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G00246931

Hype Cycle for Business Process Management,2013Published: 31 July 2013

Analyst(s): Bruce Robertson

This year's Hype Cycle illuminates the current transitional status of BPMtechnologies, methodologies and concepts, and also signals a new wave ofinnovation to come.

Table of Contents

Analysis..................................................................................................................................................3

What You Need to Know..................................................................................................................3

The Hype Cycle................................................................................................................................ 4

Innovation Is Rising in BPM Technology and Services.................................................................4

The Nexus of Forces Is Driving BPM Beyond Cost Efficiency...................................................... 4

The BPM Discipline Is Transforming............................................................................................5

BPM's Focus Is Shifting to Business Outcomes and Agility.........................................................6

Process and Information Drive Decisions and Digitization............................................................6

Many New Hype Cycle Entries Have Been Added for 2013...................................................... 10

Process Styles Added to the Hype Cycle for 2013....................................................................12

The Priority Matrix...........................................................................................................................14

Off the Hype Cycle......................................................................................................................... 17

On the Rise.................................................................................................................................... 18

Operational Intelligence Platforms............................................................................................. 18

Process-Centric Model-Driven Applications.............................................................................. 20

Open-Source BPM Technology................................................................................................ 22

Cloud Business Rule Management (BRM) Services...................................................................23

Process Style: Event-Driven BPM............................................................................................. 25

Social BPM...............................................................................................................................27

Unstructured Process...............................................................................................................29

BPM Certification......................................................................................................................31

Enterprise-Class Agile Development......................................................................................... 33



At the Peak.....................................................................................................................................35

BPA for the Masses..................................................................................................................35

BPM Methodology Toolbox...................................................................................................... 37

Decision Management.............................................................................................................. 39

Digitized Processes.................................................................................................................. 42

Mobile BPM..............................................................................................................................45

Process Style: Case Management/Adaptive............................................................................. 47

Business Capability Modeling................................................................................................... 49

Business Process Governance................................................................................................. 50

Intelligent Business Operations................................................................................................. 53

bpmPaaS................................................................................................................................. 55

Enterprise Business Architecture.............................................................................................. 59

Intelligent Business Process Management Suite....................................................................... 61

Automated Business Process Discovery...................................................................................62

BPM for Customer Service and Support...................................................................................64

Business Process Optimization and Simulation.........................................................................65

Case Management Frameworks............................................................................................... 67

Gamification............................................................................................................................. 69

Multienterprise Business Process Platform............................................................................... 71

Business Process Management in C&SI................................................................................... 74

Sliding Into the Trough....................................................................................................................77

BPM-Enabled BPO...................................................................................................................77

Organizational Change For BPM...............................................................................................79

Process Metrics and Measurement...........................................................................................81

Business Rule Management Systems....................................................................................... 83

BPM Discipline......................................................................................................................... 86

Chief Process Officer................................................................................................................ 89

Climbing the Slope......................................................................................................................... 91

BPM Standards........................................................................................................................ 91

Process Style: Content Collaboration........................................................................................94

Process Style: Guided Navigation............................................................................................. 96

Business Process Competency Center.....................................................................................98

Entering the Plateau..................................................................................................................... 100

Business Process Management Suites................................................................................... 100

Process Style: Forms-Driven Workflow................................................................................... 103

Appendixes.................................................................................................................................. 104

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Hype Cycle Phases, Benefit Ratings and Maturity Levels........................................................ 106

Recommended Reading.....................................................................................................................107

List of Tables

Table 1. Examples of How BPM Is Reinventing Itself...............................................................................8

Table 2. Selected New Entries..............................................................................................................11

Table 3. New Process Style Entries...................................................................................................... 13

Table 4. Hype Cycle Phases...............................................................................................................106

Table 5. Benefit Ratings......................................................................................................................106

Table 6. Maturity Levels......................................................................................................................107

List of Figures

Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, 2013............................................................. 9

Figure 2. Priority Matrix for Business Process Management, 2013........................................................15

Figure 3. Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, 2012......................................................... 105

Analysis

What You Need to Know

Business process management (BPM) is a complex mix of concepts and technology capabilities,and many organizations struggle to keep track of all the nuances to separate the hype from reality.This Hype Cycle helps seasoned BPM professionals and those new to the discipline decide whetherand when to adopt BPM-related concepts, technologies and disciplines (see Note 1).

Given that BPM professionals range from core BPM team members, such as business processdirectors, consultants and analysts, to a variety of business and IT professionals involved with thefuture of business processes, this report should inform a wide set of BPM stakeholders on the stateof BPM adoption and hype.

BPM is reinventing itself and experiencing a lull in adoption while this occurs. Among the 40 entriesfeatured in this year's Hype Cycle, 16 are new and 22 have not yet reached the Peak of Inflatedexpectations. Gartner believes the future still promises strong growth in the BPM technology andservice markets, and that the progress of BPM as a discipline will increase the chances ofenterprise success in improving business operations and performance. In fact, we see thisreinvention as a new wave of BPM innovation and value delivery, with impact on a wider scope ofbusiness operations.

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The Hype Cycle

The 2013 evidence is in: BPM has declined in hype and visibility. Gartner's 2013 CIO survey revealsa significant decline in CIO perceptions of the priority of business process improvement (BPI) as aglobal business strategy: Following multiple years as the top choice for global business strategies

(in the 2009 and 2010 surveys), BPI has since dropped in priority, and now stands to No. 10.1 In

addition, investment in BPM has also slowed. The market for business process management suites(BPMSs) has flattened from its strong growth in the past, declining 1% in 2012 after showing strong

growth of 10% in the prior year.2

In Gartner Hype Cycle terms, BPM, in general, is in the Trough of Disillusionment, and several keyBPM Hype Cycle entries this year hit the low ebb of hype. The BPMS entry inched a bit further pastthe Trough of Disillusionment, while the business rule management system (BRMS) entry slid closerto the bottom of the curve. In addition, our BPM discipline entry, encompassing our general view ofBPM methodology and practice, is still moving through the trough.

Gartner does not see this as a sign of long-term decline in perceived value for BPM, however.Instead, we view this lull as a temporary setback. As Gartner's Hype Cycle illustrates,disillusionment is typically followed by enlightenment and productivity. Given that 16 of the 40entries in the 2013 Hype Cycle are new, and that only 12 of them are past the Peak of InflatedExpectations, a new wave of innovation is coming for BPM technology and the BPM discipline.

Innovation Is Rising in BPM Technology and Services

BPMSs aren't going away. They are becoming mainstream, just as BPM modeling and analysistools have. The plateau in revenue is due to market consolidation, new cloud options and otherchanges that are transient rather than long-term issues, and we expect market growth to pick up

again.3 BPMSs are being transformed into intelligent BPMSs (iBPMSs) that incorporate more

information-centered analytic, social and mobile capabilities than ever before. Twelve entriesspecifically on BPM technology and two on services are still at the peak or earlier. The iBPMS entry,which was introduced last year, is still climbing the hype curve in 2013. The related concept ofintelligent business operations (IBO) is also inching toward the peak.

In fact, this very innovation in the BPM technology and service market is causing BPM overall to gothrough a period of confusion as it reinvents itself. Moreover, although there's clear innovation in thesupply side of BPM, the demand side is changing as well.

The Nexus of Forces Is Driving BPM Beyond Cost Efficiency

BPM has been viewed in the past as focusing primarily on cost-efficiency, but it must change totarget more important performance goals, such as time to market, speed to change, revenuegrowth, customer satisfaction and engagement, and effectiveness. Many forces are causingenterprises to change more rapidly to drive effectiveness and business performance improvement,rather than just hone internal operations for cost-efficiencies, and to reinvent the way they work andengage with customers, taking a more outside-in approach. These forces include the marketdynamism and competition driven by challenging economic conditions and accelerating regulatory




changes.4 They also include the Nexus of Forces — social, mobile, cloud and information — that

Gartner sees shaping all Hype Cycles this year.5 All of this is changing how a business's work will be

conducted with its customers, suppliers and broader communities of interest.

The impact of the Nexus of Forces is reflected in this year's BPM Hype Cycle in the new mobileBPM entry, along with the updated or new entries for social BPM, bpmPaaS, cloud BRMSs,iBPMSs and operational intelligence platforms. These are rising toward the peak of the Hype Cycle,but it will take them time to make their largest impacts.

The BPM Discipline Is Transforming

The BPM discipline is undergoing a period of confusion, where past approaches that worked wellno longer solve emerging business demands. New BPM approaches are just emerging to targetnew ways to deliver effective change faster and drive better business outcomes. Six Sigma, forexample, does little if the organization's focus is on customer engagement. Gartner clientinteractions demonstrate concern that BPM only delivers small, continuous improvements and

traditional, "eliminate the paper" workflow enhancements.6 Worse yet, some clients felt that BPM is

unable to adapt its traditional, structured process methodologies to support increasing demands fordifferentiation and innovation.

The development of BPM as a management discipline should be given higher priority thantechnology, tool or service provider selection. The maturation of the BPM discipline drivescompanies to become process-centric and achieve transformational benefits. Yet almost 90% oforganizations completing Gartner's five-level BPM maturity assessment are still below Level 3 —cross-boundary process management — and are struggling to overcome organizational challengesto continue their BPM journeys (see "ITScore for Business Process Management, 2012").

One key Level 3 maturity indicator is enterprise adoption of a business process competency center(BPCC), but only 34% of the ITScore for BPM survey participants have created one (see "How toStart Up and Sustain a Strategically Vital Business Process Competency Center"). And organizing aBPCC, by itself, may not be enough, since many of the BPM methodologies leveraged so far havebeen unable to solve emerging business innovation and transformation goals.

Other key determinants of BPM success in enhancing business performance improvement includebusiness role engagement and a focus on end-to-end or cross-boundary process improvement. IT-centered efforts, where the business process director and BPCC report to the CIO, can catalyze atfirst, but limit success in the long term. The process owner role needs active business leaders (see"Three Best Practices to Avoid Ineffective Process Ownership Damaging Your BusinessPerformance").

