There’s nothing like an initial public offering (IPO) to get people to sit up and notice a company.  IPOs are only possible when companies are delivering novel solutions that offer great value and facilitate strong revenue growth.  That’s the case with Guidewire, a software company that’s built enterprise applications to support the core systems of property & casualty (P&C) insurers.

But a closer inspection of Guidewire, made possible through their IPO regulatory filings, shows their solutions are novel only in comparison to the ancient IT systems and paper-based processes used extensively by P&C insurers today.  Guidewire is a big advance over those, but only a few steps in the BPM direction.

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Tags: , Appian, BPM for Insurance, Business Process Management, Forrester

Forrester analyst Craig Le Clair has published an excellent report called “Stuck In Cement: When Packaged Apps Create Barriers To Innovation.” In his related blog post, he frets that “concrete” is the more apt, but less poetic analogy. Based on the research findings, I suggest “Packaged Apps Are the Concrete Shoes Pulling Business Down.” That’s how dire a picture Craig paints, but he offers a ray of hope by positing that BPM Software is the answer.

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Tags: , application development, BPM software, Enterprise Resource Planning, Forrester, mobile BPM, Social BPM

Discussions around customer service strategies have shifted from “customer management” to “customer engagement.” A recent piece in InformationWeek on  “Seven Ways IT Can Improve Customer Service” highlights this shift. The article, by Forrester Research senior analyst Kate Leggett, pays a lot of attention to process improvement and process consistency. Kate is a leading expert on customer service strategies, and a member of Forrester’s Business Process team, so this comes as no surprise. What is a little surprising is that she didn’t call out Mobile BPM and Social BPM more directly in her analysis. These components of Appian’s BPM software are playing a huge roll in the strategies our customers are rolling out to engage with their customers.

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Tags: , Business Process Management, customer experience, Forrester, Informationweek, mobile BPM, Social BPM

Ellen Carney, lead insurance industry analyst at Forrester Research, has just published an insightful report on the changing tide for insurance companies. You can read an excerpt here. “Tech Opportunities in the North American Insurance Industry” details the transition from “business-as-usual” to what Ellen calls a “business-as-unusual” model where the customer experience takes precedence over the products and services an insurer provides. BPM software, particularly Mobile BPM and Social BPM, are key technology enablers for this transition.

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Tags: , BPM for Insurance, Business Process Management, Forrester, mobile BPM, Social BPM

Forrester’s Ted Schadler recently blogged about “The Mobile Goat Rodeo.” In case you’re unfamiliar (as I was), goat rodeo is a term “used by aviation people (and others in higher risk situations) to describe a scenario that requires about 100 things to go right at once if you intend to walk away from it.” Ted’s right that the path to enterprise mobility has a lot of moving parts, but using a Mobile BPM platform for code-free mobile app development removes a lot of the complexity.

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Tags: , Appian 6, Business Process Management, enterprise mobility, Forrester, mobile app development, mobile BPM

Appian World 2012 is coming! If you haven’t done it yet, get registered today. The complimentary event will feature customer presentations, topical and timely panel discussions, Appian technology insights and free training, and loads of networking and knowledge sharing. It will also give you a chance to hear from four separate analyst organizations. Daryl Plummer (Gartner), Clay Richardson (Forrester), Sandy Kemsley (Column 2) and Neil Ward-Dutton (MWD Advisors) will deliver presentations on various aspects of BPM software, its usage today, and where it is headed tomorrow.

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Tags: , Appian World 2012, BPM, Column 2, Forrester, Gartner, MWD Advisors

Nick Deacon, Global Head of Business Process Management at Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) will deliver a Keynote presentation at the Forrester Research Business Process Forum 2011. The theme of the event is “The New World of Customer Engagement.” Nick will discuss “Empowering the Customer Through Process Improvement and BPM.” It’s going to be a great presentation, and a great conference, so get yourself to the Sheraton Boston Hotel in Boston, MA next week (September 22-23).

The traditional view of BPM software – that it reduces cost through automation – is giving way to a larger understanding of BPM’s value for transforming the customer experience. In this new age of customer empowerment, sophisticated mobile devices and global social networking are changing the nature of what organizations must do to connect with, sell to and retain customers. Mobile BPM and Social BPM are becoming integral to a company’s ability to compete.

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Tags: , archstone, customer experience, Forrester, mobile BPM, Nokia Siemens Networks, Social BPM

Several of Forrester Research’s leading thinkers on BPM, BPM software, application development and the customer experience participated in a roundtable discussion on empowering customers through business process transformation. Connie Moore has posted an excerpt of the discussion on her Forrester blog. It is a thought-provoking read that talks about the future of enterprise applications, the demand for more flexible and process-centric solutions, and the mobile, cloud and social “game-changers.” You can also get a free copy of Forrester’s “Empower Customers By Transforming Business Processes” report via a link on Connie’s post.

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Tags: , BPM in the Cloud, customer experience, Forrester, mobile BPM, Social BPM

Clay Richardson at Forrester Research has just published a great research paper on “The ROI of BPM Suites.” Clay puts forward some very exciting market data demonstrating the enormous business value of process improvement through BPM software. He also gives insightful prescriptive guidance on how to plan, measure and maximize BPM suite return on investment. According to Clay’s data, “implementing a BPM suite produced an expected return on investment (ROI) of 58% and a net present value (NPV) of $1,585,457 over three years via an on-premises deployment.”

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Tags: , Appian Cloud, BPM, Business Process Management, Forrester, Nokia Siemens Networks, ROI

As I previously blogged, Forrester Research has published some eye-opening stats about the growing mobile workforce. 70% of information workers in North America work remotely at least once a month, and “Hyper-Mobile Professionals” already constitute 33% of the workforce. According to the report’s author, T.J. Keitt, commercial and government leaders need to keep up with the pace by provisioning the mobile workforce properly. Appian’s mobile BPM software can help.

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Tags: , BPM for Government, Business Process Management, Forrester, mobile BPM