According to the report, BPM suites deliver a range of business benefits in addition to pure cost-cutting:

“Instead of deploying slow-to-change packaged applications or building difficult-to-change custom solutions, leading organizations embrace BPM methodologies — supported by BPM suites — that drive rapid process change, increased business engagement, and dramatic improvements in worker productivity [as well as] driving greater process orientation, improving the customer experience, and accelerating the integration of merged and acquired companies.”

Appian customer Nick Deacon, global head of Business Process Management at Nokia Siemens Networks, is quoted in the report citing BPM software as a new, faster and less-costly alternative to traditional application development:

“One of our business teams received a quote from a systems integrator (SI) for nine months of development at a cost of $1.2 million to extend a particular process within one of our packaged applications. Our BPM team also reviewed the requirements and was able to deliver the same functionality over a three-month period at one-quarter of the cost quoted by the SI. We believe that much of the savings came from the BPM suite’s model-driven approach, which allowed us to quickly engage business stakeholders.”

The report also outlines the common costs of implementing a BPM suite. The top two are software license costs and maintenance fees. Appian is cited for offering full-featured BPM in the cloud – eliminating both the up-front license investment and the ongoing maintenance. The three most common reasons for BPM suite project failure are also noted:

• Inability to establish the proper business context for BPM
• Shortage of BPM skills
• Lack of planning for business change management

Addressing these issues at the outset of a BPM initiative will greatly increase your chances of success, and will position you to heed the report’s advice to “go all in with BPM suites to gain the greatest benefits.”

-Ben Farrell, Director, Corporate Communications

The new report, called “BPM Accelerated: Slashing Cost and Time with Agile Business Processes,” uses Aberdeen’s methodology of Best-in-Class, Industry Average and Laggard to show that leading companies were able to achieve an average 18 percent year-over-year reduction in operating cost and an average 16 percent reduction in process cycle time through a comprehensive strategy for BPM. 

This study collected data from 200 organizations globally and discovered that “companies that have developed the organizational maturity and are leveraging the right tools for BPM are generating more robust, flexible and agile business processes.”

I recorded a webinar with Michael Lock (author of the report), and Bill Laberis from Computerworld where we discussed Aberdeen’s data in the context of BPM’s value across organizational roles and out to customers. You can watch it on demand here.