BPM people have the most important job in the crisis!?

At least this is the opinion of David Norton, Research Director for Gartner. During the “ARIS Process World On Tour” stop in Munich, I had the opportunity to join David’s presentation ”Benefits of BPM in a crisis ”. The presentation started with a review of research conducted by Gartner. According to the results, business leaders' priorities are quite clear: Cutting operating costs and increasing revenue. In my opinion, that's not a surprise but it's interesting to notice that according to the research conducted , IT will be one of the most resilient investment areas. 49% of the people polled will increase investments in information technology in 2009. Furthermore, the improvement of business processes and the cutback of enterprise costs are number one and two of  the CIO’s Top 10 business priorities. However, David had to admit that there is a big “BUT”: 60% of all business leaders think that their current enterprise IT capacity restricts  their choices.

David’s recommendation: Make sure that BPM is not seen as a “cost problem”! Because after the storm hits, the No.1 advancement opportunity will be BPM! It is time to redesign old processes – because there is low resistance to change! BPM helps to restructure costs and protect revenue and cash.   But the main problem remains: Most organizations are scared of change. According to David, this is because it takes too long to reverse the changes, when something has gone wrong. But today’s BPM Suites like the ARIS Platform help customers to deal with this issues.   In his closing remarks, David instructed  the auditorium to do tow major things on “Monday morning”:   1.)    Don’t stop the BPM initiative or see it nice to have! 2.)    Use the current crisis as a window of opportunity to put forward  fundamental change!   For me as an EA Expert the bottom line of this presentation is the following : If BPM is the right medicine to survive the crisis, EA is even more!