Unlocking the Potential of Business Process Management

Significant investments in IT infrastructure have fallen short of meeting the dual goals of streamlining application development and enabling a more nimble response to changing business needs. At the same time, increasing competitive and economic pressures – and the resulting focus on improved processes – are increasing the need for an effective way to implement business change.

These pressures have grown as enterprises strive to become more agile and increase the rate at which they deploy new or improved processes. Additionally, participation in process improvement activity is rapidly increasing across all segments of the enterprise, as organizations adopt initiative-based or regulatory required methodologies such as Six Sigma, TQM, Lean, ISO9000, and Sarbanes-Oxley. Business Process Management (BPM) solutions have emerged as the answer for organizations that are focusing more explicitly on their processes. However, if they are approached as just another IT implementation toolset, BPM solutions will fail to achieve their potential and  companies will continue to struggle to effectively manage their ever-changing business processes.

This paper explores the challenges associated with achieving a successful BPM environment and describes an approach that enterprises can take to realize the full potential of BPM.