One marker of the shift to business-driven process change is the rise of the chief process officer —a role that represents the most significant entry position change on this year's BPM Hype Cycle.Superseding the business process director role, this new role commands higher business visibility,accountability for coordinating process owners and an increased focus on larger-scale processchange or transformation initiatives. With 30% of CIOs reporting that they also play this role — the




highest of any "outside of IT" role they perform — this shows that process has moved beyond

traditional IT concerns.7

The discipline of BPM includes process modeling, measurements of process outcomes, theanalysis of process performance, governance and change management. Many of these areas haveseparate entries in this Hype Cycle. They may be enabled by BPM technologies (BPMTs), buttechnology alone will not deliver agility or improve business outcomes. The BPM discipline mustlook beyond traditional, cost-efficiency goals toward differentiated and innovative process changesthat deliver effectiveness, revenue and customer satisfaction benefits (see "Reliance on BusinessProcess Standardization Is at Odds With a Focus on Differentiating Processes" and "BalanceProcess Agility and Process Integrity Choices Along the Application Continuum").

BPM's Focus Is Shifting to Business Outcomes and Agility

One reason that CIOs' perceptions of BPI as a priority have dropped is that their focus has shiftedto higher-ranked concerns, such as growth, results, costs, customers, products, services andefficiency, which are primarily business outcomes. This is actually a positive trend, emphasizing thatthe focus of BPM leaders should be on process as a means to that end, not as the end in itself. Thisalso will counteract the false perception that buying a BPM platform equates to "doing BPM."Perhaps most importantly, getting to business outcomes means doing metrics right, so we'vecreated an entry for process metrics and measurement as a key discipline.

We've also added a group of entries that track process styles to chart the progression in demandfor process-centric solutions that better support changing business conditions with agility. Near theend of this year's Hype Cycle are the content collaboration and guided navigation process styles,which are climbing the Slope of Enlightenment. The forms-driven workflow style has reached thePlateau of Productivity, and will soon drop off the Hype Cycle as other mainstream styles have(such as straight-through processing). Process styles that can tackle new problems, such as event-driven BPM and adaptive case management, are still emerging and adolescent in maturity.

More generally, the unstructured processes entry tracks the slow transition taking place, astraditional, structured-process and high-control BPM approaches are augmented with new, moreagile coordination models for nonroutine processes and the business operations they enable.Gartner expects to track more innovative process styles in future BPM Hype Cycles.

Process and Information Drive Decisions and Digitization

The most critical connection between processes and information is decisions, and decisions arebest made when they leverage good information. More and more big data is being analyzed andharvested from IT systems or machine sensors. One key thing that processes can do is capturedata more consistently and accurately, giving people more time to do their real work — that is,providing a service or creating a product. Better decisions can be made by leveraging this data withanalytics. But these decisions aren't only driven by lengthy, business intelligence (BI) analysis andreporting cycles for strategic change. They happen all the time in people's day-to-day work, andthus in the business operations of an enterprise and the processes supporting that work. TheiBPMS targets this synergy of process, information and decisions, enabling increased automation




and coordination of operational decision making (see "Use Intelligent Business Operations to CreateBusiness Advantage").

Still, not all decisions can be automated with a BRMS or iBPMS. Sometimes collaboration isneeded to reach a decision or advance toward a business outcome, which is where unstructuredprocesses come in, with people coming back into the picture. Thus, this BPM Hype Cycle trackshuman-interaction-oriented process work through entries that cover social BPM, business processanalysis (BPA) for the masses, organizational change for BPM and related process styles. Peopleare still fundamental to business operations as the providers of services and the consumers orcustomers of them. While older cost-efficiency goals for BPI might have pushed to cut people as acostly resource, new BPM work must define how to improve the effectiveness of human expertiseand tacit knowledge in creative ways to further improve business operations. The ability to makebetter decisions — that is, ones that achieve business outcomes more consistently and predictably— will improve as iBPMS-enabled systems analyze more data about decision making itself.Increasing the visibility of decision making helps maintain the coordination of, but relaxesoverbearing control over, people working together to achieve great business outcomes.

Gartner is seeing an increasing push by CEOs, supported by CIOs, to digitize their business.8

BPMTs, as well as mobile, analytics, big data, social and cloud technologies, are key digitaltechnologies that coordinate the flow of work. Furthermore, BPM concepts and methodologies areneeded to harvest and coordinate these increasingly digitized business operations. Our newdigitized process entry tracks how process contributes to the digitized business (or "intelligentdigitized business operations," to extend our IBO concept a bit further). Our chief process officerentry tracks this change from an organizational perspective. In fact, we see the chief processofficer's rapid progress toward maturity as a leading indicator of the future health of BPM as amarket, including the technologies and services delivered by that market, and as a discipline,including the methodologies and people needed for business outcome improvement.

This year's Hype Cycle for BPM presents a filtered picture of the whole of BPM, focusing on newand emerging concepts, and de-emphasizing some established ones. But BPM needs to transitionto the new to reinvent itself (see Table 1 and Figure 1).




Table 1. Examples of How BPM Is Reinventing Itself

From ...(What BPM Has Been)

To ...(What BPM Can and Should Be)

Structured processes Unstructured processes

Routine processes Nonroutine work

Product company applicability Service company solutions

Workflows Interactions

IT systems and data Sensors and big data

Control Coordination with visibility and accountability

Data entry Decisions

Automated processes Digitized processes

Business operations Intelligent digitized business operations

Process performance Business performance (or outcomes)

Incremental process improvement Differentiating and transformative processes

Business process improvement (BPI) Business operations improvement

Inside-out thinking Outside-in thinking

Cost-efficiency Effectiveness, revenue generation, innovation and customer satisfaction

Transaction management Case management

Source: Gartner (July 2013)




Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, 2013

Innovation Trigger

Peak ofInflated

Expectations

Trough of Disillusionment Slope of Enlightenment

Plateau of Productivity

time

expectations

Plateau will be reached in:

less than 2 years 2 to 5 years 5 to 10 years more than 10 yearsobsoletebefore plateau

As of July 2013

Open-Source BPM Technology

Case Management FrameworksGamification

Business Process Management in C&SIMultienterprise Business Process Platform

BPM-Enabled BPO

Organizational Change for BPM

BPM Discipline

Process Metrics and Measurement

Business Rule Management Systems

Chief Process Officer

BPM Standards

Business ProcessManagement Suites

Business Process Competency Center

Process Style:Forms-Driven Workflow

Process-CentricModel-Driven Applications

Operational Intelligence Platforms

Cloud Business Rule Management(BRM) Services

Process Style: Event-Driven BPM

bpmPaaS

Automated BusinessProcess Discovery

Enterprise Business Architecture

Intelligent Business ProcessManagement Suite

Business Capability ModelingBusiness Process Governance

BPM for Customer Service and Support

Intelligent Business Operations

Business Process Optimization and Simulation

Mobile BPMProcess Style: Case Management/Adaptive Enterprise-

Class Agile Development

Social BPM

Unstructured Process

BPM CertificationBPA for the Masses

Digitized ProcessesDecision Management

BPM Methodology Toolbox

Process Style: Guided Navigation

Process Style: Content Collaboration





Transformation and innovation require changes to business operations and processes, and theenterprises that are successful at this take a new, more advanced approach to BPM. Advancedpractitioners of BPM (at Level 3, 4 or 5 in our maturity model) are achieving high-value businessinnovation and transformation using new tools and techniques for BPM. Many organizations mustreinvent their BPM approaches to transition to greater future business results, which means theymust take a big step in their BPM efforts and investments to focus on getting to Level 3 andbeyond.

Many New Hype Cycle Entries Have Been Added for 2013

This year, we've introduced a range of new entries describing technologies, roles, methodologiesand management disciplines that are critical to the evolution of the BPM market. A selection ofthese new entries and their reasons for inclusion are shown in Table 2.




Table 2. Selected New Entries

Technology Reason for Addition in 2013

Decision Manage-ment in BusinessProcesses

Decision management is one of the key enablers of IBO strategies. Decision management technology can be used in conjunction withBPM flow management technologies to implement the guided navigation process style. Some decision management applications arecontext-aware, adapting their behavior based on conditions such as the location of a participant or the time of day.

Mobile BPM The hype has increased for mobile work that is further automated using BPM and related tools for greater agility and simplicity of processchange.

Process-Centric,Model-Driven Ap-plications

These new offerings comprise prebuilt activity sequences, rule sets, UI designs, integration adapters and potentially other artifacts thatare sufficient to deploy a functional application on par with the "out of the box" functionality provided by a packaged application. Thisentry refers to a very specific type of process solution that is just beginning its journey up the Hype Cycle, and succeeds our retired proc-ess templates entry.

Operational Intelli-gence Platforms

These platforms have adapters to ingest event data; context stores to hold context data; logic to find patterns and detect anomalies, aswell as other threats and opportunities; decision management capabilities, such as rules or analytics; interactive dashboards; alerting fa-cilities; and capabilities to trigger responses in applications, devices or workflow tools. Gartner added this entry because these platformsare well-suited to implementing IBO strategies, and will increasingly be visible in enterprise requirements and vendor offerings.

OrganizationalChange for BPM

Organizational change encompasses the discipline, frameworks and methods used to address the "people" challenges associated withbusiness process transformation, technology implementations or changes to organizational structures from activities like mergers or out-sourcing. We added this entry because organizational change is a critical component of any change initiative's success, including BPIwork. New neuroscience research is adding to the techniques needed to change process participant and stakeholder behavior.

Process Metricsand Measurement

Businesses that quantify and monetize the benefits of proposed initiatives before implementation realize better project success and busi-ness outcomes, yet too many BPI projects and BPM programs fail to measure well. Gartner adds this to track the adoption of these bestpractices more specifically.





Other new entries for 2013 include:

■ BPM for customer service and support

■ Digitized processes

■ Enterprise business architecture

■ Gamification

■ Open-source software BPM

Process Styles Added to the Hype Cycle for 2013

This year, we also added several new "process style" entries to raise awareness of the manystructured and unstructured business process styles, and how market demand is changing withindomains that reflect these styles (see Table 3).




