tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post5682702015811412630..comments2023-11-08T08:32:41.971-05:00Comments on Improving It: SMBs and the BPM vendors' dirty little secretPhil Ayreshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14708790980510403134noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-43498771980377009122009-11-06T05:16:26.715-05:002009-11-06T05:16:26.715-05:00Till date I hardly knew about the job profile and ...Till date I hardly knew about the job profile and the kind of work done by SMPs and BPM vendors.Reading this post I got to understand the clear image of their work profile and my conclusion come to the point that SMB market is under-served by the traditional BPM suite vendors.<br /><a href="http://www.sunrisesoftware.co.uk" rel="nofollow">Business Process Management</a>markinsonmarshalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06904483412295156652noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-1773555361650058212009-10-01T14:17:53.852-04:002009-10-01T14:17:53.852-04:00Chris, you have articulated some great points here...Chris, you have articulated some great points here. You are completely right about the departmental purchases of process improvement technology. Not many global companies have implemented their precious BPM suites in more than a couple of departments. Perhaps this is leaving huge potential for the BPM vendors, but it is also telling about the technology itself. What makes it so hard for organizations to adopt technology that is supposed to be so good for them if the ROI really does add up? So, let's not leave the departments of large enterprises out of the discussion.<br /><br />Your point that that the biggest constraint to SMBs is time, seems reasonable. For that, the complex methodologies for BPM projects, involving business analysts, software developers, IT and half of your valuable operations resources just don't fly. Honestly if I was a department head and you told me that I needed a project manager, process analyst and at least one software developer to put in place an expense claims solution or HR employee onboarding process, I'd laugh. I don't neeed to be a lean, mean AP or HR machine, I need to make sure that work gets to the right people and can be found when needed, with minimal user training. Saving 5 minutes a day for each employee in HR is not worth the complete hell of a software project for 3 months (and all the people involved will back me up on that). <br /><br />For my critical processes, the ones that make my company unique, sure, let's spend a little more time looking at them. My opinion here is that most organizations need to see how a system, any system, will affect their operations so that they can understand really where to focus their efforts in more detail. When consulting on BPM strategy I push this point with clients routinely when they are implementing BPM for the first time. They push back, because they want to really feel like big change is happening with the software investment they made. But in phase two they thank me, because they realize that some of their initial ideas were misplaced and would have been expensive unused features. <br /><br />So, the five items you speak about are important for BPM. Though I feel that Centers of Excellence and E-learning give the impression of 'big software' and 'business re-engineering' and probably put a department head or SMB buyer on the defensive from the start. Your experience may well be different and I'd love to hear about it.Phil Ayreshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14708790980510403134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29020225.post-49986749863468625162009-10-01T10:55:19.053-04:002009-10-01T10:55:19.053-04:00When I read stories about the difficulty of BPM pe...When I read stories about the difficulty of BPM penetration into the SMB space, I often see arguments based on BPM Suite (BPMS) functionality and BPMS pricing. I think both of these points are valid, but not unique to the SMB space. Large scale companies want the same “ease of use” and “flexibility” in a BPMS that SMBs do. And while large scale companies, on a whole, have bigger pockets, BPMS purchases by the large scale companies are not always at the enterprise level. As such, many of same pricing and licensing constraints are encountered by the large company’s individual department that is considering the BPMS purchase.<br /><br />I argue that the single most constraint for SMBs is time. SMBs can be slow to adopt a BPMS because of the fact that everyone in the SMB is “heads down” in executing their day-to-day processes just to maintain their business (even if their processes are not efficient and/or cost controlling as they would like them to be). If the SMB spares even one resource to commit to a BPM initiative, that is one less person involved in operating their mission critical processes today. Over and above SMBs needing a flexible and powerful BPMS, SMBs need help from the BPMS providers themselves to augment their limited available resources. BPMS providers need to provide a full BPM solution to the SMBs which should include:<br /><br />• Centers of Excellence (staffed by the BPM provider) which consults into the SMB<br /><br />• Flexible E-Learning programs where SMBs can regularly and routinely learn how to leverage the BPMS<br /><br />• Process Templates (which provide pre-built and “canned” common process solutions which are “plug and play”)<br /><br />• Virtual, Hosted, and SaaS BPMS solutions which allow the SMBs the avoidance of having to invest time and money into hardware and on-premise software<br /><br />• Online BPM Communities, where SMBs can share knowledge, processes, best practices, and informationChris Adams, VP of Product Management and Product Marketinghttp://www.ultimus.comnoreply@blogger.com