Gartner bares key predictions for business process management

By eGovAsia Editors | Feb 4, 2011

Thumbnail: 

EGHAM - Research firm Gartner has identified prospects for business process management (BPM) in 2011 and beyond.

Gartner said that between now and year-end 2014 an intensifying focus on process-related skills, competencies and competitive differentiators will increasingly separate process excellence leaders from the laggards among the Global 2000 companies.

“A key theme in our BPM predictions for 2011 is the rising focus on making business process improvement (BPI) a core competency of the organization — and on the capabilities and tools required to gain that competency,” said John Dixon, research director at Gartner. 

Dixon added that the practices, tools and resources that organizations will increasingly harness to boost their process excellence include business process competency centers (BPCCs), which Gartner expects to be adopted within the majority of organizations by 2012. 

“Those who embrace BPM can do things that others cannot,” said  Dixon. “While this is true in 2010, by 2014, BPM will clearly deliver benefits to those who have the competencies, and deny a peaceful sleep to those who do not.”

A key BPM prediction  for 2011  is that business process defects would topple 10 Global 2000 companies.

Gartner said broken business processes underpin major business debacles, snafus and embarrassments. Though state-of-the-art BPM practices and technologies today could spot many of these issues, still many detectable process defects remain undiagnosed throughout the Global 2000.

"Companies should build organizational competencies for business process excellence. Invest in the skills and roles (such as business process analysts), tools and techniques and organization that are needed to analyze and improve processes," it said.

Gartner added that by 2015, context-aware computing will be used to rejuvenate at least 25 percent of “commodity” enterprise processes that are currently perceived as “low value.”

"Organizations that really understand business processes will explicitly or implicitly tier those processes in a hierarchy of value. Through the use of context-aware computing principles such as presence, historical pattern analysis and emotion detection, up to a quarter of these commodity processes can be rejuvenated, made more customer-centric and contribute even more to the organization bottom line.

By 2014, Gartner said process templates from “non-traditional application vendors” will be included in the shortlisted options for 70 percent of application purchases.

Process templates are prebuilt business process design, execution and management artefacts that serve as solution accelerators for development, integration and BPM projects.

Gartner predicts that, as the application market shifts from monolithic packaged applications to next-generation composite applications, the definition of what constitutes an “application” will become more blurred, enabling many non-traditional application vendors to play in the enterprise application market.

General BPM certification will grow in value but will not be materially relevant to BPM hiring decisions before 2015, it said.

Gartner also emphasized need for skilled and experienced personnel to lead and participate in BPM activities is clear. "What is also clear is the eclectic nature of that skill set and, by definition, the individuals who possess it," it said.