Table 3. New Process Style Entries

Process Style Reason for Addition in 2013

Guided Naviga-tion

In this process style, software guides participants through alternative workflows to reach a satisfactory outcome. Although this style hasexisted for years, newer BPMSs leverage declarative models, explicit rules, context metadata and other techniques to more intelligentlyguide the participant.

Forms-DrivenWorkflow

This is a mature process style. However, recent technological changes have occurred to make such workflows more dynamic.

Case Manage-ment (Adaptive)

Adaptive case management (ACM) is a subset of case management — a complex and unstructured process style in which the workflowsare nonsequential, dependent and often cannot be predetermined at design time. The technologies for this style are already tracked sepa-rately (see the case management frameworks entry), but adding an entry for the style enables tracking the concept itself against otherstyles.

Event-DrivenBPM

In this process style, the sequence of business activities is dynamically determined by applying rules to events as they occur. Event-drivenBPM is returning to the Hype Cycle after a one year hiatus, since the market has shown renewed and growing interest in the idea. Aware-ness in user companies is limited to leading-edge architects and process modelers, but numerous vendors are actively pursuing it.

Content Collabo-ration

Modern workflow technologies can make the dynamic, ad hoc and unstructured nature of content collaboration more visible, and thusmore manageable. Broader recognition of the complexity of nonroutine work is driving market interest in software technologies that bettersupport unstructured work.

UnstructuredProcesses (In-cludes Some ofthe ProcessStyles Above)

These are nonroutine business processes — mostly executed by individuals or small groups of professionals who are collaborating to ach-ieve a business objective — that depend heavily on human interpretation, collaboration, judgment and expertise for their successful com-pletion. An important new focus for BPM is to harness this tacit process knowledge so that these processes can be made visible (explicit)and measurable, thereby uncovering the hidden costs and associated hidden benefits.





The Priority Matrix

The Priority Matrix (see Figure 2) shows the extent to which Gartner believes that each Hype Cycleentry will enable the enterprise to achieve benefits within a specific time frame. The most appealingentries are those that offer the highest or most transformative benefits in the least amount of time(within five years).




Figure 2. Priority Matrix for Business Process Management, 2013

benefit years to mainstream adoption

less than 2 years 2 to 5 years 5 to 10 years more than 10 years

transformational Business Process Management Suites


Intelligent Business Process Management Suite

BPM Discipline

Decision Management

Organizational Change for BPM

Social BPM

Process-Centric Model-Driven Applications


high Business Process Competency Center

BPA for the Masses

BPM-Enabled BPO

bpmPaaS

Business Capability Modeling

Business Process Management in C&SI



Mobile BPM


Business Process Governance

Case Management Frameworks



Enterprise-Class Agile Development

Multienterprise Business Process Platform




moderate Process Style: Forms-Driven Workflow



Process Style: Case Management/Adaptive


Automated Business Process Discovery

BPM Certification

Cloud Business Rule Management (BRM) Services

Digitized Processes

Gamification


low BPM Standards

As of July 2013


Entries that are less than two years from mainstream adoption and can deliver high-to-transformational benefits to BPM initiatives include the following:




■ BPMSs — A BPMS should be considered for processes that have balanced requirements forcoordinating human efforts with automated activities and information flows to deliver higherwork outcomes. BPMSs have now become the most widely adopted, model-driven applicationinfrastructure stack. These products are morphing into iBPMSs as they add new features thatleverage the Nexus of Forces (mobile, social, cloud and information). However, it will take atleast two years before the iBPMS is broadly adopted.

■ BPCC — A BPCC represents an internal consultancy and promoter of BPM, including trainingand awareness, and offers a "one-stop shop" that provides services to multiple BPM projects,programs and initiatives. A BPCC is essential for BPM to become institutionalized within anorganization, and to share expertise and solutions more widely in the enterprise. As of 2012,BPCCs had been implemented by 34% of organizations participating in our worldwide BPMadoption survey, and we expect continued expansion of implementation (quantity) andutilization (volume) in enterprises worldwide.

Many Hype Cycle entries are poised to achieve mainstream adoption within two to five years.Among them, those likely to provide transformational or high benefits include the following:

■ BPA for the masses — This provides a simple modeling approach tailored to business roles,rather than technical roles, enabling BPA tools to become popular among business people. Theresulting benefits will include faster realization of the desired business performanceimprovements, and better ability to meet time and budget targets, due to better processunderstanding and extra insight into process impacts.

■ Business capability modeling — This is a technique for developing an organization's businessanchor model, independent of the organization's structure, processes, people or domains.Business capabilities are the ways in which companies combine systems, processes and theirenvironments to deliver value to their customers. The benefit of this modeling is that it enablesbusiness and IT strategic planners to focus on and explore business directions and plans. Italso helps focus and illustrate investment decisions.

■ BPM platform as a service (bpmPaaS) — This platform as a service (PaaS) subtype makes itpossible to deploy commodity and differentiating processes in the cloud, and to support end-to-end processes comprising cloud services from different providers or value chain partners. Toqualify as bpmPaaS, a BPM platform must be available as a one-to-many service and include atleast one of the following BPM runtime capabilities: flow management, rule management,optimization and simulation or business activity monitoring (BAM).

■ BPM-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO) — BPO providers that base theirofferings on a BPMS can differentiate their services based on improved process agility. Buyerscan better balance their needs for reduced costs and process flexibility by using BPM-enabledBPO services.

■ BPM in consulting and system integration (C&SI) — This represents the use of externalresources to help deliver a BPM project, as well as to mature BPM disciplines and technologyskill sets over time.




■ BRMSs — BRMSs guide business rule definitions, categorizations, governance, deploymentsand use throughout the business life cycle. When combined with other BPMTs, BRMSs simplifyprocess change and accelerate process agility.

■ IBO — In this style of work, near-real-time analytic and decision management technologies areintegrated into the transaction-executing and bookkeeping operational activities that run thebusiness. This integration changes the way people do their jobs, and increases visibility intohow the company is running and what is happening in its external environment. This enablesindividual contributors and managers to have improved situation awareness so that they canmake faster and better decisions.

■ iBPMSs — An iBPMS expands the traditional BPMS by adding functionality needed to supportIBO. The iBPMS can be used to achieve new business opportunities through an intelligent,flexible and visually adjustable set of processes, which can be outcome-driven or linked to keyperformance indicators.

■ Mobile BPM — Mobile BPM can transform how work is performed by enabling the participantto drive the activity, rather than simply participate in a predefined, server-orchestrated flow.Conversely, it also enables the worker to execute highly detailed process steps with less initialtraining and planning, providing more real-time flexibility and effectiveness in service delivery.The capabilities of newer mobile devices and their network connectivity are opening up a rangeof possibilities, all of which are still being explored.

■ Process style: guided navigation — In this process style, software guides the participantthrough alternative workflows to arrive at a satisfactory outcome. We are adding this entry tothe Hype Cycle to raise awareness of the technological changes that have occurred to makesuch workflows more dynamic.

The majority of entries on this Hype Cycle — 22 of 40 overall — will take more than five years toreach mainstream adoption. This does not mean, however, that the majority of organizationsundertaking BPM initiatives now will fail to realize significant benefits. A number of near-term andmidterm BPM opportunities can yield productive results, particularly for early BPM adopters.

BPM efforts should not end with these early successes. Organizations that mature their use of BPMas a discipline will achieve more transformational benefits over a longer period of time.

Off the Hype Cycle

Six entries that appeared in the 2012 Hype Cycle have been removed this year. Two of these havesuccessors with a more narrow or updated focus:

■ BAM (succeeded by the operational intelligence platform entry) — BAM has moved off theHype Cycle due to the declining use of the term. BAM originally referred to real-time and near-real-time monitoring of any business activity, although some people used the term in thenarrower sense of monitoring a business process that was orchestrated by a workflow orprocess orchestration tool. The number of companies that are monitoring their businessactivities in real time or near real time is increasing rapidly, but users and vendors are now morelikely to use the general term "operational intelligence" or a purpose-specific label, such as




business process monitoring, call center monitoring, supply chain visibility or manufacturingoperations intelligence, to describe the activity. The most appropriate term to describe thecategory of tools for monitoring, alerting and adaptive decision making is now "operationalintelligence platform."

■ Process templates (succeeded by the process-centric, model-driven applications entry)— Despite Gartner's efforts to clarify the term "process template," the market continued to useit to refer to near-trigger concepts, such as "process-centric, model-driven applications," aswell as for confusingly on-the-plateau concepts, such as solution accelerators, starter kits,rapid implementation packages, sample packs and templates. Accordingly, a name change wasin order. Process-centric, model-driven applications now refer to very specific types of processsolutions, which are just beginning their journey up the Hype Cycle.

■ Information semantic services and enterprise metadata management — We are retiringthese because our research indicates that few clients in BPM roles are sufficiently interested inthese technologies to warrant their continued inclusion in the BPM Hype Cycle. Both can still befound in the enterprise information management (EIM) Hype Cycle.

■ Subject-oriented BPM — This was retired because our research indicates that few clients inBPM roles are sufficiently interested in this technology to warrant continued inclusion in theBPM Hype Cycle.

■ Cloud BPM — Gartner has dropped the general "cloud BPM" profile this year to track specificaspects of this concept via multiple entries, including social BPM, bpmPaaS and cloudbusiness rule management.

On the Rise


Analysis By: W. Roy Schulte

Definition: An operational intelligence platform is a set of development and runtime tools thatenables applications that monitor, alert or support adaptive decision making, based on currentconditions. These platforms have adapters to ingest event data; context stores to hold context data;logic to find patterns and detect anomalies and other threats and opportunities; decisionmanagement capabilities, such as rules or analytics; interactive dashboards; alerting facilities; andcapabilities to trigger responses in applications, devices or workflow tools.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Operational intelligence platform is a new entry on theHype Cycle. It is at the Technology Trigger stage and still relatively unknown. It will take severalyears to reach the Peak of Inflated Expectations and up to 10 years to reach the Plateau ofProductivity, at which point over half the potential users will be using this technology.

