Have the BPM goalposts moved?

DSC_0811.jpgMy last post asked Where is the BPM Market going? and opened the way for discussion (mostly on Twitter) about the changing state of the BPM marketplace.

Thanks to Craig, The Process Ninja, we can now look at the latest analysts offerings from Gartner and Forrester in the form of the Forrester Wave for BPM suites and the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Intelligent Business Process Management Software.

Wait! Hold-up now. "Intelligent Business Process Management Software", you say? What the hell is that?

Gartner has made changes to the classification of BPM solutions by redefining the marketplace. They are referring to this as "an evolution of the BPMS market" that is "centered on a new IBO use case". IBO in this case means Intelligent Business Operations. It is the same thing they did several years ago when the Magic Quadrant for Pure-Play BPM morphed into the Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites.

In other words, they've moved the goalposts!

Further analysis of the underlying reason for this reveals that Gartner feels that iBPMS represents a maturation of the capability and is used typically at higher levels of BPM maturity.

But the problem is they are pushing the same products as they had in the previous Magic Quadrant  for BPMS - which they say cannot be compared with this iBPMS Magic Quadrant.

My recollection of the earlier Magic Quadrant showed a group of vendors in the top right sector of the diagram with a number of other vendors trailing down a diagonal to the bottom left. The new Magic Quadrant shows a wider spread of vendors, many of whom can be found in the lower right quadrant. In Gartner speak this indicates that they are visionaries, but lack the ability to execute on their vision.

So what am I to do if I am a Gartner customer looking to identify which vendor I can pursue to fulfill my needs?

I might previously have gone for a Metastorm offering (for example) as they were highly regarded and in the top right quadrant. They have since been purchased by Open Text and now languish in the lower left quadrant as being niche players with an incomplete vision and a lack of ability to execute. Does this mean the purchase has been a failure? Not at all. But the goalposts have moved.

I worked for American multinationals who would only look at vendors who landed in the top right quadrant of the Gartner grid. As of the current offering this would reduce the market down to three vendors. In many multinationals that's not even enough to put out an Invitation to Tender as a minimum of four vendors are needed.

But is that a problem?

Well it might be if you are one of the vendors who was in a more elevated position and now find yourself in a less elevated position, but if we look at the Forrester Wave report for BPM suites we find some sobering statistics. In a survey of 520 IT decision makers in Q4 2012, when asked "What are your firm's plans to adopt BPM tools", fully 43% said they were not interested or had no plans and only 27% said they were planning to implement.

When the same group were asked "What are your firm's plans to use Software as a Service (SaaS) to complement or replace your BPM software?", 52% answered that they did not know or had no plans to us SaaS and only 33% had plans to do so in 2 years.

In a market where Forrester have identified 52 different vendors competing in the broader BPM market, where Gartner have redefined the goalposts about what a good vendor is, and where half the IT decisions makers are not looking at using BPM, I sense a serious disconnect.

Who are the 52 vendors marketing themselves at? Can the market sustain this onslaught?

Photo Credit: OnTask via Compfight cc

Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.


All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford
 See related info below

Where's the BPM market going?

The Mist I remember back in the deep, dark mists of time (about ten years ago, actually), The BPM market used to have several players in it. Gartner's Magic Quadrant had a diverse number of players in each of the quadrants, and it was easy to look at and understand the fragmentation. Things were called 'BPM' and everyone knew where they stood with it - although, in reality, very few people could adequately define 'BPM' as a concept.

More recently, though, the market has started to amalgamate. Major companies were purchased by competitors and their products merged together (Metastorm and Provision is one example). The fragmentation of the market decreased suddenly. The Magic Quadrant (and Forrester's Wave) had fewer parts to it. Things looked good for the BPM vendors, but, not necessarily, good for the market.

People like Gartner then started to split their BPM Magic Quadrant up into different areas. We got BPMS, and ACM and the like. Different companies were invited in to join, and, pretty soon, the market seemed to be just as wide-ranging as before.

But is it really? Or have we just moved the goalposts?

Is this a classic reorganisation the likes of which we experience in companies at regular intervals? Movement for the sake of movement.

Is it a way for some of the consulting companies and business integrators to muddy the waters for customers and justify large consulting fees?

Or is the market genuinely in the throes of some major increase in the number of vendors working in a particular niche? Are we on the cusp of an explosion of products that will help customers conquer the BPM beast?

I'm not sure I know the answer myself, but I suspect a number of my readers will have opinions on this. Feel free to share in the comments below.

Photo Credit: Nathan O'Nions via Compfight cc

Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford See related info below

The Path of Least Resistance

A1(M) Darlington BypassNot far from where I live, there is a DIY store on an out-of-town trading estate. It is surrounded on all sides by dual carriageway roads and the only, real, access to it is by vehicular transport. However on the opposite side of this dual carriageway is a housing estate. I was waiting at the nearby traffic lights yesterday and noticed that from the fence surrounding the estate there appeared to be the beginnings of a pathway that had been worn by pedestrians across the central grass reservation of the dual carriageway and into a hole in the fence surrounding the DIY store. As I watched I saw at least three people take the route from the estate, across the dual carriageway, into the store.

It struck me as being a prime example of people finding a way of doing things that wasn't originally anticipated in the design of the thing.

When they first built the store and surrounded it by roads, nobody imagined that people would actually want to walk to the store. But people found a way. What's more they found the path of least resistance to achieve their goals.

The same happens in processes. You can design a process in whatever way you want, but people (users) will always find the easiest way to achieve their goal, and it may ot be by using the process in the way you anticipated. More often than not this should be the way the process should be designed in the first place.

Always bear this in mind when designing processes.

Photo Credit: s_gibson72 via Compfight cc

Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.


All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford
See related info below