Appian was the sole BPM vendor sponsor at the recent Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. We were there because, as I noted in a previous post, we believe that BPM technology is a powerful remedy for the competing challenges facing IT: developing and deploying new business-driving services, while also fighting the fires to maintain existing systems.

Gartner issued a press release from the show outlining the “Nine Most Contentious IT Issues for the Next Two Years.” Almost all of them are directly related to process control and improvement within IT. Whether talking about business expectations that have outstripped IT capacity, infrastructure and application modernization, or accountability and risk management, it comes down to process:

• Automation and the ability to make better resource allocation decisions based on process performance mean more productivity for short-staffed IT teams
• BPM-based composite Web applications mean new life and increased value from legacy systems
• Documented policy enforcement and audit trails mean more accountability and reduced risk

Gartner names BPM specifically as one of three core disciplines IT must master (along with Enterprise Architecture and Service Management) to minimize turf wars, align viewpoints and “provide the architectural guidance required to build solutions.” To foster and support a process-oriented culture, Gartner talks about creating Business Process Competency Centers, also called Centers of Excellence (COE). This is absolutely in keeping with what we have seen with our customers, and it is why we have created services packages including our own BPM Center of Excellence that puts customers on the fast-track to success, facilitates knowledge transfer to make customers BPM self-sufficient, and helps them develop their own on-going BPM COE.

We want to help IT leaders get a jump-start on using BPM to overcome their “contentious issues.” To that end, we’re offering a webinar on BPM for IT called “Improve Your Processes. Control Your Destiny,” where some of our IT customers will discuss their BPM successes. Follow this link to register, and while you’re there, take a look at some of the BPM for IT case studies we have collected.   

Don’t delay, because as the Gartner press release concludes, “IT leaders should use this time, before obtaining new post financial crisis direction from CEOs, to resolve these issues. . . Resolving these issues will place IT leaders in a far better position to take on the challenges of the new future that lies ahead.”

Ben Farrell

Director of Corporate Communications

Tags: Uncategorized by ben.farrell
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IT departments are tasked with two primary, and sometimes competing, objectives. The first, driven by executive management, is to make IT transformative to the business through new and innovative services. The second, driven by the realities of complex technology infrastructures, is to fight the daily fires and do the maintenance and upgrades required just to keep the lights on. With fewer and fewer resources available (the result of cost cutting across the organization), managers on the IT front line know they are often lucky to meet SLAs for the services already available, let alone develop, deploy and maintain new services.

Business Process Management technologies are emerging as the common solution to both the executive mandate, and the IT management nightmare. BPM lets IT create, document, execute, manage, and modify standards-compliant processes to ensure consistent execution. This process standardization and automation in IT Service Management (ITSM) leads to more efficiency and increased productivity in what IT is already doing. More importantly, it enables a redirection of IT resources to focus on strategic projects that can move the needle for the business.

Success happens when both IT and the business harmonize, using appropriate technology underpinnings to support a process-centric mentality that looks for and eliminates waste and inefficiency. Using BPM for ITSM is a single solution that solves both of IT’s primary challenges, thereby enabling transformative new IT services with unlimited potential for the business.  

Appian will be a sponsor at the Gartner IT Expo in Orlando from October 12-16. If you’re going to be there, stop by our booth so we can talk about the team effort required to make the shift in IT mentality from one of managing assets, to one of delivering valuable and high-quality services.

Ben Farrell

Director of Corporate Communications

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