The term "operational intelligence platform" was coined in 2012 because there was no general labelfor software that supports applications for continuous (or regularly recurring) monitoring, alerting oradaptive decision making (see "Commercial Operational Intelligence Platforms Are Coming toMarket"). However, the concept is not entirely new as some kinds of operational intelligence




platform have been used in particular industries or applications for many years. They are known bylabels specific to their purposes, which include supply chain visibility, business process monitoring,business activity monitoring, manufacturing operations intelligence (see "Hype Cycle forManufacturing Product Life Cycle and Operations Management, 2012"), customer contact centermonitoring and truck fleet management. "Operational intelligence platform" is a broad category thatencompasses those established purpose-specific monitoring systems, as well as newly emergingmonitoring systems for other industries and applications. It also encompasses general-purposeproducts that can be tailored to virtually any business scenario for which there is no suitablecommercial, off-the-shelf, purpose-specific monitoring and alerting system.

Operational intelligence platforms are often, but not always, used for real-time or near-real-timedecisions. Real-time and near-real-time decisions are those in which at least some of the data usedfor making decisions has been generated within the previous 15 minutes. Other decisions are notreal-time because all the data is more than 15 minutes old (it may be hours or days old). Whenoperational intelligence platforms are used for real-time or near-real-time purposes, and for decisionautomation rather than decision support, they are adopting the role of a real-time decisioningplatform.

User Advice: Architects and analysts should use operational intelligence platforms to provide a newlayer of oversight and insight into processes and operations. The platform is sometimes used toenable panoramic (or "360 degree") monitoring applications that cover end-to-end processes ormultiple aspects of an operation that previously had no continuous (or regularly recurring)monitoring, or where the monitoring was limited to narrow "keyhole" views of individual applicationsystems and devices. Operational intelligence platforms should do more than provide visibility; theyshould also be used to sense variances from a baseline of historical, expected or desired activity.They should send alerts to people (as part of decision support) about business threats oropportunities as they occur. In some cases, these platforms will trigger responses automatically(decision automation).

Architects and analysts should work with business managers and users to identify what data needsto be maintained in the context store, and how long it should be held. A context store can integrateinformation from multiple applications, sensors or other event sources inside and outside acompany. In some cases, it is used to track each instance of a business process through its lifecycle, even if the process is not managed by a workflow, business process management (BPM) orbusiness process management suite (BPMS) tool. Context information is continuously (or at leastfrequently) refreshed so that decisions made by people or application systems reflect the mostcurrent and complete view of conditions.

Operational intelligence platforms are one of the technologies well suited to implementing intelligentbusiness operation strategies. They are relevant when retrofitting monitoring, alerting or adaptivedecision-making capabilities on top of processes or operations that will not be replaced orfundamentally modified, or when implementing monitoring systems across heterogeneousoperations and processes that span multiple business units or disparate application packages.However, architects should consider intelligent BPMS (iBPMS) products, instead of operationalintelligence platforms, when implementing all-new business processes or making fundamentalchanges to processes. iBPMS products also have monitoring, alerting and decision-making




capabilities, so they overlap operational intelligence platforms. iBPMSs tend to have superiorworkflow, adaptive case management and structured process orchestration capabilities, but inferiormonitoring and alerting capabilities, although these are generalizations and do not apply to allproducts (see "Commercial Operational Intelligence Platforms Are Coming to Market").

Business Impact: The benefits of operational intelligence platforms differ, depending on theindustry and business function to which they are applied. In general, the platforms give businesspeople broader, more holistic and more current views into their operations. Traditional businessoperations are managed using daily, weekly or monthly reports without an operational intelligenceplatform (or iBPMS or custom-built monitoring and alerting system). Business people have no wayto monitor the up-to-the-minute status of end-to-end business processes, and have only limitedvisibility into conditions in adjacent parts of the business or the outside world. Traditional businessintelligence systems are set up only to report results, not to detect anomalies or other threats andopportunities.

Operational intelligence platforms operationalize objectives such as reducing customer churn,expanding sales and reducing the cost of manufacturing or delivery. They help people share acommon operating picture, which improves their ability to collaborate when making businessdecisions. They improve the quality of decisions by providing more contextual information andoffloading mathematically based business logic from people and application programs, so thatdecisions are better informed and more precise.

Benefit Rating: High

Market Penetration: 1% to 5% of target audience

Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: Access Intelligence; Aha Software; Axway; BusinessPort; C3global; ClearPriority;FeedZai; Greenlight Technologies; Intelligent InSites; JackBe; Kofax; Lavastorm Analytics; OversightSystems; Rockshore; SAP; Software AG; Splunk; Systar; Vitria; West Global

Recommended Reading: "Commercial Operational Intelligence Platforms Are Coming to Market"

"Use Intelligent Business Operations to Create Business Advantage"

Process-Centric Model-Driven Applications

Analysis By: Nicholas Gall; Janelle B. Hill

Definition: Process-centric, model-driven applications consist of prebuilt activity sequences, rulesets, UI designs, integration adapters and other artifacts sufficient to deploy a functional applicationon par with out-of-the-box functionality provided by packaged applications. They include ongoingvendor changes and upgrades to the application, and ongoing vendor support or managedservices. They use a metadata-driven, model-based approach to enable multiple parties to design,deploy, implement and version process solutions.




Position and Adoption Speed Justification: A chasm has existed between custom-developed(aka homegrown) applications and packaged applications for half a century. Therefore, anarchitecture that eliminates or even substantially reduces that chasm is at least 10 years away frommainstream adoption. A process-centric, model-driven application uses a business process andbusiness rule model as the primary abstractions to design and implement solution behavior(although other metadata constructs or solution facets may play a supporting role). It is based on aBPMS, or at least a BPM platform, that minimally consists of:

■ A graphical business process and rule-modeling capability, in which the models represent theexecution behavior of business processes and/or business rules

■ A process registry/repository to coordinate the modeling and versioning of the solutionmetadata by multiple stakeholders (vendors and users)

■ A process execution and state management engine and a rule engine

Ultimately, process-centric, model-driven applications are a middle ground between customapplication development (user designs, implements and versions everything) and buyingcommercial packaged applications (vendor designs, implements and versions everything). Ideally,process-centric, model-driven applications enable co-innovation, meaning that, although both thevendor and buyer innovate the solution through a variety of changes, their respective changes areeasily reconciled during upgrades. This is in sharp contrast to current approaches, in whichreconciliation of changes is painstakingly manual and error-prone.

Currently, the closest things to a process-centric, model-driven application are software andmetadata assets referred to by a confusing variety of names, such as solution accelerators, starterkits, rapid implementation packages, sample packs and templates. Such assets range from verylimited, very specific, vendor-provided assets (for example, a rule set, activity model or set of UIdesigns) to an almost complete, ready-to-deploy application. However, with few exceptions, suchassets are designed primarily for the implementation phase of the application life cycle. Suchvendor-provided assets are not designed to be perennially licensed, supported, maintained, andevolved by the vendor throughout the lifetime of the application. Such vendor-provided assetsbasically become the enterprise's responsibility once the application is deployed.

In particular, such assets (and the BPM platforms that execute them) lack a fundamental capability:the ability to coordinate multiparty versioning. To truly close the gap between homegrown andpackaged applications, one must close the gap between vendor-versioned assets and enterprise-versioned assets. The ultimate goal of a process-centric, model-driven application is to enable atruly Pace-Layered Application Strategy. Such an architecture leaves the vendor in charge ofevolving at its own pace those assets the enterprise feels provide good-enough commodityfunctionality, while the enterprise is in charge of evolving or even replacing those application assetsit feels are key to differentiating and innovating at whatever pace the business needs. In fact, such acompletely metadata-driven architecture would enable multiparty versioning by multiple vendors(say the main suite vendor and a vendor providing a single replacement module) and multipleenterprise stakeholders (say different departments in the enterprise). In its ultimate realization, theBPM software platform underlying the process-centric, model-driven application metadataarchitecture effectively becomes an application life cycle management (ALM) platform, in that it




coordinates all the versioning of all solution artifacts (expressed as metadata) by all the parties,thereby simplifying and accelerating application and process change. In such a world, softwarecode becomes the infrastructure, and model/metadata becomes the solution.

We position this technology near the beginning of the Hype Cycle because, although the concept isout there and there are a few examples with some of the versioning capabilities described (forexample, Pegasystems has the ability to version some of its BPM solution frameworks), there is nota well-defined market yet for such technology, despite a powerful, but not clearly articulated, needfor it.

User Advice: Use process-centric, model-driven applications to integrate or augment systems ofrecord when you need system of differentiation or innovation calling for higher degrees of processchange. Given that mature multiparty versioning architectures do not yet exist, expect suchapplications to be more homegrown than packaged for the next several years. In other words, don'texpect the vendor to be able to evolve the solution assets it provided beyond the implementationphase — you use it, you own it.

Business Impact: Longer term, process-centric, model-driven applications will have a major impacton business agility. The cost and complexity of rapidly changing business processes will go downsubstantially. Also, applications will last much longer before they enter the legacy phase of their lifecycle — that is, where the difficulty of evolving the application becomes a drag on the business.

Benefit Rating: Transformational

Market Penetration: Less than 1% of target audience

Maturity: Embryonic

Sample Vendors: Appian; Appway; FICO; Happiest Minds Technologies; IBM; Pegasystems

Recommended Reading: "What Types of Model-Driven Applications Are Most Appropriate for aHigh Pace of Process Change?"

"Process Templates Broaden Application Options in a Pace-Layered Application Strategy"


Analysis By: Teresa Jones

Definition: Open-source business process management (BPM) is BPM-enabling technology(BPMT) — such as business process analysis/modeling tools, rule engines, workflow engines andBPMSs — which is made available via an open-source license agreement. Often, a specialistvendor will provide support for a stabilized version of an open-source software (OSS) project for anannual subscription fee.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Open-source BPM offerings have been around forseveral years, but until recently, we did not see significant hype. Products tended to be used by ITprofessionals as application infrastructure components of a traditional application development




project, or for BPM pilots, experiments or learning projects. However, in the last year, the economicclimate has encouraged organizations to increasingly look at the cost of BPMTs, and open-sourceofferings are also starting to mature. Adoption of open-source BPM software appears to beincreasing, and some of the established players are forking solutions to provide a wider range offeatures, and business user friendliness is starting to improve. Even some process styles such ascase management now have open-source options; however, the majority of OSS BPMT productsfocus on rule execution or automating workflows.

