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Intelligent business operations could take BPM to new maturity levels

Ben Farrell
March 11, 2013

Business process management can give businesses a path to operational innovation. This is accomplished through business process gains built on top of one another to streamline work functions and enable more productivity. Organizations can gain considerably from this method for getting things done. However, it is most effective when companies develop a long-term vision for ongoing BPM use that sustainably builds better processes through a combination of analysis, operational integration and technological growth.

The long-term vision for BPM is proving problematic for many businesses. A recent Computerworld guest post from Gartner's John Dixon explained that many companies introduce BPM effectively and gain initial, iterative benefits. However, a significant portion of organizations fail to advance in the BPM maturity model to create long-term gains that transform processes and maximize the return on investment associated withthe practice. Moving forward, intelligent business operations (IBO) could provide the connecting point needed to help organizations take their BPM investments to another level.

Developing more mature BPM models

According to the news source, one of the major problems facing businesses, from a BPM perspective, is that they are focusing on short-term, relatively inexpensive BPM projects that only take them through the initial phase of process improvement. These early gains can be considerable, but they do not provide the sustainable operational change necessary to transform operations in light of changing economic and technological trends. IBO can resolve this problem, to a great extent, because itrepresents a natural path for BPM investments.

The report explained that IBO represents an overarching move toward analytics. Many companies face pressure to get more done with less. This creates an environment in which businesses have to use data more effectively to drive intelligent operational decision making. In many cases, organizations can do this, but only if they are able to integrate various application and data sources to streamline information analysis. BPM software provides the technological support needed to make this integration possible. As a result, IBO could prove to bethe catalyst needed to help organizations take their BPM efforts to a new level of maturity.

Importance of mature BPM models

Process innovation can be somewhat disruptive and challenging. However, the end result is often an operational architecture that enables companies to get the greatest value out of most of their technology investments. As a result, mature BPM deployments are becoming integral in helping businesses respond to cloud computing, mobile solutions and social operations more effectively.