Chapter 7

How do you sell BPM technology to the

organization?
Frits Bussemaker

Even though many internal BPM practitioners have identified substantial business benefits
from the use of an automated BPM solution, they have often struggled to convince the rest
of the organization, especially the decision-makers and holders of the budgets, to gain funding. Frits Bussemaker, Chairman of the Dutch BPM Forum, describes how an automated
BPM solution can be positioned to gain acceptance. The main message is: there are multiple stakeholders, and it is crucial to focus on the business benefits rather than technology.

Business processes are all around us, independent of the market, organization,
department or function whether a telecom operator providing an ASDL connection, a bank processing a loan application, an insurance company handling
a claim, or a local government organization processing a request for a new passport. It could be argued that any organization is the sum of its business processes. At least, the business process should be considered as a fundamental part of
any organizations infrastructure. In all the above examples, the volume of work
and the complexity of the business process demand that organizations look for
possible IT applications to support and automate their processes. Throughout
the years, many companies have invested millions in all sorts of IT solutions. The
marketing department has its Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system,
used to inform the consumer of the organizations products or services. The
sales department has a Customer Relation Management (CRM) system to allow
the company to up- and cross-sell, and finally the delivery department has an
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to process the order and send an
invoice. The reality with most organizations today is that these departments operate as independent silos (Figure 7.1).
The consumer is often confronted with poor customer service due to broken processes, inefficient processes and manual processes that is, the customer is often confronted with the silos of the organization. However, the same
consumer is becoming more and more demanding with respect to delivery
time where customers used to expect and accept days or weeks for delivery,

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Business Process Management

Boardroom

Marketing

Sales

Delivery

CM

CRM

ERP

Figure 7.1
Automation of the
functional silos.

The customer

over recent years they have moved to ever more real-time expectations. At the
same time, the consumer is demanding higher quality of the products or services. Finally, the product or service is becoming more and more personalized
(and thus more complex), supported by increased customer services This is
what I want, and I want it now.
How can any organization cope with these increased demands in an environment where, at the same time:

the number of interfaces with the customers is growing (e.g. phone,

fax, email, sms, pda, etc.)
the product, service and price options have increased the complexity of the business
most organizations have a whole suite of build and buy systems and
applications, often each with its own data format
budgets are being cut.

Organizations must start realizing that all the organizations assets, systems,
departments and people are interlinked. There are numerous internal
processes that form an internal supply chain, which relate to the end-to-end
process of the organization. Basically, one simple interface with the organization would be preferable:

Marketing what product or service do you have to offer?

Sales please treat me as one single client
Delivery please provide the product or service as quickly as possible.

Realizing that an organization could be seen as a sum of its business

processes is the key element in selling BPM that is, BPM automation is not
just about implementing technology, it is also about automating the business
processes in the right circumstances. Existing applications can be linked to
each other by an independent process layer. BPM automation is also about a
new way of working, monitoring and managing the organization, which could
result in a new organizational structure.
As presented simplistically in Figure 7.2, BPM technology can complement
existing (and future) investments in applications. BPM provides an independent

Chapter 7

How do you sell BPM technology to the organization?

Boardroom

Figure 7.2
The end-to-end
customer process
crosses the
functional silos.

Customer

31

the business process

Marketing

Sales

Delivery

CM

CRM

ERP

process layer linking the various independent applications needed to execute a

single end-to-end business process. BPM technology can then manage the flow
of activities along different applications, and the people involved. BPM technology can also reduce execution time. By tracking the business process, an organization can monitor its performance and at the same time audit for compliance.
Analyzing this information will also help to improve the business processes further. All this can increasingly be completed in real time; management can make
instant changes and validate if the changes are having the desired effect.
As the business process may cover different people working in different
departments, the organization should also consider allocating issues such as
process owners, process managers, and the method of measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of a business process. This also implies that, with most
organizations, the business and IT should be involved. Experience shows that
organizations which are successful in exploiting BPM technology start by solving a specific business problem with a clear, short-term return on investment
(ROI). Thus, anybody selling BPM, both internal and external to an organization, should consider both parts of the equation:
BPM = process and organization (including people) as well as technology.

In the end, you are selling a mindset: implementing BPM technology can
contribute towards an organization becoming process-centric.
Can BPM technology realize a more efficient organization at a lower cost?
Yes! Just consider the old silo structure, where individual departments spend
lots of time and money (effort) but this effort is not necessarily aligned, so
that the effort of one department actually contradicts the effort of another
department. What BPM can do is assist in aligning the efforts of the individual departments. The sum of the total effort will then increase (Figure 7.3).