User Advice: Consider open-source BPMTs where your organization has a pre-existing skills basethat is comfortable using open source. Don't overlook training and professional services costs thatmay be needed to help implement open-source BPMT.

Business Impact: The use of OSS BPM tools can reduce the license costs associated withsoftware used in BPM initiatives, but it is important to understand that, as with any open-sourcesoftware, software license costs are only part of the picture. Until recently, such solutions tended tobe very IT-centric and therefore required higher technical skills to deploy — this is starting tochange although many are still aimed at a developer audience.

Benefit Rating: Moderate


Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: Activiti; Bonitasoft; Camunda; Colosa; Red Hat

Recommended Reading: "Cool Vendors in Business Process Management, 2013"

Cloud Business Rule Management (BRM) Services


Definition: Business rules are implicit and explicit business directives that define and describeguidance for making a business decision. Business rule management (BRM) is a structureddiscipline guiding business rule definition, categorization, governance, deployment and usethroughout the business life cycle. A cloud BRM service is a comprehensive business rule offering— hosted in a public or private cloud— that facilitates the creation, registration, classification,verification, deployment and execution of business rules in the support of BRM.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Cloud BRM services have moved slightly up the HypeCycle this year, as we are starting to see vendors promoting the concept — however, there is littlechange in actual uptake by end-user organizations. Cloud BRM services can be obtained either as aseparate offering or as a subset of business process management (BPM) platforms and BPMplatform as a service (bpmPaaS — as defined in "Platform as a Service: Definition, Taxonomy andVendor Landscape, 2012"). There is a conceptual appeal for a low-cost, easily accessed alternativeto traditional business rule functionality, but to date, uptake of stand-alone cloud BRM servicesremains low, with most interest coming from a combined BPM and rule capability.




We believe there are several reasons for this:

1. Client demand is unknown — BRM-capable vendors have still not seen significant clientdemand for cloud BRM service capabilities, and therefore are monitoring what they will do.Some are positioning basic "test the waters" announcements (for example, by enablingdeployment on specific cloud platforms such as Microsoft Windows Azure) as a first step, butcontinue to hold off on larger-scale investments in 2013.

2. BRM functionality is often "bundled" with other technical platforms — Business rulefunctionality is often part of a larger platform. This is true for traditional on-premisesdeployments, and it will likely be true for deployments in the cloud. For instance, Pegasystemsoffers its business process management suite (BPMS) as a cloud offering, which incorporatesBRM features. As of May 2013, only one of Pegasystems' cloud customers is using the BRMfeatures by themselves; the majority are using the entire BPMS (for example, rule functionalityplus process functionality). This is a natural expectation; rule functionality is powerful by itself,but more powerful when used in combination with a full BPM capability.

3. The traditional BRM market is not an ideal domain for PaaS innovation — The independentBRMS and business rule engine market is undergoing signification transformation (see"Navigating a Fast-Changing and Paradoxical Business Rule Landscape"), which is disruptivefor platform innovation. Although the BRM concept continues to increase in adoption (see"Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, 2012"), it is still less well-understood thanother domains (for example, BPM). Therefore, we conclude that BRM has not been an ideal"test case" for PaaS innovation, despite the various offerings that have appeared. Emergentvendors appear to be the exception as they come to this market with a fresh slate, but weexpect very few new entrants in the BRM space to offer only BRM functionality and not providea combination of value-added capabilities (for example, BPM, complex-event processing [CEP],simulation, optimization and predictive analytics). Innovation is more likely to emerge throughthe combination of cloud BRM services with other cloud services such as a cloud servicebrokerage, or via the provision of cloud-based decision services.

User Advice:

■ There are few cloud BRM service offerings currently, and these are untested by significantmarket action, so users should be cautious in 2013 about making long-term plans concerning aparticular offering.

■ Consider using a stand-alone cloud BRM service as a way of experimenting with rules, much asyou could use a cloud BPM platform to experiment with process understanding.

■ With lower startup costs, cloud BRM services may provide smaller organizations with a meansof accessing rules. The cloud paradigm of simpler and more intuitive user interfaces will alsohelp.

Business Impact: The primary business impact of cloud BRM services will be derived from thebusiness impact of BRM proper; cloud BRM services are just an alternative delivery vehicle for aconcept (BRM) that can increase quality decision making when properly understood. Even thoughBRM concepts have been prevalent in certain industries (for example, financial services) and well-documented processes (for example, underwriting), there is no inherent limit to BRM's industry and




process reach. Therefore, cloud BRM services have a similar potential reach, with the emphasis on"potential."



Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: FICO; InRule Technology; Pegasystems; Progress Software; RulesHub; SparklingLogic

Recommended Reading: "Rule Engines and Event Processing"

"Cool Vendors in Business Process Management, 2012"

"Vendors in the Business Rule Market, 2012"


Analysis By: W. Roy Schulte; Teresa Jones; Janelle B. Hill

Definition: Event-driven business process management (BPM) is a style of process in which thesequence of business activities is dynamically determined by applying rules to events as they occur.It uses a combination of structured process orchestration, business rules management (BRM) andcomplex-event processing (CEP).

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Event-driven BPM returns to the Hype Cycle after aone-year hiatus. The market has shown renewed and growing interest in the idea, although it is stillat the Innovation Trigger phase of the Hype Cycle. Awareness of event-driven BPM in usercompanies is limited to leading-edge architects and process modelers, but numerous vendors areactively pursuing it. Given the sophistication of the concept and its relative newness, we expect thatevent-driven BPM will not reach the Peak of Inflated Expectations for another three or four years(2016 or 2017). Progression to the Plateau of Productivity will probably take another five yearsbeyond that.

The concept of event-driven BPM has been evolving since 2007 (possibly earlier), building on thework of Rainer von Ammon, Adrian Paschke, Florian Springer, Nenad Stojanovic, Paul Vincent andothers. A rich body of academic research has been amassed, and a few user companies haveimplemented event-driven BPM systems. However, these early applications required significanteffort because of the immature state of the art. Some vendors provide guidance on how to use theirproducts to support event-driven BPM, but most commercial software products are still immatureand incomplete. Relevant industry standards are even less mature. For example, Business ProcessModel and Notation (BPMN) v2.0 defines dynamically invoked event subprocesses that live withinlarger, more structured business processes, but does not specify any details on how to apply CEPand BRM, and places restrictions on how event subprocesses are triggered.




User Advice: Architects and business analysts that want to pursue event-driven BPM mustunderstand three different, but complementary, techniques. Each technique applies a different typeof rule to data about business events in order to make decisions about what activity should occurnext in a process:

■ A process orchestration capability, similar to that found in traditional workflow or other BPMprocess orchestration engines, is used to control structured, preplanned processes andsubprocesses (process snippets).

■ A business rule engine (BRE) capability is used to make flow decisions where the logic involvesmany combinations of choices (compound predicate logic).

■ CEP is used to correlate event data from one or more sources inside the company, or from theexternal environment, to detect patterns and trends and provide situation awareness. Eachpattern or trend is reflected in a complex event; each complex event is the result of calculationsthat were performed on hundreds or thousands of event observations. Rules are applied tocomplex events to determine what to do next.

These three techniques complement the fourth, ubiquitous method of triggering process activities— human decisions. For example, in modern collaborative and adaptive case management usagescenarios, many flow decisions are made by people on an ad hoc basis, rather than by using any ofthe three automated techniques.

A full implementation of event-driven BPM integrates all three techniques. Some business activitiesare driven by the process orchestration capability, others by the BRE capability and others by CEP.For example, CEP may detect business threat events, such as when customers are unhappybecause they had to wait on hold for a long time to get through to a customer contact center afterstruggling through an unsuccessful session on the company's website. The CEP component mayhand an "unhappy customer" event notification to the BRE to determine what action to take basedon the customer's history and value to the company. The BRE may then pass control to a processorchestration capability in order to carry out a sequence of remedial actions (a structured processsnippet) that provide appropriate services to the customer to improve the relationship. In earlyimplementations of event-driven BPM, this sequence was typically implemented in three separateproducts; in more-mature implementations, a single holistic infrastructure can manage all threetypes of flow decision.

A good event-driven BPM solution enables business people to change some of the event-handlingflow rules without requiring professional programmers. Note that BREs and CEP technology areused for many purposes outside event-driven BPM, in roles unrelated to controlling the sequence ofan event-driven process. For example, both are used in decision management. However, the thirdtechnique, process orchestration, is always dedicated to controlling the sequence of activities,either in an event-driven or a traditional process (in a sense, even traditional processes are event-driven, although they are not "event-driven BPM" in this sense of the term).

Leading-edge project teams should implement event-driven BPM today for their more complexprocesses. Some commercial software suites (from vendors in the sample list below) alreadysupport this kind of system, although some are far more mature than others and all still havesignificant limitations and seams between their internal capabilities. Alternatively, project teams can




assemble a collection of software products that implement the individual functions and integratethem through custom code. Mainstream and conservative project teams should track the progressin this field, but need not begin implementation in 2013 or 2014.

Business Impact: Event-driven BPM has the power to automate or improve many process flowdecisions in ways that were previously unachievable. It enables companies to implement processesthat work the way the business wants them to work, with less human intervention. All companieshave always been event-driven, but most of their processes have relied on human intelligence tointerpret events, understand what is happening (achieve "situation awareness)" and then decidewhat to do. With the advent of event-driven BPM, software can be used to apply the right decision-making technique at the right time. The result is:

■ Greater agility in the face of changing business requirements

■ Faster responses to individual instances of anomalies and other business threats andopportunities

■ Improved collaboration among people working on the same process instances and cases

Event-driven BPM will become one of the most important and common approaches forimplementing intelligent business operations. It is already a minor issue in the selection ofcommercial intelligent business process management suite (iBPMS) products, and it will become amajor selection criterion as companies build increasingly rich and flexible processes. In the long run,event-driven BPM is likely to become the dominant model for large, sophisticated BPM projectsbecause it can support a wide range of process styles, from simple to robust, whereas simplermodels can support only simple process styles. iBPMS products exhibit varying levels of supportfor event-driven BPM, but we expect competition in this area to grow dramatically during the nextfive years.



Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: Appian; Aurea; Bosch Software Innovations; Cordys; Fujitsu; IBM; Informatica;Oracle; Pegasystems; Red Hat; SAP (Sybase); Software AG; Talend; Tibco Software; Vitria;Whitestein

Recommended Reading: "Use Intelligent Business Operations to Create Business Advantage"

"Magic Quadrant for Intelligent Business Process Management Suites"

"Apply Three Disciplines to Make Business Operations More Intelligent"

Social BPM

Analysis By: Nicholas Gall




Definition: Social business process management (BPM) is a transformative approach to traditionalmanagement disciplines that treats social collaboration as integral to business processimprovement (BPI) and to the more adaptable processes it produces. Social BPM transformstraditional management practices by iteratively infusing social collaboration into all processes, fromstrategy to execution, to improve adaptability by engaging and empowering the collectiveemergence of innovation via a process community.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Social BPM is an emerging concept that is at an earlyphase in the Hype Cycle. It has not changed in position or pace since last year. Social BPM issupported by BPM technology and social software that make process design more visible andholistic. This includes the ability to support all process activities — such as communitycollaboration, social networking, collective activities and communications — that are a natural partof "work" to create a holistic process design that is open to influence and change from a variety ofperspectives (for example, from customers, partners, suppliers and employees).

Unlike conventional BPM, the ultimate goal of social BPM is not merely BPI; it is also processcommunity improvement (PCI). The dual goal must be to improve the effectiveness of a businessprocess and to improve the effectiveness of the collaborative community (aka the processcommunity) that is evolving the process. Contrary to much of the hype driving "social" everything,social BPM is not about the ad hoc application of social media to improve business processes (likemany vendors' bolt-ons of social media technology to their business applications). Like the saying,"It takes a village to raise a child," it takes a process community to evolve a process. A healthy andeffective process community should include not only the designers of the process, but also thepeople performing the process (the "doers"), the people interacting with the process (the"receivers") and other process stakeholders (for example, legal and finance). However, just asimportantly, but often overlooked, is that the village is not just a means of growing a child —growing the village is an end as well. Accordingly, the goal of social BPM is BPI and PCI: improvingthe process and improving the process community. Improving the process community will enableall process stakeholders who compose the community to work together more effectively as theycontinually evolve the process and the process community.

BPM today is based on three tenets of equal importance: accountability, visibility and adaptability.However, for organizations that place paramount importance on adaptability, BPM must evolve tobecome social BPM. Just as BPM evolved from traditional process improvement by shifting thefocus from efficiency to accountability, visibility and adaptability, social BPM is evolving from BPMby shifting the primary focus toward increasing adaptability by focusing on community engagement,empowerment and emergence.

User Advice:

■ Ensure processes are designed and iterated via community collaboration, rather than by"bolting on" social media technologies. It will result in a better process design that enablesseamless usage by the participants.

■ Examine work processes with a lens for the activities that occur in instant messages, activitystreams, community workspaces and other social platforms. Include these interactions inprocess design.




■ Consider an "outside-in" view that addresses the expectations of the customer or processparticipant, and redesign the process from that view.

■ Rather than defining discrete activities and workflows, enable the community to determine themeans to a purposeful end.

■ Deliver a culture and a collaborative process improvement environment that enables thecollaborative cycle of contribution, feedback, judgment and change.

Business Impact: Social BPM represents a shift to a different style of management entirely — atransformation of business management itself. Such a transformation is required to reach the goalof becoming a social organization as well as a process organization. To achieve such amanagement transformation, business and IT leaders must try out new approaches to managing.One example of a new approach is guiding from the middle — letting go of ownership of all thedecision making about the process and shifting it to the community, keeping the communityconnected to the enterprise, and encouraging the emergent nature of collaboration.



Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: Appian; HandySoft; IBM (Blueworks Live); OpenText; Oracle; Pegasystems; SAP

Recommended Reading: "Master Social BPM to Build a Social Organization"

"Master Six Core Principles to Tap the Massive Power of Social Media"

"Social BPM: Getting to Doing"

"Business Gets Social"


Analysis By: Janelle B. Hill; Elise Olding; Carol Rozwell

Definition: Unstructured processes are nonroutine business processes that are mostly executed byindividuals or small groups of professionals who are collaborating to achieve a business objective.Unstructured process segments depend heavily on human interpretation, collaboration, judgmentand expertise for their successful completion.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Most end-to-end processes are a combination ofstructured and unstructured processes. Unstructured portions are those in which experiencedprofessionals work individually or collaboratively to achieve a business objective. According to theU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonroutine work has been increasing year over year such that, in2012, approximately 60% of jobs consisted primarily of nonroutine tasks, whereas 40% consistentprimarily of routine tasks. By definition, nonroutine work is unstructured; there is a process, but it is




embedded in the tacit knowledge of the individual(s) performing the work. Unstructured processesrange from simple, even individual approaches to work to very complex, collaborative processes."Unstructured processes" is an umbrella term; there are many unstructured process styles thatwould fall under this umbrella, such as adaptive case management (ACM), content collaborationand some types of intelligent processes. Unstructured processes have not received much attentionin business process management (BPM) efforts, which tend to focus on more structured sharedprocesses in which the activities can be modeled, standardized and automated. For years,nonroutine work was addressed with a variety of personal productivity software (such as email),groupware (such as Lotus Notes) and other document-centric programming environments (such asMicrosoft SharePoint). However, such work is now recognized as contributing to a larger processthat might be better coordinated and managed. Thus, there is a huge opportunity to improveorganizational performance results by focusing attention on the unstructured processes. Animportant new focus for BPM is to harness this tacit process knowledge so that unstructuredprocesses can be made visible (explicit) and measurable, thereby uncovering the "hidden costs"and unleashing the "hidden benefits" associated with them (without destroying the value deliveredby unstructured processes).

Growing economic dependence on service-based industries and nonroutine work has brought a lotmore focus on improving worker effectiveness, not just efficiency. Thus, unstructured processes arefinally receiving a lot more attention from BPM technology providers, consultants, academics andprocess thought leaders. (Content collaboration and case management processes in particular aresome of the most widely recognized styles of unstructured work.) Technological advances in event-driven architecture, automated process discovery, social media and explicit rules are criticalcapabilities for exposing unstructured processes, for uncovering emerging next practices and betterpractices, and for assessing worker effectiveness. Some technologies accomplish this by examining(after the fact) the various execution paths taken, whereas others leverage a "follow me" approachto expose the flow model as the worker performs his or her actions. Over time, process modelsemerge that can be analyzed for efficiency, effectiveness and innovation, and that can be socializedmore broadly as appropriate.

With the exception of attempts to turn unstructured processes into structured ones (inappropriate inmany cases), and despite a wealth of research, books and hype, few BPM practitioners have yetadvanced their process improvement efforts to unstructured work domains. Also, a wealth ofcompeting technologies (such as social media tools, collaboration platforms, personal productivitytools and mobile applications) vie for attention from buyers who are looking to improve workereffectiveness without the perceived "heavyweight burden" of BPM-enabling technology. There areno well-established methodologies or best practices yet for discovering such work habits. The dotposition for unstructured processes on the Hype Cycle reflects a lack of maturity in BPM disciplinesand lack of experience with emerging BPM technologies to address unstructured process domains.Even simple techniques — such as using time stamps on a start/notify activity and a terminateactivity, or providing a contextual checklist for an ad hoc/collaboration activity state — are rarelyimplemented in BPM suite and other workflow solution designs.

User Advice:

■ Ensure that your BPM efforts are not constrained by the mindset that every human-intensiveprocess is unique and, therefore, can't be studied or improved.




■ Expand your repertoire of BPM skills to include techniques and tools that bring visibility toactivities that have been ignored by traditional process improvement techniques. Leveragecollaboration and social software tools, in addition to BPM tools, and also leverage approachesfor knowledge capture and redistribution.

■ Take a more social and collaborative approach, supported by the appropriate purpose andtools, which is crucial to understanding and mastering unstructured processes.

■ Understand and embrace concepts that are aligned with handling unstructured processes (suchas ACM, event-driven processing and intelligent business operations) to succeed in deliveringstrategic business outcomes.

■ Identify which end-to-end processes contain important, unstructured work that takes placeoutside your automated applications. Examine and bring visibility to those processes as the firststep in eliminating hidden costs.

■ Work with others in your enterprise who are already focused on improving this kind of work,such as those leading "social" efforts; they may be approaching the same problem from adifferent direction. You may have to sell the idea of "process" being applicable to their variousviewpoints.

Business Impact: Examples of cross-industry unstructured process domains include new productideation and development, R&D, marketing, sales, order management, customer and partnerrelationship management, product and software testing, quality management, and riskmanagement. There are many industry-specific areas as well, such as explorations in oil, gas,pharmaceuticals and minerals. Any area that is experiencing more "exceptions" than "happy path"executions is ripe for consideration. Excelling at nonroutine work and doing so at scale hastremendous potential to differentiate a company and give it a competitive advantage.



Maturity: Emerging

Recommended Reading: "Expand Your BPM Horizons by Exploring Unstructured Processes"

"Business Narratives Supplement Traditional Data Analysis"

BPM Certification

Analysis By: Samantha Searle

Definition: Business process management (BPM) certification formally recognizes that an individualhas the necessary skills to successfully implement, run or participate in a BPM initiative. BPMcertification, as discussed here, does not refer to certification in business process improvementmethodologies (such as Six Sigma or ITIL) used in BPM — or in vendor-specific approaches.Instead, this research applies to more generic, broadly scoped training in BPM as a discipline.




