Sunday, October 02, 2005

Why is BPM such a big deal?

Business Process Management is to the Information Age what Logistics and Operations Research were to the manufacturing age, and it holds the same transformative power. How? In short, BPM technology underlies the knowledge-worker's equivalent of the assembly line.

Workflow solutions streamline the production of business information in much the same way that assembly lines streamlined the production of automobiles: the flow of work is automated, leaving individuals at each station free to concentrate on and develop skill for their individual task, resulting in higher throughput.

Furthermore, just as each assembly line is unique to a company or product, good workflow solutions will be continually adapted to local needs in order to maximize productivity.

Therefore, while BPM is enabled by technology and supported by IT, its application requires a new kind of business engineering that is focused on maximizing output while minimizing cost and time. This is firmly in the business domain -- not the IT domain.

Where, in the past, management has provided requirements for IT to fulfill, BPM calls for management to define the solution, leaving IT to implement and operate the solution.

The next long term surge in productivity in the economy will be fueled by BPM, and making the tools affordable and easy to use is the next step.