM

BI
The strongest trend in the next couple of years will be Business (Process) Intelligence.
BPM vendors have the process design and process execution elements of the BPM life cycle pretty much nailed.
BI will become a competative edge for BPM vendors. The difference will be between vendors that provide process design, process execution, and basic reporting – and vendors that provide cutting edge trend analysis, proactive, not interactive .
A system that tells you what needs to be done, instead of a system that just lets you search for the problem. The ability to be alerted of problems and solve them before they need to be escalated. Visibility and accountability. There will be more requirements for reporting, drill-downs, analytics, KPIs, impact analysis.
It should come as no surprise to see mergers of BPM and BI vendors, OEMs and joint solutions in the next couple of years.
The biggest differentiator between BPM solutions, from a customer’s point of view – will be the quality of the BI offering.

Cloud and SaaS
Hosting software is an infrastructure solution, not a business process solution.
It doesn’t provide a different solution, a different methodology or even a different approach to BPM – just a different infrastructure platform.
It has been discussed quite a lot in the past year, as will be next year.
Infrastructure vendors have invested too much money in it to let the hype die down.
It is not cheaper, faster, or better, but it does have one very important advantage.
It removes the hassle… and IT managers are willing to pay large amounts of money to get rid of the hassle. Removing the hassle factor has real value.
The Cloud will remain a fog. The way we deploy BPM solutions will change. Cloud solutions will enable companies to bypass expensive BPM Enterprise licenses and start using BPM “pay as you go” solutions in the cloud .
The success of BPM in the cloud depends on the ability of cloud vendors to offer out-of-the-box solutions, that require minimum customisation, at a lower cost, to multiple customers.

Open Source
Open Source has slowly become part of mainstream BPM in the last year.
The huge number of downloads alone has shown that it is no longer a niche.
The business model of downloading the BPM software for free, and then paying for development and consultant services is an appealing model. Less risky, easier to get approved budget-wise.
It’s success still depends on more people embracing the open-source concept, the ability of the open source community to support, and of course all the other problems that non-opensource vendors face.

Both Saas and Open source have a strong selling point – The pricing model.
From a financial point of view – less risk. It’s easier to finance (even if it might not be cheaper in the long run).
It enables IT managers to fly under the radar, get third party services without going through the hell of tenders and purchase cycles.

CEP – Complex Event Processing
CEP is currently embraced by only a couple of BPM vendors.
The other vendors still do not see the added value of CEP. Unlike other areas (like ECM and ACM) that BPM has moved into, CEP is still an undiscovered territory.
CEP will probably start to grow in the next couple of years when the concept is clarified, the value is proven and the vendors feel it will give them a competitive edge.

Google
Google is one of the most innovative of the big companies currently in the market.
Any new innovation that Google comes out with will have an impact on BPM vendor offerings. Currently, when comparing BPM vendors offerings, one of the differentiators is Microsoft vs Java solutions. All the vendors have one eye open on Google.
Integrating with any Google future application (Search, Mobile, Email…) will be seen as giving the vendor a competitor edge.

Email
Email is still an island. The content is saved in the employee’s Outlook and not integrated into the BPMS’s database, therefore cannot be analysed.
There are already attempts to bypass the Outlook email island (Google…)
The end game will be to embed email content (not generated by a BPM system) into the BPM audit trail and reports.

Mobile BPM
Most BPM vendors have simple mobile functionality (receiving tasks and notifications via emails and SMS notifications).
The round cycle (updating the BPM system by mobile) is still lacking.
Missing standards in the mobile industry prevent a BPM solution from being used by ALL the mobile device types, all the mobile devices, operating systems, application platforms and versions.
That said, the biggest obticles of BPM mobile adoption in organisations are still the security issue (opening up a closed BPM system to the web) and user authentication (audit trail corruption).

Adaptive Processes and Case Management
The ACM acronym has become quite an important part of BPM debates in the last year. The need for unstructured process, ad-hoc functionality to solve unpredictable events will remain a hot topic in the BPM discussion.
ACM will either become a standalone market or will be embedded as part of the BPM offering.
Case Management, traditionally part of ECM, is slowly becoming part of the BPM solution offering. If ECM don’t start pulling their socks up – Documents, Record management, Collaboration will become part of the BPM offering as well.

Social BPM
Social media applications have had an impact on way people communicate.
It’s still early days, the talk is mainly hype, the vendors are testing the waters.
Users desire same level of innovation and functionality from their business applications as they get from their home applications.
It won’t take organisations long to cotton on to the potential: Twitter-like applications, Collaboaration applications. Social BPM, Enterprise social networking, Online real-time collaboration, Adaptive BPM, Enterprise Microblogging. They all have the same target and they all will be integrated into one naming convention as time goes by.

Back to Basics – Workflows
Like all industries, there will be a push for more innovation, then a “return to basics”, then again another push.. Checks and balances are part of every industry.
As vendor solutions become more sophisticated, therefore more costly, there will be a demand for simple and inexpensive workflow solutions.
BPM vendors will either have separate high-end and low-end offerings, or focus on high-end, leaving a niche for smaller vendors.

Checklists
“Checklists” belongs to the workflow era, before the acronym BPM was established, therefore seen as the old way of doing BPM.
Checklists will make a comeback, part of the “back to basics” theme, as they are an important business process tool and are currently not getting the attention they deserve.

Consulting, Skills and Education
Software, as good it may be – is still software. The bottleneck will always be human.
Successful BPM initiatives have a high correlation with educated business users.
As BPM software reaches the plateu, the next drive will be to educate business users.
The market has a large number of process designers, either independent consultants, vendor consultants or internal organisation roles.
The trend will see new roles, new consultancy companies, new type of consultants running new BPM focused programmes like Centres of Excellence, Change management programmes, BPM best practice programmes and will be targeting CIOs, BAs and even EAs.

Applications
Selling BPM as a platform has not been found to be a gold mine.
BPM Applications, off-the-shelf solutions, with the flexibility to customise and change – will be the next trend in BPM.

AI – Artificial Intelligence
Years down the line…
Making computers think more like people is an idea that persists. In the workplace, software already predicts customer behavior and machine failures on the factory floor. These capabilities will continue to evolve. AI’s strength is that it can uncover patterns and spot problems amid a mountain of data. That might translate into detecting future trends. The first step will probably be implementing AI in the BPM simulation modules.