Position and Adoption Speed Justification: BPM certification remains in the same place on theHype Cycle as last year, due to no visibly significant increase in certified BPM professionals.However, the need for skilled and experienced personnel to lead and participate in BPM activitiesremains clear. A lack of expertise and suitable resources are two of the top three reasons (the thirdbeing organizational politics) why BPM projects and initiatives are stalling or failing to get off theground. The aim of BPM certification is to provide or assess the skills most appropriate for BPMsuccess, help recruiters validate that applicants have the skills required for the job, and provide theapplicants with appropriate professional recognition.

A combination of transformational, operational and technical skills is required to implement BPMsuccessfully (see "15 Skills Critical to Business Process Management Success"). However, the maincertification bodies (Association of Business Process Management Professionals [ABPMP], BPMInstitute and the OMG — see "BPM Certification Is Currently a Work in Progress") focus primarily onoperational skills, such as process modeling and analysis, process governance, metrics, andprocess performance management. While technical skills can be found or gained through vendor-specific training, a lack of key transformational skills, such as communication and organizationalchange techniques, can prevent BPM programs from succeeding in driving strategic businessoutcomes. In fact, the Gartner 2012 BPM Adoption Survey revealed that the top three skill setsorganizations lack are business strategy, planning and alignment; project or program management;and process domain expertise. These are not covered in detail by the main certification bodies, and,consequently, BPM certification fails to fully address the skills gap that organizations experience inreality.

Today, however, BPM certification is an immature market, and it does not look like this will changein 2013, despite the potential value it can bring to the industry in highlighting the skills andknowledge required for success. The number of individuals certified to date is still relatively low(Gartner places the estimate at 4,000), and there is no body to ensure standards for thesecertifications. Until BPM certification reaches a critical mass and its value is recognized by hiringcompanies, organizations will have little to act on in terms of selection criteria.

Note that some universities and business schools offer courses in BPM, but we do not see apreference for BPM professionals to take academic courses as opposed to BPM certification. A listof BPM academic programs is maintained by Business Process Trends (see www.bptrends.com/resources_organizations.cfm?organizationTypeID=2F5802DD-3048-C0CF-057584B8675B9A1A).

As a result, we have placed BPM certification as coming before the peak in the Hype Cycle.Research shows that market penetration is still relatively low, but continues to grow.

User Advice:

■ For hiring managers: Understand the context for BPM in your organization and establish a roleprofile accordingly, concentrating on the skills relevant to your current BPM project andprogram needs, regardless of how those skills are certified. Use this role profile as the basis forselecting job applicants or even consultants.

■ For hiring managers and BP directors: When reviewing applicants with BPM certification, askthem to articulate what was required and what curriculum was covered. This could be a good


http://www.bptrends.com/resources_organizations.cfm?organizationTypeID=2F5802DD-3048-C0CF-057584B8675B9A1A

http://www.bptrends.com/resources_organizations.cfm?organizationTypeID=2F5802DD-3048-C0CF-057584B8675B9A1A



place to start probing for whether the applicant has actual experience in implementing BPM, asopposed to just a theoretical understanding of the discipline and skills. Do not forget to look forcoverage of the softer skill sets.

■ For BPM professionals: Understand your current skills and whether your reason for seekingBPM certification is to provide ongoing education or to fill a specific skills gap. If working withinan organization, understand the BPM needs of the business. From this, review the curricula ofthe various bodies offering BPM certification and pick the one with the closest fit to your needs.

■ For hiring managers and BPM professionals: The need for individual methodology trainingand/or certifications (such as Six Sigma) is not replaced by a broad BPM certification.

■ For BP directors: Consider whether BPM certification can help upskill your existing BPM team.Carry out a skills gap assessment for your planned BPM projects, and review each certificationsyllabus in depth to determine whether it will provide sufficient training in the areas where thereare significant skills gaps.

Business Impact: The need for skilled personnel with a broad range of hard and soft skills is amajor contributor to organizations realizing business benefits from BPM. Thirty percent oforganizations (n = 557) that participated in Gartner's 2012 BPM Adoption Survey cited lack ofexpertise among the top three challenges that they needed to overcome to successfully deliver theirdesired business outcomes; a further 29% also indicated that lack of personnel was anotherinhibiting factor. Many of the failures that Gartner sees through its continuous client interactionscome from a lack of previous experience or skills from the team that is accountable for delivery.BPM certification can potentially have a significant impact on the success of BPM projects andoverall BPM adoption by providing education in the skills critical for establishing BPM as amanagement discipline within an organization.



Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM); Association ofBusiness Process Management Professionals; BPM Council; BPM Institute; Object ManagementGroup (OMG)

Recommended Reading: "BPM Certification Is Currently a Work in Progress"

"15 Skills Critical to Business Process Management Success"

Enterprise-Class Agile Development

Analysis By: David Norton

Definition: Enterprise-class agile development (EAD) is the use of customer-centric, collaborativeand cooperative practices with continual stakeholder feedback. Feedback is done in dynamic and




changing heterogeneous environments throughout the software life cycle to support continuousdelivery of enterprise-class adaptive solutions. Enterprisewide agile development is a matter ofprocess maturity and usually is tactical and unrelated to EAD, which is a well-governed strategicinitiative and a scaling issue.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Project-level agile adoption is becoming mainstream,but organizational maturity is still relatively low throughout the industry. We expect EAD, in mostcases, to be bottom-up adoption based on project-level agile development. However, top-downstrategic adoption is growing, driven by information and communication technology (ICT)transformation initiatives, or by business demand for faster time to market.

Through 2015, 40% of organizations will actively adopt EAD to gain business differentiation forprojects and programs needing strong collaboration and cross-process cooperation.

Many people in system architecture groups, the project management office (PMO), andinfrastructure and operations (I&O) organizations are suspicious of and resistant to agile practices,which impedes EAD adoption. Although significant barriers to EAD come from outsourcing andmultisourcing, system integrators and outsourcing suppliers are actively adopting agile practices ascommercial offerings. There is strong push back from agile practitioners to anything they see as abig process or compromising agile principles.

User Advice: Develop a long-term picture of EAD. Enterprisewide, organizations might be doingmany self-contained/independent agile development projects that are totally unrelated and meetspecific tactical needs. The projects may be first iterations of agile development projects intendedto help organizations understand how the application solution could grow into a more completesolution, which will subsequently be integrated into the current application solution portfolio. Mostagile development projects start without a real concern for their longer-term impact on theapplication ecosystem and broader solution architecture. These projects often fail to scale toenterprise-class solutions.

Assess the impact of agile development on current and future enterprise solution architectures sothat the organization can make the best business decisions. Organizations will be able to decidewhether to use a basic agile approach to agile development, or a more formalized version of agilemethods in relation to other projects and current solutions. Organizations must have a clear strategyof targeted use and support, with policies indicating where agile practices should be used freelywith the project or product, and where they should be used with caution or avoided. Define agileroles and touchpoints with key stakeholders, including application developers, information andsolution architects, and those in the PMO, quality assurance (QA), and I&O areas.

Create key performance indicators (KPIs) that include technical (i.e., defect density, technical debtand QA) and business (backlog value, responsiveness, flexibility and time to market) attributes, andmake the KPI dashboard available to all stakeholders. Define EAD critical success factors fordelivery management based on best practices, such as Scrum or Dynamic System DevelopmentMethod (DSDM), and on engineering practices, such as continuous integration, testing and delivery.

Recognize that tool application life cycle management (ALM) and project and portfolio management(PPM) suppliers are moving aggressively to provide EAD support, bridging the gap between agile




and nonagile. Most clients are still predominantly best-of-breed users. This reflects the fragmentedtool strategy of many end-user organizations prior to adopting EAD.

Business Impact: A holistic approach to EAD across the entire development process makes EADbeneficial to a wide range of projects and products. Systems of differentiation and systems ofinnovation will benefit most from EAD. Business domains with a degree of uncertainty, or where thelevel and pace of business change are issues, will be good fits for EAD.

EAD is as much about business benefits and change to support these benefits as it is abouttechnology benefits and change. Hence, EAD benefits can only truly be realized if line of businessand product owners structure their business cases and road maps with agile delivery in mind. Thisincludes funding and revenue realization.



Maturity: Adolescent

Sample Vendors: CollabNet; HP; IBM; Microsoft; Rally Software; ThoughtWorks; VersionOne

Recommended Reading: "Enterprise-Class Agile Development Defined"

"Understanding the Fundamentals of Agile Methods"

"Enterprise-Class Agile Development as Part of the Enterprise Solution Architecture"

At the Peak

BPA for the Masses

Analysis By: David Norton; Teresa Jones

Definition: Business process analysis (BPA) for the masses, formalized as enterprise BPA,describes a usage scenario in which business users, rather than BPA specialists or IT resources,use user-friendly, lightweight business process modeling tools to analyze, design and collaborateon business processes at a high level.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: BPA for the masses has moved up toward the Peakof Inflated Expectations somewhat this year, based on growing adoption of several products in thismarket. BPA for the masses emphasizes a developing trend toward a simpler business processmodeling approach that can be used by business stakeholders and does not require a technical orBPA expert. BPA for the masses is simpler than traditional BPA because it uses familiar businessterms, with attention to business goals and outcomes, and less inclusion of technical terms tosupport implementations. It also deals with business process modeling at a higher conceptual level,rather than at a more detailed logical or physical level. The traditional BPA tool category hasfocused on the need of business architects and analysts to collaborate with others, requiring more




robust methods and tooling than many business process modelers care to deal with. However, BPAfor the masses directly targets business staff members, regardless of position or role, providingeasy-to-grasp insights into their own business processes. The goal of BPA for the masses is tocapture the informal shadow processes, concepts and information often missing in more formal in-process modeling and user requirements definitions. As a result, enterprise BPA tools — specificallytools that target the BPA for the masses usage scenario — are becoming more popular amongbusinesspeople.

