2013: The Year of BPM (Again) – Part II
Last week I began a discussion of two predictions I am making for 2013. As you no doubt recall, the first of these was that packaged application vendors will accelerate their embrace of BPM this year.
This week I’ll cover my second prediction; namely…
2. A new emphasis on business process as a service (BPaaS).
BPM in the cloud has only just started to catch on, but the next wave is already on the way. Why employ staff to build and operate your business processes when you can outsource the whole deal?
We’re already seeing some BPM vendors, including the one I work for, offering to build and support highly customized business processes in the cloud for their customers. Convenience and ROI will drive this trend forward in 2013, with, I predict, the appearance of some new players: business process outsourcers (BPOs). As their name suggests, BPOs are already delivering outsourced business process resources to customers. By bringing BPM into the mix, they will be gain leverage, reducing the burden of building custom services for each client.
Imagine, for example, that you are a BPO offering help desk services to dozens of customers. While the help desk operates more or less the same way for each, there are a number of custom parameters and behaviors that each client demands: escalation policies, user interaction models, and so forth. You want to take advantage of BPM solutions for the same reasons as anybody else–to improve the efficiency and robustness of your business processes (in this case, the processes you’re operating on behalf of your client)–but also because the slight changes from one client to another are easier to implement and maintain using a BPM platform.
As an outsourcer, any economies of scale you can realize give you an edge in a very competitive marketplace. So for BPOs, adoption of BPM offers advantages that will prove hard to resist.
And so my predictions for the year are complete. I feel very fortunate in this new year to hold a position that enables me to share my ideas while at the same time learning from all of you. I look forward to using this blog to engage with you, and I hope you will do the same, either by commenting on these posts, following me on Twitter at @ESMatBPL, or just dropping me a note at scott.menter@bplogix.com.
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