Companies embrace BPM to drive innovation

BANGALORE, INDIA: While many companies are investing in business process management (BPM) solutions as a way to spur innovation and boost competitiveness, they lack the best practices, vision and executive sponsorship necessary to realize the full benefits of their BPM investments, according to a new survey by PRTM and Virtusa Corporation. 

The survey found that while companies often have basic elements of BPM in place—including systems for collaboration, workflow and business rules—most of these elements are in early stages of deployment and are not yet optimized. Information sources are often scattered across the organization, and workflow and collaboration systems cannot keep pace with a company’s changing business processes.  In addition, companies generally use few metrics or data standards to support measurement of performance improvement. 

Key findings include: 

* 47 percent of respondents are interested in deploying BPM for new product development—an emerging innovation area for BPM applications

* Only 12 percent of participants use a defined roadmap for business process improvements, while more than half have no formal BPM roadmap at all

* Over 40 percent of respondents have no clear decision-makers in place to manage BPM programs

* While some 72 percent of study participants have IT-enabled collaboration capabilities, further investigation revealed the systems work poorly 

“While many of the survey respondents have made some investments in BPM solutions, few have put in place clear objectives or roadmaps to support these initiatives,” said Kevin Nguyen, PRTM Principal.  “The lack of a clear vision and strategy is often compounded by inadequate executive sponsorship, governance and resources to support BPM projects, placing these investments at risk.”  

The survey found that, despite immature current practices, many companies look to BPM as a way to drive innovation. For example, the survey revealed a stronger-than-expected desire on the part of respondents to use BPM to support product innovation—an emerging area for BPM applications.   

To gain insight into how companies are using BPM to drive innovation, PRTM and Virtusa surveyed 125 product and service companies, including those in the manufacturing, communications/technology, banking, financial services and media/information industries, and conducted follow-up telephone interviews to further explore respondents’ current BPM and innovation initiatives.