Australian organizations are expected to spend almost A$63 million on business process management suites (BPMS) in 2012, an increase of 9.3 percent over 2011, according to Gartner. Worldwide spending on BPMS is expected to reach US$2.6 billion, up 6.9 percent compared to 2011.
Gartner managing vice president John Dixon said the continued growth in the BPMS market worldwide was an indicator of BPM adoption among end users and showed a commitment to BPM as a strategic tool for improving business performance. However, despite overall growth, BPM maturity remains low:
As BPM adoption grows, it is not surprising that the influx of organizations newly exploring BPM will have an impact on overall BPM maturity levels. In last years Gartner survey data we saw maturity levels increase, and we continue to see this trend, however, these levels are still relatively low. Much work remains to be done to deliver the performance improvements that that BPM promises.
Gartner surveys indicate that a lack of trained and experienced BPM professionals is negatively impacting the ability of organizations to deliver against their enterprise objectives. Therefore, the need to find and recruit appropriate resources is a significant challenge for BPM hiring managers. This resource constraint is being felt by end-user, vendor, and consulting and system integration organizations alike.
Business managers are being asked to make faster and better decisions in an ever-changing business context, but cannot do so without improved visibility into their operations and environments. To meet this challenge, leading organizations are seeking to make their business operations more intelligent by integrating analytics into their processes and the applications that enable them. Gartner calls this trend a new usage scenario for a BPMS, called intelligent business operations. John Dixon:
This is a developing space, because intelligent processes are still a considerable distance away for many organizations.
Gartner presented its new Magic Quadrant for iBPMS for the first time during the BPM Summit in Sydney this week, naming leading global vendors in this new category. Technologies offering transformational benefits will drive further growth in BPM, such as social software, mobility and cloud computing, according to Gartner. Dixon commented:
Social BPM and social network analysis (SNA) are emerging technologies that are expected to take five to 10 years to reach mainstream adoption. The move to cloud computing has also affected BPM, with BPM platform as a service and cloud-enabled BPM platforms also set to become mainstream in two to five years.
Additional information on BPM technologies is available in the Gartner report ‘Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, 2012’. . .
