Dear Graywind,
Your clarification made things a bit more complicated. If you are
familiar with Adam Smith, you?d understand that business process (in
general) is essential to every business system, and even the most
primitive business has to apply some sort of business process. A
market cannot exist without business processes. This is not a question
of ?advantages? vs ?disadvantages? ? even a barter-based system has
some sort of (admittedly, very simple) process involved. The question
is not whether a process exist or not, but whether it is efficient and
optimized or not.
Naturally, the more complex the global system and technology
application go, the greater the need for organized, and mechanized,
business processes. Today, the claim is that a large business cannot
survive without business process management, as part of its
mechanisms. Another important transition is of course between Smith
original model of business processes in the manufacturing industry,
and the development of business processes in the service industry. BPM
is clearly important, and its significance has grown with the
development of new technologies, new market and the complication of
the global market.
Ulrich, for example, writes that ?The importance of business process
management (BPM) has grown dramatically due to the convergence of
several factors. Business requirements that include enabling
functional integration across segregated business units, extending
vertical process management into supply and distribution chains,
streamlining costs and providing companies with e-business integration
capabilities are collectively driving companies to embrace BPM as a
core strategy. The most important factor, however, is the need to
obtain, and the promise of BPM to deliver, more cost effective and
flexible business integration than traditional approaches to
enterprise application integration (EAI) and business-to-business
integration (B2Bi) can provide. Organizations can meet these
requirements by deploying BPM technology across business units and
third party environments. BPM tools integrate human and machine-based
processes to streamline and improve the effectiveness of customer,
distributor, supplier and internal interactions. To accomplish this, a
BPM product must incorporate certain characteristics as outlined in
this white paper. Before discussing these characteristics, however, it
is important to clarify the scope of process management and its value
to the corporate enterprise.? (William Ulrich, ?Essential
Characteristics of a Business Process Management Product?, System
Transformation, < http://www.systemtransformation.com/org_bpm.htm>)
A Q&A with Debbie Moynihan, Program Director, IBM WebSphere Business
Integration Product Management, provide more organized benefits of
BPM:
?1) Clarity: Business process modeling identify and clearly document a
business's most strategic business processes, and helps optimize those
business processes to drive maximum ROI and competitive
differentiation, as well as conforming to corporate standards. For
example, by using business process modeling with simulation, business
users and IT can clearly identify which processes have the best ROI,
so that those projects are given top priority. By having a clear
understanding of business processes and related costs and resources
needed, business can reduce costs by eliminating unnecessary process
steps, duplicate processes, and manual processes. Business process
modeling fosters stronger communication between the business and IT
teams to work together to support the company's strategy.
2) Responsiveness: Business process modeling enables increased
operational effectiveness for IT and a better match with business
requirements and IT deliverables. Business process modeling tools can
validate the business process model prior to deployment, such that the
business analyst can realize if they made a mistake in the model and
correct it before sharing the model with IT. Utilizing business
process modeling coupled with an overall business process management
strategy, you can quickly modify applications to adapt business
processes on demand as a result of changes in the market or
competitive threats.
3) Business Flexibility: The key word to this benefit is "business",
in that the business leaders and process analysts can modify the
business process without having to go to IT. With business process
modeling, the business user has a tool to modify and simulate business
processes, to see how a new business process will run and affect the
business. New or modified business process models can reuse
components, services, and sub-processes of existing processes across
organizations and functional areas. A business user can then share the
model with IT to deploy new applications, products and services
quickly to respond to the ever-changing business needs. ? (SOURCE:
Rosemarie Graham , ?Development Meets Business Process Modeling: A Q&A
with IBM?, Developer.com <
http://www.developer.com/design/article.php/10925_3492721_1>).
A similar article from IBM is available at :
Richard Barton, ?The Power of Business Process Management? Asian
Productivity Organization, <
http://www.apo-tokyo.org/productivity/046_prod.htm>
However, naturally, there is also criticism on BPM and not everybody
thinks that there are only advantages: ?Collectively, the issue of
failure to produce a business case for business process management
(BPM) remains the leading reason why firms have not yet made a
decision to invest in BPM. [?] ?The findings reflect the priorities of
business process management (BPM) uses and evaluators, relative to
their overall importance to the respondent's organizations. ? (SOURCE:
Nathaniel Palmer , ?Delphi Group: Why Not Invest in Business Process
Management?, DM Review, <
http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleID=1022443>).
Another critic comes from an interesting source, Thomas H. Davenport,
who wrote several books and articles on business processes and the
implementation of engineering in the improvement and redesign of
business processes.
Thomas H. Davenport, ?The Fad That Forgot People?, FastCompany, Issue
01 | November 1995 | Page 70, <
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/01/reengin.html>
Books on the subject:
====================
Roger Burlton, ?Business Process Management: Profiting From Process?,
Paul Harmon, ?Business Process Change: A Manager's Guide to Improving,
Redesigning, and Automating Processes?,
H. James Harrington, Business Process Improvement,
Harrington et al, ?Business Process Improvement Workbook?
Felix Racca and Waqar Sadiq _ Business Services Orchestration: The
Hyper-Tier of IT._
Howard Smith, Peter Fingar, Business Process Management (BPM): The Third Wave
Working/White Papers
====================
Insession Technologies, Inc. , ?BPM Market Trends & Implementations? ,
< http://www.bitpipe.com/detail/RES/1100539131_599.html>
TIBCO Software Inc., ?The Case for Business Process Management? April
1, 2005 abstract could be read, full article could be obtained through
BitPipe < http://www.bitpipe.com/detail/RES/1114536883_360.html>
Ultimus, Inc. ?A Closer Look at BPM?, January 1, 2005, abstract could
be read, full article could be obtained through BitPipe , <
http://www.bitpipe.com/detail/RES/1103736098_704.html>
Articles
========
Jim Ericson, ?The Business Process Factory ? Line56, May 06, 2004, <
http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=5602&TopicID=3>
Grover, Varun and Kettinger, William J. , ?Special Section: The
Impacts of Business Process Change on Organizational Performance.?,
Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 14 No. 1, Summer 1997
pp. 9 ? 12, introduction available at
<http://jmis.bentley.edu/articles/v14_n1_p9/>
David McGoveran, ?An Introduction to BPM & BPMS?, Business Integration
Journal, April 2004, <
http://bijonline.com/PDF/mcgov%20intro%20bpm%20april.pdf>
Alan Radding, ?Internal medicine for what ails you?, FCW, Nov. 15,
2004, < http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/1115/spec-internal-11-15-04.asp>
Raj Ramesh, ?Holistic BPM?, Business Integration, Juen 16, 2005 <
http://bijonline.com/PDF/ramesh%20june.pdf>?
Andrew K. Reese, ?BPM Rising?,iSource Business, October/November 2002]
, < http://www.isourceonline.com/article.asp?article_id=3132>
Howard Smith and Peter Fingar, ?A New Path To Business Process
Management?, Optimize Magazine, October 2002, Issue 12, <
http://www.optimizemagazine.com/issue/012/leadership.htm#_>.
Mark Smith, ?Behind the BAM Hype?, Intelligent Enterprise, September
1, 2003, < http://www.intelligententerprise.com/030901/614bpm1_1.jhtml?_requestid=39134>
Michael Voelker, ?BPM Targets the Bottom Line?, Transform Magazine, <
http://www.transformmagazine.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=YSQWIJC3RU5Z0QSNDBCCKHQ?articleID=16400144>
I hope this answered your question and have you lots to start your
research from. Please contact me if you need any further clarification
on this answer before you rate it. |
