Leaders in an IT-enabled economy will transform their organisations by using IT to manage business processes that enable change, meet customer expectations and adapt to the needs of their markets. The technology that supports the automation of critical processes will be scalable, available and high performance.

In a tough and uncertain economic climate, where customer demand and market opportunities are as unpredictable as the British weather, organisations need to be able to have business processes that can provide them with the flexibility and agility to adapt. IT, in conjunction with the business, is looking at how business process management (BPM) and process automation tools can enable this sleeker, swifter responsiveness to change.

Vuk Trifkovic, senior analyst at research group Ovum, says all organisations need to think about improving business processes.

“Process efficiency is always a big deal as whatever companies choose to compete with, they fall back on good processes, whether it’s great customer service or speed to market. They have to optimise business processes, but how they choose to do this is evolving,” says Trifkovic.

John Dixon, BPM research director at analyst Gartner, says BPM is becoming more democratic.

“BPM is a management discipline, about processes and assets with the aim of improving your organisation’s effectiveness and agility, and all sizes of companies are interested in this, whether it’s managing PCs on a desk in a banking environment or managing the processes people use to deliver a final output. All organisations are interested in how they can make themselves better,” he says.

Cloud computing is unstoppableIn the 1990s, the craze for business process re-engineering was linked with big ERP transactional systems, but there are now more options available for businesses as new ways of doing BPM and new strategies are emerging to support organisational transformation.

“It is a waste of time buying a big ERP system in the forlorn hope it will change business processes,” says Bob Tarzey, director at analyst Quocirca.

“Businesses that have done this have ended up changing the business to fit in with how the technology supplier thinks the business should be run. Today there are new choices including the option of the cloud if an organisation doesn’t have the internal capabilities. All the big suppliers know the cloud is unstoppable and a game-changer.”

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Trifkovic adds: “The real problem is not in installing applications but in connecting them without customisation and that is where BPM comes in today.”

Solving the process problemThere are two ways to look at BPM, he says.

The first is the integration model, where organisations look at their transaction environment and understand the process flows of data to applications, dealing with application interfaces that don’t change that quickly.

“It can be done in an automated fashion, which means less scope for human error, and is popular in areas such as the public sector and insurance where there are many repeated steps and BPM can hum nicely in the background. Although this area of BPM is mature, there is still plenty to be done and many enterprises are still grappling with it,” says Trifkovic.

The second requirement for BPM is trickier – how to deal with loosely structured processes, connected to the growth of knowledge workers and solving problems within a service economy.

“As the economy moves from making things to offering services, the problem is how to capture processes where there is often the need for workarounds and exceptions,” says Trifkovic.

“A customer can ring with a specific problem and a knowledge worker may find it hard to know the optimum way to solve the problem and have to navigate the best way. For example, there are huge amounts of specificity with planning applications. Where problems are diverse, an organisation can keep adding exceptions, but it will eventually hit the wall as it is unable to predict all possibilities,” he says.

This is where BPM can help organisations find looser ways to support processes, but there is no single approach, says Trifkovic.

“In an ideal world, business process tools should be agile enough to be able to deal with straightforward and messy issues, but there is no simple answer for how companies should deal with this and it depends on their BPM strategy,” he says.

The top-down approach, relying on modelling and surveying of processes to find how best to optimise and implement them, is more popular in continental Europe, where process modelling experts hold sway, says Trifkovic.

The other approach is less process-driven and may short-circuit the mapping processes, and relies on the IT department using powerful tools that demand IT skills.

“It doesn’t matter which approach an organisation chooses, and there are risks to both methods. If all the processes are mapped and they don’t follow through to systems and implementation, then it is just an academic exercise, whereas if BPM is driven by IT only, cutting out the decision-makers, it will not benefit from what the business owners can bring to the table,” says Trifkovic.

The tools are available, however, that can benefit both strategies, and the important thing is to include IT and the business.

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“Suppliers have opened up process modelling with light modelling applications now available provided through software-as-a-service which increases the number of constituents who can give input about how the processes should look. Whatever approach is chosen, the important thing is to leave the door open to comment on what’s being done,” says Trifkovic.

FlexibilityAgility and adaptability are key features required of the tools by many organisations.

“Unlike previous process improvement activities, where processes were built and remained good for three to five years, now there is a build-to-change perspective as agility is coming in. Rather than going for 100% improvement, many organisations may go for 80% right and improving. The focus is on getting it out there,” says Dixon.

Responsiveness is extremely important and should not be hampered by technology.

“If the marketing director, for example, sees a niche in the market and he goes to the IT director for help, but is told he is sixth in the queue and it will take three months to build a prototype, he is not going to be happy,” says Dixon.

“BPM suites today should enable the business person to alter the process flow, and the code changes underneath it. However, the suite is not a replacement for IT which must be brought in because IT specialises in data architecture and understands how data works. A BPM suite should give greater ownership to the business people, but without IT, improvements would grind to a halt,” he says.

Tarzey agrees that agility is key. “If the solution to a problem arrives three months later, the problem is no longer a problem, it is either a raging issue, or it has gone away,” he says.

The crucial point is that BPM is “best done as a partnership between IT and the business”, says Dixon.

“Organisations need to move with agility to be effective and need to watch what is going on in the market and be able to respond quickly. IT shouldn’t be the brakes for this type of innovation, it should be the enabler.”

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This paper is one of three industry reports produced as part of Building the IT Economy, a Computer Weekly content programme, in association with IBM. Visit www.computerweekly.com/ITeconomy for more information and to read the other two reports.

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