Business Process Management Vendor Checklist (Part 2)Bridging Line-of-Business Management
Ironically, the most-important element in BPM implementation and acceptance doesn't relate as much to the technology as it does to bridging line-of-business (LOB) management with the IS organization. The bridge must give the owner of a process the ability to directly design, manage and change the process flow without too much support. Although gains have been made, the end state still requires intervention in most cases. However, the benefits associated with simply going through the exercise of defining a discrete process and then refining it after automation is enough to warrant a closer look at BPM for powerful return on investment (ROI), as well as short-term cost recovery in terms of efficiency gain. Sorting and Weighting BPM Requirements A review of the established environment can yield two benefits: - Understanding what systems and applications have a BPM or workflow automation component
- Defining what the missing elements are and how to supplement them with the right products. The first benefit requires an IT asset inventory and review. To achieve the latter, we've divided BPM requirements into 10 categories for evaluation purposes:
- Support of business process flow for human-to-human-related tasks, rather than just system-to-system and human-to-system
- Ease of use in operation and administration
- Architectures, standards and platforms supported
- Performance and scalability
- Integration support — native, links and partnerships
- Business activity monitoring (BAM) capabilities
- Agility supported by business rule engines (BREs) or simulations
- Development environment
- Vertical template support
- Costing and pricing models
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