Many of the everyday challenges that business leaders are facing today relate to how the business is managing its middle and back office processes. Customer satisfaction may be waning due to long response times, unhandled exceptions in customer processes, or complex, uncoordinated customer service. The organisation may be unable to launch new business tactics quickly to compete effectively or exploit new opportunities. There may even be issues associated with complying with government, industry or internal regulations, as well as SLAs with customers and partners.

So, what tools does an organisation need in order to take control of business process management? The answer is a software product suite, for creating, executing and optimising business processes. In the past many BPM initiatives have stalled on technology grounds. Now that SOA is gaining acceptance though, BPM software seems to have a brighter future. And with standards emerging for SOA design and deployment, maybe the foundations are being laid for BPM.

(ITadviser, Issue 54, Summer 2008)