Taking a business user's perspective, I can't help but think that driving massive BPM adoption includes making it part of our standard workflow. Now there are still (amazingly) some executives who assistants print their e-mails for them to hand write responses, but in general, e-mail and mobile phones are the two adopted tools of the business professional. I could argue MS Office is the third.
When I think about where BPM is going, I imagine being able to send e-mails to initiate processes. I imagine never seeing any BPM application since everything happens through Outlook (or my e-mail system). I imagine being able to call up and respond to tasks on IVR (interactive voice response). I imagine getting reports e-mailed to me or being able to dial in and hear key metrics. Some of this is starting to happen, but over the next two years, I expect to see some radical changes.
I compare BPM to where CRM (Customer Relationship Management) was in 1999-2000. It has a good install base and good client references, but it is just starting to get the right momentum. I can still use the acronym and get a blank look back from people. When I went to work for Firepond (a CRM software company) in early 2000, it was the same situation. Two years later, most people knew what CRM was (primarily driven by Siebel's marketing machine). Now, anyone knows CRM, and you no longer have to spell it out.
I draw the parallel because we went through many of these same debates in 2000 with CRM. Who is the right buyer - IT or business? How do you make this seamless? Does this have to change the user's workflow? Will they use it? Are business users technically savvy enough? What changes need to happen to a company's infrastructure and architecture? What industries are most interested? What products should use CRM? How to use these tools with your external constituents?
Comments