"We don’t want any software package putting restrictions or dictating how our business can act," says Chicago-based Lombardo. "Our product guys are very creative, and there’s so much competition out there. We’ve got to be able to react."

Lombardo’s need for speed and flexibility rings true in nearly any business. Ideally, companies should be able to quickly automate their business processes while also being nimble enough to optimize those processes over time. In practice, companies often find themselves bound to the business rules hard-wired into their enterprise applications because modifying the software is so difficult.

Business process management (BPM) software seeks to turn the tables. BPM tools are designed to let CIOs and end users take a process-centric approach to IT projects and to track the effectiveness of those corporate processes. With many companies doing the same amount of work with fewer employees, business process efficiency may well be the next stage of business-IT innovation.

Process Improvement by Design

Although workflow-oriented software has been around for years, a new generation of BPM software is spreading beyond the leading-edge user set. Founded in 1992, the Business Process Management Group?a U.K.-based user organization?boasts more than 2,500 members, 200 of which joined during the past few months.

Vendors of many stripes?integration middleware, workflow and enterprise applications?are converging on BPM as well. Because so many software products now include embedded workflow engines, a precise definition of BPM is tricky. But the most common feature set includes a business-process-modeling tool, a run-time engine to execute and monitor processes, and a development environment with connectors to enterprise applications.

Many experts argue that BPM is the killer application for Web services. Once Web services becomes more commonplace, end users and business analysts without extensive training should be able to design and build process workflows that tie together, or "orchestrate," several prebuilt services. IT organizations, relieved a bit of the application backlog, will then have time to focus on IT infrastructure and system-to-system process automation?or at least that’s the hope.

But perhaps most compelling, BPM technology is versatile enough for all manner of applications. Just ask Shell Oil.

Shell U.S. Tax Organization in Houston wasn’t in the market for BPM software when it had a mandate to cut its monthly financial reporting time in half and provide a clear trail in case of audits. The core problem?common to large enterprises?was the heterogeneity of the systems involved, including geographically dispersed divisions running primarily SAP R/3 but also J.D. Edwards and Oracle Financials, says John Antaki, former technology adviser for the Tax Organization who is now a managing partner with Matrix5 Consulting in Houston.