Expect 20% cost savings in first year, with BPM

"Economic woes are driving increased usage of BPM as a cost-cutting mechanism for survival," says Michele Cantara, research vice president at Gartner. "We are seeing one-third of companies increasing their investments in BPM." Why? Because BPM – a discipline that optimises the performance of end-to-end business processes – makes business processes visible to both business managers and their IT departments, she says, allowing both to work together more effectively and to change business processes faster. Gartner is now recommending that manufacturers use BPM to manage the improvement of inter-departmental and inter-company processes, because of its ability to help them "confront business challenges and complex business relationships". Cantara insists that BPM is more important during the downturn than ever. "When companies are in survival mode, they tend to slash head count and funding for programmes to cut costs to still deliver on their earnings promises. "This slashing approach can derail critical business processes and actually cost the company more money. Because BPM makes processes visible, it also helps companies do cost cutting with surgical precision," she explains. However, Gartner also makes the point that, while there is a lot to be said for using BPM to achieve sustainable cost savings, if companies do not manage the process carefully, they will still see failed initiatives. Too many user organisations are adopting BPM technologies without applying BPM disciplines … and find that their efforts do not deliver the promised results, and their BPM initiatives will subsequently be disbanded," says the organisation. And there's the old ownership chestnut. "Some organisations get mired in debates about who should drive the effort, who should own the end-to-end process, how to define processes, and how to prioritise which process improvement efforts to tackle first," says Cantara.