Marketing Governance

Organizational politics are emerging as a challenge, and through 2016 they will prevent at least one-third of business process management (BPM) efforts progressing from one-off projects to enterprisewide adoption, according to Gartner, Inc. The prediction is based on a Gartner survey conducted in the fourth quarter of 2011 among 157 BPM professionals.

Elise Olding, research director at Gartner, said:

BPM is frequently successful when applied to one-off projects at a departmental level with significant benefits. However, when it comes to scaling this success up to cross-departmental programs that require collaboration and shared metrics, or that institutionalize BPM throughout the organization, efforts often stall.

For any BPM initiative to progress beyond simple process improvement projects of limited scope, efforts must be made to understand the organizations politics, and disciplined efforts undertaken to address them.

Olding:

Its up to the business process champion, sponsor or business process director to talk to stakeholders in order to understand and document their thoughts and positions, and so determine the best way of adapting the program.

Although organizational politics look set to hamper some BPM efforts, Gartner predicts that gamification — the broad trend of applying game mechanics to non-game environments to motivate people and change behavior — will stimulate BPM adoption during the next few years. By 2015, 25% of all redesigned processes will include one or more gamified engagement practices, Gartner predicts.

Although business processes are not games, they can benefit from a focus on more engaging process designs that deliver immediate feedback and encourage continuous improvement. For example, organizations can achieve better results from their process redesign efforts by increasing participant satisfaction with new processes, connecting participants to common goals, and providing immediate feedback on progress.

Gartner also predicts that, by 2016, 20% of shadow business processes will be supported by BPM cloud platforms. Shadow business processes are hidden, informal work practices, often supported under the IT radar by secret spreadsheets, emails, phone calls and face-to-face collaboration.

Michele Cantara, research vice president at Gartner, said:

BPM cloud platforms are a better and more cost-effective way to automate hidden processes than secret spreadsheets or uncoordinated email threads. A BPM cloud platform — BPM platform as a service (BPM PaaS) — can track process steps, provide insight into work item status and help manage the collaborative interactions involved in unstructured processes.

In particular, high-productivity BPM PaaS will provide shadow process owners with a more attractive and productive user experience, which will encourage them to share their shadow processes.

During the next four years, process-related skills, particularly those related to tackling organizational challenges, will become an imperative for organizations as they move from individual projects to enterprisewide process transformation programs.

Olding concludes:

Politics will be a challenge that some will not overcome, but the good news is that many of this years predictions point to a path that leads to BPM success.

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March 14-16, Research firm Gartner will host the Customer 360 summit in Orlando, Florida. The Customer Relationship Managment (CRM) event promises to deliver complete coverage of the new strategies and technologies that are enabling organizations to better understand and engage their customers, build loyalty and grow the business.

From the program:

Business and IT leaders can learn from the latest Gartner research and interact with 25+ Gartner analysts, peers and solution leaders. Experience new research and innovative thinking in a variety of session formats that drill down into your most critical CRM topics, including customer experience management, integrated marketing and sales, data quality and business analytics and mobile and social strategies. Read More

Unilever, Inditex, H&M and Nestlé are top performers in European Supply Chain Management according to the annual ranking of the top 15 supply chain organizations by Gartner. The goal of Gartners Supply Chain Top 15 in Europe research initiative is to raise awareness of the supply chain discipline and how it impacts businesses.

Gartner identified the top 15 performers headquartered in Europe, based on a combination of financial metrics (revenue growth, return on assets (ROA) and inventory) and opinion (Gartner supply chain analyst and peer opinion). The top-four companies are also listed in the global Gartner Supply Chain Top 25. Six new companies entered the European top 15 ranking this year: H&M, AstraZeneca, Reckitt Benckiser, Syngenta, Roche and Volkswagen (see Table 1). Read More

Gartner. Gartner analysts have identified some best practices to help supply chain leaders improve their overall demand-planning processes to deliver against business goals.

To better understand the state of demand planning, Gartner surveyed 240 respondents during the fourth quarter of 2011 in Brazil, China, Europe and the U.S., spanning seven industries: consumer products, aerospace and defense, healthcare, consumer electronics, chemical, apparel, and footwear.

The survey found that the primary influences on demand variation were increased customer requirements followed by new product launch and the state of the economy. Fifty-seven per cent of respondents also said that erosion in profitability had the greatest effect on their organizations.

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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. Read More

surveyed by Capgemini, a consultancy, for the report, two-thirds said they believed they worked for a data-driven company. A similar total (65%) said the proportion of corporate decisions taken on the basis of hard analytic information was rising.

By contrast, a clear majority (54%) said that decisions taken due to a managers personal intuition or prior experience were suspect. The strong support for data also came despite almost half (42%) of respondents agreeing that data analysis made decision-making slower, and 67% expressing concern about the accuracy of the data they used as a basis for their decisions. Just over half (51%) also complained about the lack of qualified data analysts available to corporations.

According to an earlier report by Gartner,

Business executives and IT managers are increasingly referring to information as one of their organization’s most critical and strategic corporate assets. Certainly there is a sharp rise in enterprises leveraging information as a performance fuel, competitive weaponry and a relationship adhesive. Read More

Cloud, social, mobile and information are the four key IT forces — alongside the continued impact of consumerization — that are combining to produce a nexus in which Cool Vendors will operate, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartners 2012 Cool Vendors research series identifies the innovative companies, products and services that will shape business and consumer strategies in the future. Cool vendors are minor software vendors that nonetheless deserve some attention and recognition for the pioneering work they are doing, according to research institute Gartner.

This year Gartner has profiled more than 320 Cool Vendors, which offer innovations relating to data analysis and management, marketing, cloud services brokerage, people-centered computing, software infrastructure, consulting, outsourcing, and telecom operations management, as well as other markets. By definition, Cool Vendors are small vendors that offer innovative products or services. The innovation may be in how the product works or in what can be accomplished by those using the product or service. Read More

Project management takes skill, determination and business insights. Not to mention the ability to navigate the internal political climate. This goes for marketing operations projects as much as any other business management project. For professionals wanting to improve their BPM skills, on April 25-27 in Baltimore, Gartner hosts the Business Process Management Summit 2012. The program features keynote speeches, seminars, workshops and one-on-ones with Gartner analysts. Offering talks on diverse subjects, from technology to social skills, from business metrics to gamification, the event promises to be pretty inclusive for attendees seeking to improve their process and project management skills. Read More

The company claims it now has over 100 customers using the product. The company also recently doubled the Spark sales team to support the swiftly growing small business channel. Read More

BrandMaker, the software vendor was rated the best in its field by the annual Gartner overview. According to the research firm, however, the field is very difficult to compare with last years quadrant. The vendors providing marketing software are becoming increasingly mature, but the companies that adopt their solutions have grown in the way they employ the technology. Moreover, recent mergers and takeovers have shaken things up in the quadrant.

Two of the major players, Teradata and IBM, entered the quadrant two years ago by taking over Aprimo and Unica respectively. SAS joined only last year with the acquisition of Assetlink. On the other hand, large companies such as Alterian and Oracle have disappeared off the map, while CDC Software, Code Worldwide, and PTI Marketing have entered the field. Read More