ROI / NPV and the "B" of BPM

It has been interesting formally practicing in the "BPM space". Although I have done this type of work for years, the formal space was not something with which I was a part. When I jumped on board, I was so excited by the possibility of providing business executives with a tool that allowed them to manage their processes.

Six months into this and after attending several conferences including Gartner and Shared Insights, I keep asking the vendors and companies the same questions:

1. What is your planned/actual ROI or NPV?
2. How is BPM transforming your business?
3. How are you using BAM to change the decisioning process and management processes across the company?
4. Has the agility of BPM allowed you to compete on process and less on price?
5. What has the reaction been of the CEO or board of directors?

Although architecture and standards are important, I don't want to hear about SOA and rules engines and BPMN and BPEL. I want to hear about what this did for a company to make them more competitive or help them grow or transform their business. Isn't that what drives purchases or services or technology? BPM, more than many other techniques or applications, should be a solution sell. Only then do I want to focus on the technical options that enable these solutions.

I am still amazed to hear people talk about BPM as a technology play and treat implementations like a typical SDLC. It was beat into our head at Ernst & Young that every technical project has to include strategy, people, process, and technology. When companies forget one of these factors is when mistakes happen. I presented to a group of IT executives earlier this week and this was the primary discussion afterwards. They wanted to know how to grow projects and make them more successful. The two things we talked about were leadership and communications.

So think about the big picture relative to your BPM initiative. Although the technology is what makes the "BPM space" so exciting and different from BPR in the 90s, these initiatives will die if they don't have tangible value that can be demonstrated against some baseline metrics. Additionally, if you focus purely on BPM as a software deployment, you will miss the benefits, limit adoption, and frustrate your executives.

A portal dashboard which gives the business user a role based view of their process, their tasks, the key metrics, and interrelated tasks is not a nirvana anymore. It can exist, but simply putting it out there without understanding it is a mistake.