To BePM or not to BePM?

Ever wonder why the business process management (BPM) software market in Romania is so small? And more importantly, will it ever grow? The COVID-19 pandemic may be exactly what the BPM market needs to gain traction to reach its true potential. According to the Global Mobile Business Process Management Market report for 2016–2022, the global BPM market is expected to reach $3.7 billion by 2022, with an annual growth rate of 21.5%. And Romania is definitely a part of this market.

The growth is mainly attributed to mobile technology which has allowed professionals to connect to the company’s internal matrix and access data and resources without being tied to a single fixed location, such as a branch, an office or the headquarters. Other factors influencing the growth of this market include need for business agility and different compliances.

Why is this market so small?

People usually confuse the BPM concept with Enterprise Content Management, Content Management System and Worflow Management capabilities, so the natural question is: “why is this market so small?”. After a closer look inside the organization’s core, several main stoppers for BPM adoption come up. BPM enterprise solutions are very complex and sometimes slow, when in fact companies want to work with solutions that can be operated by anyone, from the analysts that develop the workflows to the technical staff that implements this logic, to the end user that will work under the process, and not only by experts. Another obstacle is the lack of experts in the field, such as enterprise architects, lean six sigma experts or consultants, which can evangelize BPM both from inside and outside organizations. Also, the IT and the business function often promote the idea that most processes inside their organization can be fully automated by using CRM, ERP and RPA platforms, which is not entirely true. And last but not least, prices are too high for most companies, as they include licenses, maintenance and man-day rates.

What is the future of BPM and what needs to be done?

In the first place, BPM has to shift its focus to customer experience. Most Romanian organizations ask themselves how they can change their processes in order to enable better collaboration, support, and innovation to help create a better customer experience. As a result, organizations are looking towards BPM for digital transformation, towards lightweight BPMs that use technology that drives automation, collaboration and engagement with their customers.

Following the low-code / no-code trend seen across other software verticals, today’s BPM solutions require little to no IT involvement to create, implement, automate and optimize business processes with fast prototyping and deployments.

There are several ways to improve the adoption of BPM platforms on short term, and a lightweight paradigm for BPM, which means a self-contained system with minimal effort from the user, in order to start the animation of BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) models, is one of them. Another way is assuring flexibility via BPM implementation, including easy onboarding, forms, UX/UI, BPMN and business rules (Decision Model and Notation - DMN). Integrating these solutions with legacy systems using APIs and identifying and using business applications and processes for faster prototyping and deployment, as well as ensuring frontend unification and integration with other systems also can improve BPM platforms adoption.

A company’s growth is usually followed by an evolution of its processes, which become more and more complex in order to meet new business demands and match its growth. Market leaders strive to use corporate information systems as the means for implementation of all process updates, but in many cases, processes get stuck into a proprietary system, such as an ERP, leaving no chance for them to be integrated at a low cost. This is why it is important for companies to choose a BPM solution that doesn’t require rebuilding from the ground up, but allows alignment with, update and improvement of already existing business processes and provides tools for business process management, including instruments for process design, execution, monitoring and analysis.

In conclusion, lightweight BPM is here to stay and has a bright future ahead!