In my last blog, I wrote about how ‘Social’ was revolutionizing BPM, providing a gateway for enhanced process efficiency, and in some ways influencing the way we ‘manage’ our process. In certain areas, 2011 was the doorway to the new influences on BPM. The year saw significant advancements in the BPM space with Adaptive Case Management, Social Media and Collaborative Process Modeling re-defining traditional BPM process development and BPM, opening its doors to a ‘ Mobile’ environment. We now find ourselves looking at year 2012.

Looking into the crystal ball, what might we see? Technology advancements will continue and that is obvious, but where will that lead us? (more…)

The economy has disappointed in 2011, and 2012 looks similar. In the US, the housing crisis and high unemployment persist. The euro debt crisis threatens Europe with recession. Healthier regions like Asia are too small and too export-oriented to escape a downturn in the West. The best macro case appears to be halting progress on structural issues and continued weak growth.

Despite this, IT spend in banking and financial services grew in 2011 and looks poised for modest growth in 2012. Why is this happening? Banks and securities firms feel pressure both to reduce costs and to innovate. There are multiple ways to cut costs but the only way to simultaneously reduce unit costs and innovate is through (more…)

With the world getting more ‘social’, individuals are transforming the way they go about their daily lives. Businesses have recognized the need to rethink their strategies and reevaluate their operating models and have commenced to align them with customer expectations and customers’ perception of value. From focusing only on optimization of supply chains, penetration of new markets and scaled bottom lines, companies are now opening their eyes to the new world – a world which is moving towards a greater impetus on having a more social identity. Today, people across the globe rely on social networks for finding lost friends, making new ones, buying new furniture and selling antiques — interacting with technology for almost every activity in their everyday life. You no longer get a wedding invite delivered by post to your doorstep; you get an event invite via Facebook delivered to your inbox!

BPM has taken cue from this world-wide phenomenon and has been quick to embrace ‘social’ and embed it into its very design. (more…)

Since the emergence of Business Process Management (BPM), organisations adopting it  have had a wide variety of experiences – some successful and others less so. Some would argue that because BPM is so amorphous that any project is considered to be analogous to ‘boiling the ocean’ and therefore the outcomes may vary from exceptionally successful to, in some cases, disastrous.

Typical challenges that often cause concerns during a BPM initiative include (more…)

Recently, I was joined by Clay Richardson of Forrester Research and Virtusa’s own Vinaykumar Mummigatti for a webinar that examined the challenges associated with BPM projects. In the fall of 2008, Elise Olding of Gartner speculated that “over 50% of BPM projects will fail by 2011”. Two months into 2011, we have observed that her estimate, as controversial as it was at the time, was actually low. Virtusa has observed the failure rate to be somewhat higher due to a variety of reasons.

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Many organizations that have implemented an ERP package or are currently in the process of consolidating their silo functional applications sometimes fail to appreciate the nuances of having BPM technology. Many times it is just the fact that there are too many vendors selling the “magic bullet” to improve the organization’s process efficiencies, resulting in an indecisive state of mind. This blog helps to clarify a few things organizations must know given their specific maturity state of IT environment. It will also provide insight as to when they should go in for BPM. The blog will start with analyzing decision conditions for a) organizations with minimum IT automation and b) organizations fairly well-automated but without an ERP package and c) organizations that are already mature with an ERP package implementation. (more…)

Unlike implementing package enterprise software like SAP or bespoke implementation using any of the 3G development tools, BPM implementation needs special techniques that are quite different from the former approaches. However, this situation should not be construed as an implementation roadblock. It is just that ensuring proper process will result in smooth implementation while not doing so will lead to BPM Implementation risk. In this blog we will discuss few areas that need to be properly planned to ensure such an implementation risk is reduced.

For those who have embarked upon automating business process in a big bang approach [automating business processes of multiple interlinked functions] the biggest challenge is how to ensure efforts related to integration do not blow up and deviate from the scheduled timeline. Some organizations think that having multi-vendor partners for implementation “de-risks” implementation schedule delays. However things can get un-manageably complicated if the coordination between the multi-vendors is not planned and controlled.

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