Structuring The Business Framework

Business process management (BPM) is the ideal way to manage the entire
process for enterprises that are multilocational. Jamdar of Tibco feels that
with customization being the ongoing process, solution providers have a vast
range of opportunities to explore in the form of BPM

An organization may have different clients with varied needs. Business
process management (BPM) helps aligning an organization with its client's needs.
It is a holistic management approach that promotes business effectiveness and
efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility and integration with
technology. As organizations strive for attainment of their objectives, BPM
attempts to improve processes. In a nutshell, we can put BPM as an optimi­zation
process. It is a tool, which can be put to phenomenal amount of usage. It
basically travels the entire business structure. Starting from account opening
to revenue-generation processes, it can fit into anything up to customer
services. The users need to define their requirement and fix the tasks for using
the BPM in an effective manner.

Where to deploy?

There is enough opportunity in large segments for BPM to move. One of its
key advantages is that it allows at the strategy-making level to outsource all
the processes. For instance, if we take up the case of insurance, there may be
highly skilled people but they would be in remote locations. By using BPM, one
can ensure that they get to access all documents and approve them, without being
physically present and can offer their skillset from there.

Gaurav Jamdar Manager-Global Sales Enablement & Product Market, Tibco

Using BPM, any process could be outsourced, which apart from enhancing the
efficiency, brings down the cost to a greater level. There are some places where
tangible advantages are very evident while using BPM solutions. For instance,
while opening an account in a bank for multiple businesses, deploying BPM, one
can have a common structure of the framework by accessing different things and
can save money by default without traveling. Enhancing customer services could
be an intangible advantage.

At a place where revenue generation is possible, it is easy to communicate
the RoI, whereas on the intangible side, it is extremely difficult to
communicate the return on investment (RoI). People intuitively know that BPM
brings efficiency in those areas, whereas one can't assign numbers to the amount
of efficiency that the BPM would bring in. But in those cases, the turn around
time would matter. The difference in time taken in the pre- and
post-installation of BPM solutions would be able judge the efficiency of the
solution.

Who are the users

Tata Tele Services, Reliance Communications among others are extensively using
it. Banks such as HDFC, Kotak, ICICI are using it as a group. Apart from these,
there are other foreign banks and financial services that are using BPM
solutions for having an enhanced service. Banks, insurance are the key users and
Telco's follow them. Predominantly BPM's are needed in places where outsourcing
tasks are performed in a huge manner, and where combination of automation and
human interventions happen. Any services that need customer facing would need
this software. We wouldn't know, whether they would go for BPM now or in another
two years, however we foresee a compulsory adoption in those verticals.

Comparing the global adoption with that of the Indian adoption of BPM
solutions, there is not much difference as only verticals like banks and telcos
are going for the BPM solutions, even in the international markets. The retail
industry hasn't much picked up in terms of adoption. It's just starting and
would get into the list of adopters of BPM very soon.

Since BPM is not generating big volumes of business, it is really difficult
to identify the percentage of growth that it has attained in last three years.
In all likelihood, it will jumpstart but it may also grow at 100 percent. But
making any assumptions at this stage would be a misleading one.

Drivers of growth

One of the major drivers I foresee is the globalization. We have lots of
global companies coming in and setting operations. They have their own business
processes and managing those processes would propel the growth. Besides that,
the outsourcing model too will pick up in a large scale, which will drive the
growth of BPM solutions. The other drivers of BPM are obviously banks and
Telco's.

BPM solutions are classified into two basic categories such as front-office
BPM (FO-BPM) and back-office BPM (BO-BPM). While vendors are racing to provide
both types of BPM solutions, the maturity of their capabilities in each area
tends to depend on their history and depth of experience in each domain. Tibco
offers end-to-end solutions in this space. We provide the BPM tools, and on top
of it, SIs customize speci­fically to that particular customer. There is a fair
amount of customization happening in this tool.

Opportunity for SIs

The customization part is somewhere the SIs fit into in the BPM solutions.
BPM is just a tool but the customization is an ongoing process. SIs can play a
major role in the customization process by sitting along with the customers and
catering accor­ding to their varying requirements. This is also very sticky task
for an SI, as he has to be with the customer for a long period and they have to
be prepared for that before going for the foray.

This is also the place where lots of innovations happen in the BPM space.
While catering according to the needs of the customers, understanding of
assorted things happens and this in turn paves way for lots of innovations.

Attention SIs

Since BPM is going to touch the heart of any organization, SIs need to be
critically aware of all the top management needs. SIs need to have deep
knowledge in business analysis. Only then they would be able to draw down, sit
with the top management, suggest them and identify the 'low hanging fruits',
which is the immediate returns that everybody would like to see and feel. More
or less, SIs should have a domain expertise before venturing into the BPM
solutions.

If not now, the channel model would definitely get evolved in the BPM space.
As more and more people start opting for BPM, there is definitely going to be a
channel model for deploying the tools and customizing it. Before foraying into
space, SIs need to remember that BPM is like SAP, which is going to be the heart
of any organization. Definitely the channel model will evolve but it won't be
massive; it'll be very small focus niche groups. Typically BPM is the playground
for those SIs who are focused on the financial services side, brokerage or
capital markets, banks and who are focused on manufacturing side.

NR SETHURAMAN

sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in