BPM – Deja Vu All Over Again?

You would not be crazy if you thought Business Process Management (BPM) was just Workflow repackaged in a 21st-century Analyst-provided moniker. [Adding to the confusion, BPM is also often referred to as Business Performance Management.] In today’s post, I’ll attempt to provide some clarification on how Business Process Management is more than just Workflow with a fancy name. Today’s GCC discussion with Gartner Analysts, Jim Sinur and Michael Melenovsky was quite insightful. However, if we look to the Analyst community for clarification, well… there is little agreement. We at Global 360 consider BPM the act of managing and routing content within or external to an organization, while regularly modeling, analyzing, and simulating existing and alternative flows to optimize those processes and meet pre-defined goals.

While there is certainly overlap, workflow falls short of the second part of the BPM definition. I think of BPM as the logical evolution of Content Management and Workflow. Why? Well, most workflow systems are limited to routing content/work items (e.g., insurance claims, new loans, expense reports, address forms, etc.) in a static flow. But what indication do you have that an existing flow is the optimal route? What if there were another way… a better way. That is where BPM comes in. Like an experienced taxi driver who knows how to get you to the airport on time, even though all the major highways are blocked, a true BPM system can provide you visibility into your workflows and help you determine the optimal route to meet your goals. Better yet, it can use this information to automatically and proactively route content based on pre-set parameters and goals. Workflow tends to be stagnant –once setup, a route will rarely change, because it was never meant to.

In today’s dynamic, highly-distributed, work environment where margins are tight and change is constant, routes are never done. Like animals in an ecosystem, organizations that can adapt the fastest will have a tremendous competitive advantage that will directly impact the bottom line. Content is no longer king, Process has taken the reigns.