Published on the 02/06/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Investment in software to support modern business process management will rise 4.4 per cent this year to reach $US.2.7 billion globally according to tech analyst Gartner…
Business transformations made possible by the advent of mobile technologies, cloud computing and Internet of Things deployments, or alternatively transformations forced by digital disruption across a sector, is prompting enterprise to rethink its approach to business process management.
Gartner says that a new class of supporting software, which it refers to as an intelligent business process management suite (iBPMS) is emerging. This melds traditional BPM software capabilities such as process simulation and optimisation with additional capabilities to support collaboration, integration with social media, mobile access to processes, more analytics and real-time decision management. This, says Gartner, allows a more transformative approach to business process management.
Companies operating in this part of the market include Pega Systems, Appian, IBM, Oracle and Tibco.
Gartner research director Rob Dunie, who is presenting at the organisation’s Business Process Management Summit in Sydney this week, said organisations faced a major challenge managing or migrating business processes which were often baked into the enterprise.
The issue is compounded for many businesses which have developed home grown software to support processes which may no longer be as optimal as they were when first conceived. Where business transformation is required, then the business processes also need to be overhauled, which can be tricky when those processes are effectively held hostage by supporting software.
As enterprises move to cloud computing however, where there is less opportunity for customisation, then there is likely to be a more “component” based approach to building business processes allowing greater flexibility in the future.
Dunie explained that the need for improved tools was also coming from the business transformations that many organisations were embarked upon. Instead of continuously tweaking business models to get better results, many enterprises were completely overhauling their businesses and their processes, requiring a different approach.
Input into business process from data sourced from sensors also required business process management software to be attuned to that input, and able to use that to change business processes on the fly to deal with changing market conditions in near real time.
