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Companies often try to improve their business processes — and with good reason. Improving day-to-day procedures can lead to cost savings, greater efficiencies, faster response to market changes and enhanced customer service, among other benefits.

Increasingly, organizations are turning to business process management (BPM) software, which is designed to help enterprises optimize their business processes. BPM enables organizations to automate and closely monitor the execution of many day-to-day activities that keep operations going but can cost organizations lots of time and money.

By using BPM to monitor and analyze how business processes are conducted, managers can help organizations make tangible improvements in these processes.

A number of vendors offer BPM software products with varied functionality. These include Appian, BEA, Cordys, HandySoft, IBM, Inovis, Lombardi, Microsoft, Oracle, PegaSystems, SAP, Savvion, Sterling Commerce, Tibco, Ultimus and Vitria.

There’s a growing market for the technology, according to Forrester Research Inc. The firm, in a study released in July of this year, predicts that revenue from BPM software licenses, services and maintenance will grow from about $1.6 billion in 2006 to $6.3 billion by 2011.

“This growth is powered by enterprises seeking to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and strategic value of key business processes that span a range of scenarios, including human interactions, system and application integration, document processing and complex decision making,” the report says.

Forrester noted that since its last BPM market forecast in early 2006, a “significant convergence” had occurred between the integration-centric and human-centric segments of the BPM software (BPMS) suite market. “Enterprise architects and business process professionals should carefully match their organizations' needs to the different market segments of BPMS tools, recognizing that more than one type of BPMS might be required to adequately cover the full range of their enterprise requirements,” Forrester says.

Developing an effective business process management strategy goes well beyond selecting software tools. One of the key steps in creating a BPM strategy is to ensure a good working relationship between the IT department and lines of business, says Ken Vollmer, principal analyst at Forrester. “A joint project team should be formed at the outset,” Vollmer says.

Organizations should choose their first BPM effort carefully, Vollmer says. “It should be important to the organization, but not overly risky,” he says. “Pick a pain point that will be noticeable if you fix it.” When it comes time to selecting a BPM software suite, make sure that the requirements of the business guide the selection of the technology, Vollmer says.

Once a business process management plan and BPM tools are in place, they can deliver significant benefits to an organization. Vollmer says the main benefits are twofold. One is that BPM enables effective process improvement efforts, including support for direct user involvement in designing, monitoring and changing processes. Process improvements can be made quickly, as needed.

The other key benefit, Vollmer says, is that BPM tools support “model-driven” development, which takes less time to create new functionality and enables the IT organization to be more agile.

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