Business Process Management (BPM) Definition and Solutions

A typical BPM project requires licensing a BPMS from a vendor, training internal staff and hiring outside assistance for your first BPM initiative. Like other software platforms, there are many different types of licenses available: enterprisewide agreements, per processor, per process, per developer, per user, etc.

Now that BPM has gained traction in many large enterprises, BPM vendors are pursuing mid-market companies and reducing license fees to match the budgets of these smaller buyers.

For a typical implementation that leverages a leading BPMS, you should plan for $250,000 to $500,000 to address a meaningful process in your organization. (This cost includes the first two bullets below.)

Potential hidden costs include:

having to license and deploy multiple development/test/production environments to support multiple BPM initiatives
additional application and database server licenses
staff to provide the care and feeding of servers
internal cost of direct involvement from business users to participate in process modeling, business rule definition, user interface design, testing and rollout activities
change management and training costs associated with convincing your users to evolve beyond event-driven to task-driven work (event-driven: workers "know" what tasks to do and in which order because that's the way they've always done it; they prioritize their work based on events as they happen, often using the "squeaky wheel rule"; task-driven: the logic built into the BPM solution defines tasks, their order and relative priorities, workers monitor a task list to know what to work on)

What is involved in implementing BPM?

Similar to other software implementations, BPM requires both business and technical resources and activities. Effective BPM is based on an ongoing iterative design/develop/deliver process improvement lifecycle. Although the usual cast of characters will be involved (executive sponsors, project managers, business users, business analysts, technical architects, software engineers, quality assurance and infrastructure specialists), the role they play may be very different with BPM.

In a typical enterprise package implementation, business users are included in up-front planning and requirements definition. After that, they don't typically get involved in a substantial way until user acceptance testing. BPM implementations, on the other hand, will require constant participation from key business users and analysts as process models are developed and supporting application elements are implemented in an iterative fashion. Many business users and IT staff are not used to an ongoing collaborative approach to implementing software; this makes planning, training and change management key components in a successful BPM implementation. (For more on change management, see "ABC: An Introduction to Change Management.")

Another potential challenge with BPM is the behavioral change required by participants in the process. Often, BPM requires users to move from an event-driven to a task-driven work paradigm (event-driven: using the "squeaky wheel rule"; task-driven: the priorities built into the BPM solution determine tasks' order).

For many workers, using a BPM application will involve monitoring an inbox of tasks with prescribed priorities and work instructions, rather than concentrating on the task that seems most pressing. For some organizations, well-planned and executed training is enough to make the transition, but for others, implementing task-driven work processes can require a major cultural transformation.

Top 10 lessons learned from real-world BPM projects

DO	DON'T
Start with an important process	Try to fix your most complex process first or everything at once
Establish a simple ROI metric for your initiative that is meaningful to your business	Go overboard with process performance metrics
Stop modeling and start implementing	Wait for complete consensus on the new process before getting something up and running
Insist on multiple iterations	Allow scope creep—your first process should be operational within 60 to 90 days with an organized plan for future releases
Use business process needs to compare offerings	Focus on technology or assume BPM vendor offerings are all the same

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