Forward-Thinking BPM

Business performance management will look different in the future. Companies leading the way are moving BPM out of finance and into operations.

When you look at the history of business performance management (BPM) and ponder its future, one thing is clear: This is no longer a concept reserved for early adopters willing to take the first steps. The pioneering days are gone. Although it emerged originally as a way to meet needs within the finance function, practitioners have broadened BPM's range of applications throughout the enterprise. This shift has landed it high on senior managers' agenda. "It's a top-three priority among Fortune 1000 companies today," says Kathleen Wilhide, research director for compliance and BPM solutions at advisory firm IDC in Delaware. "BPM has reached a stage of maturity and is now considered to be more mission-critical. Driven by compliance imperatives, it's become an enabler not only of transformations within finance, but eventually throughout the organization."

The future of BPM represents in some ways the future of business itself. As companies more fully embrace BPM's principles in the years ahead, they will begin to use BPM tools to manage a variety of challenges, including mergers and acquisitions and globalization.

John Van Decker, senior vice president at Meta Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn., believes that companies have lots of room to expand the use of BPM software. "Even so, BPM is a process, so in the future along with the expansion of BPM there will need to be some reengineering of a company's processes in order to align those processes with BPM-driven initiatives," Van Decker says. "In fact, aligning BPM with business process management is a prerequisite for succeeding with BPM as it evolves within the organization."

Mark Smith, CEO and senior vice president at Ventana Research in San Mateo, Calif., agrees. "The future of BPM isn't just about performance improvement; it's also about process improvement," he says. "There hasn't been much focus yet on viewing BPM as a process, but that is how it will be viewed in the future -- more than just a driver for financial effectiveness."