Who is buying BPM technology?

As mentioned previously, both the business and the IT sides of an organization
are involved in acquiring BPM technology. As processes are everywhere, this
also means that basically any business manager can buy an automated BPM
solution. Generic arguments for any business manager include the following:

BPM technology provides business process transparency

the business becomes more agile

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Business Process Management

Figure 7.3
Illustration of a
sub-optimal process
versus an end-toend optimized
process.

Case study: BPM automation in a telecommunications

organization
A European telecommunications company was faced with an extremely fast-growing demand for broadband
services, just as most countries in Europe.The company anticipated the challenge of such high demand, realizing that if it did not update its system for managing customer requests and broadband orders then business would suffer. The existing system was entirely manual, so every order had to be produced from one
system and passed to another by its employees.About eighty processes were divided over twenty systems
and ten departments. On average, one order took two days to process.This was proving to be very expensive and a waste of resources, especially since it was a relatively straightforward procedure.
By implementing a BPM infrastructure, the company is now able to process approximately 80 percent of
orders automatically, and turns around most orders within two hours, thus reducing the process time by
90 percent. This has also increased quality by reducing errors by 95 percent. A full return on investment
was achieved within a year of implementation. On a practical level, the company has learned a lot more
about its business and how it operates Now we actually know exactly how our customer order process
works. Using the previous legacy system, it took the company between four and six weeks to make any
changes; now, any problems in the processes can be fixed in two weeks.

productivity is increased at a lower cost

compliance can be provided
customer service is improved.

These generic arguments should be presented as specific business benefits

where the BPM technology is the means of providing these.
When addressing an IT department, the following issues should be presented:

with BPM technology, the earlier investment in IT applications will

not be wasted
BPM will link these independent applications together
the IT department can be more responsive to the changing business
requirements
the new applications can be provided faster, cheaper and more flexibly
BPM is also a key element in a service-oriented architecture.

Chapter 7

How do you sell BPM technology to the organization?

33

Finally, it is important not to forget to involve the senior executives of the

organization. As mentioned, BPM and its associated technology will most
likely change the way an organization is managed, and even its structure.
Senior executive support is therefore essential.

Who is selling BPM technology?

In general, we can see the following three parties involved in selling an automated BPM solution:
1
2
3

Parties internal to the organization

A software vendor
A system integrator and/or consultant.

Many organizations have internal sponsors and advocates for an automated

BPM solution. There is, however, a shift from enthusiastic individuals to a
more structural support, in the form of process owners, Centers of Business
Excellence or Chief Process Officers. In many cases these internal personnel
leverage the benefits and lessons learned from earlier implementations.
For a long time, BPM vendors were niche companies in a small market.
Pure play BPM software vendors had a background in developing and selling
workflow management solutions (e.g. Staffware) or document management
solutions (e.g. Filenet). When the first early adopters of BPM technology
demonstrated significant business benefits and of course a good ROI, business
analysts such as Gartner and Forrester began to notice this. Favorable reports
were written on the future and benefits of BPM, and a billion dollar market
was predicted. This has definitely woken up the supplier market. New pure
play vendors have emerged, and some vendors are repositioning themselves
from, for example, CRM vendors to BPM vendors. Others have come into the
BPM space through acquisition for example, Tibco software buying
Staffware. Finally, the traditional big companies, such as IBM, SAP and Siebel,
are offering BPM-type solutions. However, as outlined in this chapter, it is crucial that vendors look at a BPM solution from the specific business perspective
and not from a package point of view.
At the same time, numerous system integrators are investing in BPM knowledge and setting up dedicated BPM practices. Consultancy firms are offering
services to design, describe and help implement the business process. It is important to ensure that these organizations are able to provide the best solution and
are not limited due to their partnerships or specific package knowledge.
Associations such as the WfMC, BPMI.org have been set up to define BPM
standards. BPM communities have been set up, such as the bpm-forum.org
and BPtrends.com. Numerous new websites, training courses, postgraduate
degrees and dedicated magazines are available.
With all these suppliers, ranging from the pure play BPM software vendor,
through to consultancy firms to the postgraduate degree, the buyer should be
very aware of what the organizations business requirements are when selecting a specific vendor, and should take into account that this explosion of BPM
suppliers will sooner or later result in a shake-out of the market.