BPA for the masses also allows communities of interest to collaborate via peer interactions,knowledge exchanges and consensus building. Harvesting information from common formats (suchas Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Visio) is a key requirement, as is the ability to communicate eitherwith traditional BPA models or common business formats. In this way, BPA for the masses isclosely associated with social business process management (BPM). We also expect BPA for themasses to be increasingly delivered via software modules on-premises, or via the cloud throughsoftware as a service, because this will allow communities to grow unimpeded. We see anincreased use of mobile technology for capturing process-related information at the source, whichallows for BPA where needed.

Steady adoption of enterprise BPA tools is moving this technology up the Hype Cycle, and weexpect its time to plateau to be within two to five years. We are seeing some organizations adoptBPA for the masses as their mechanism for collaborating on and maintaining process models ofrecord, particularly where process blueprinting (i.e., an emphasis on high-level, business-focuseddesign of "to be" business processes) is needed.

We see two main drivers for simpler BPA for the masses tools. First, as BPM adoption continues togrow — and as it involves the participation of more and more businesspeople versus IT staff — itdrives concurrent growth in business users' awareness of the benefits of analyzing andunderstanding their own processes. Contrary to BPA's traditional role as a primarily IT-drivenactivity, business units are increasingly being prompted to apply enterprise BPA concepts tounderstand their processes and how to improve them.

Second, the accelerating pace of business is driving the need to respond quicker and moreeffectively to change. These demands can be addressed through sound BPM disciplines, but theinitial, critical BPM discipline of business process modeling provides, from a business perspective,the visibility needed to gain a shared business understanding of the as-is process, which canbecome a springboard to making processes more effective, and causing them to be changed morerapidly. BPA for the masses can deliver this.

User Advice: Recognize and adopt the concept of BPA for the masses as an accelerator forsignificant business performance improvement. Look for user-friendly modeling tools with strongcollaboration and versioning capabilities to add now.

Examine all the BPA and modeling activities in your enterprise, and establish a shared-program andshared-governance effort that defines and supports common tools and standards, but recognizethat you may need different tools for different purposes.




Accept as a valid option the approach of using two sets of modeling methods and tools — onefocused on business user friendliness, and the other on BPA for use by architects and analystsdriving solutions, including technical specifications, execution and orchestration. Key to success isproviding the easy exchange of information — from the conceptual business model to the ITimplementation model — in both directions.

Business Impact: Gartner believes that increased adoption of BPA for the masses will impactenterprises by helping them achieve a range of business benefits. However, before this occurs,several missteps will likely drive a period of overinflated expectations, followed by disillusionment,including the mistaken notion that this is a universal tool or approach that must be usedeverywhere. This is a pitfall best avoided by selecting the prime target areas or processes, wherebusiness performance improvements can be derived from sound modeling to provide clear andvisible economic benefits.

Over time, however, lasting growth will be incremental, based on the success of business userswho grasp the best ways to apply this emerging and relatively low-cost category of BPA tools. Forthese users, the resulting benefits will include faster realization of desired business performanceimprovements and a better ability to meet time and budget targets due to better processunderstanding, as well as extra insight into process impacts to avoid unpleasant surprises.

Another critical benefit will be improved communication between business and IT staff. Goodmodels will become a bridge of understanding seen by businesses as how they need to operate toperform well, and seen by IT as how to create systems to deliver the services. In general, theadoption of BPA for the masses as a management productivity tool will lead to improvedproductivity, increased agility, continuous improvement and refined pattern discovery.



Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: Bizagi; IBM; Interfacing Technologies; Orbus Software; Signavio; Tibco Software

Recommended Reading: "Magic Quadrant for Business Process Analysis Tools"

"Predicts 2012: Organizational Politics Hampers, Gamification Motivates BPM Adoption"

"Social BPM: Design by Doing"


"Early BPM Efforts Benefit Most From a Focus on Future-State Processes"






Definition: A single overarching methodology that accomplishes everything needed for everybusiness process management (BPM) project is more a theoretical ideal than a practical reality. The"methodology toolbox" is a response to this reality and consists of the BPM professional selectingthe appropriate best-fit methodologies, or components of methodologies, for a situation. The keyhere is the studied selection and maintenance — rather than a chaotic grab — of approaches.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The BPM methodology toolbox has slowly crept upthe Hype Cycle since last year because there is some evidence of steadily increasing adoption.Although interest in the BPM methodology toolbox approach continues to grow, organizations stillprefer to implement a particular process improvement methodology or tool rather than leverage atoolbox approach. Evidence from a series of 51 detailed client interviews on how organizationsapproach BPM revealed that only 18 organizations adopted a methodology toolbox approach, suchas Lean Six Sigma, while the remaining organizations adopted a single methodology (usually lean orSix Sigma). Furthermore, ITScore for BPM results from December 2012 showed that 42% oforganizations that took the maturity assessment had adopted a BPM methodology toolboxapproach, compared with 41% in July 2011, thereby indicating no significant increase in toolboxadoption.

Gartner continues to recommend a toolbox approach to methodologies — that is, aggregatingcomponents and methods from multiple methodologies that are the most relevant to the particularactivity on which the business focuses. However, the position on the Hype Cycle, the adoptionspeed and the market penetration are based on two factors:

■ This is a position for a "methodology toolbox" — a somewhat underexploited concept — ratherthan a position for individual methodologies (for example, Six Sigma), which are more mature,penetrated and established.

■ A cogent and conscious force drives the methodology toolbox effort in the organization.Accidentally stumbling on and using a pile of methodologies is not the same as adopting amethodology toolbox approach and institutionalizing its use for business process improvement(BPI) projects across your organization.

The majority of business process directors still tend to adopt a single methodology, rather thanconsciously adopting a toolbox approach to improve the likelihood of supporting business goalsand delivering results. However, process improvement methodologies, such as lean or Six Sigma,are best suited to incremental process improvement, rather than driving strategic businessoutcomes. This could be one key factor in why many organizations are failing to fully realizestrategic business outcomes, and, consequently, why BPM programs are being abandoned for lackof perceived business value and relevance. Adoption of a BPM methodology toolbox will not gainspeed until business process directors realize that this approach will significantly improve theirchances of driving strategic business outcomes from their BPM programs.

User Advice:

■ Determine and prioritize what business outcomes your BPM program is trying to achieve. Fromthis, select the key features from BPI methodologies (whole methodologies or subsets, asneeded) that are the best fit for delivering the goals of the organization. Consider the initial BPMprojects and prioritize the selection of and training on those methodologies that fit the project.




■ Conduct an analysis of the skills and experience already in-house. Determine the skill/experience gaps and decide whether you need to supplement the existing staff with consultantsuntil knowledge transfer is complete or you can work with existing resources.

■ Adopt the BPM methodology toolbox as a pragmatic way of delivering results. Start withsmaller initiatives to breed confidence in and competence with the selected methodology, andthen expand your scope and impact.

■ When choosing a vendor-based methodology, look for vendors that promote knowledgetransfer as part of their solutions, and that will license the methodology for your ongoing use.

Business Impact: A BPM methodology toolbox can be a significant aid to successful improvementin the organization. It can provide the templates, procedures, processes and methods necessary todirect the actions of the participants, enable a common shared language and remove much of theambiguity on quantifying the scale of the improvement. A unified, methodological approach to BPMcan provide repeatable success and prevent "reinventing the wheel."



Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: Appian; Bosch; Cordys; CSC; Kofax; OpenText; Pegasystems; PerformanceDesign Lab; Progress Software

Recommended Reading: "Bust the Myth of the Overarching BPM Methodology and Leverage aToolbox Approach to Bridge the Gap"

"Opening the BPM Methodology Toolbox: ITIL"

"Opening the BPM Methodology Toolbox: Lean Six Sigma"

"Is Lean an Agile Development Method?"

"'Just Enough Process' Requires an Understanding of Agile Practices"

"Case Study: BPM Education and Training at Owens & Minor"

"Who's Who in Business Process Management Consulting and System Integration"

"Who's Who in Business Process Management Consulting and System Integration, Volume 2"

Decision Management

Analysis By: W. Roy Schulte; Lisa Kart

Definition: Decision management is a discipline that uses rules and analytics to determine apreferred course of action. It may be used to automate business decisions (with no direct human




involvement), or to assist decisions made by people (through decision support systems). Decisionmanagement specifies what to do, in contrast with descriptive and predictive analytics whichdescribe a situation without explicitly identifying a particular response.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Decision management is new to the Hype Cycle, butit is already the subject of considerable discussion and publicity. Hype built quickly, fueled by thewidespread popularity of analytics in areas as diverse as digital marketing, predicting elections andeven managing baseball teams (as documented in the book and movie "Moneyball"). The hype islikely to grow further during the next several years (2014 through 2016). The technology affects coreaspects of business processes, so it will take another three to six years before it matures to thePlateau of Productivity and becomes part of the majority of new development projects foroperational systems.

Business leaders are quite receptive to the idea of using analytics for business purposes. However,most business analytics were historically used offline to make long-term, high-level tactical or evenstrategic decisions. The use of decision management within processes, although clearly beneficial,was less common because it was potentially more disruptive. Dozens or hundreds of businessdecisions are made in the course of every instance of every business process. In an order-to-cashprocess, for example, a CRM system decides which products and prices to offer to a potentialcustomer on a website; after receiving an order, it evaluates the customer's credit to decide if therisk is acceptable; a fulfillment system decides how to pick and pack the order; an inventorymanagement system in the background decides when to replenish the stock of certain items; alogistics system decides the schedules and routes for delivery trucks; and so the process goes on.

The numerous minute-to-minute and day-to-day decisions that guide the transaction processingand the physical activities that run the business are operational decisions. Decisions occur ininformation-centric operations — such as processing insurance claims — and physical operations— such as running machinery, processing plants and utility networks. Injecting rules and analyticsinto operations requires changes in the way companies work and in their computer systems.Companies sometimes need to change their process models, policies, decision-making practices,organizational structures, development methodologies, databases or software. Although decisionmanagement tools have been available for years, and more new and improved tools (those used tomodel decisions, for example) are coming to market, many system architects, process modelersand analysts are still learning how to apply them. Operational intelligence platforms are an exampleof a type of software product that can be used to implement decision management as a part ofbusiness processes.

Decision management is already proven in a growing number of application areas, such asgenerating best-next-action cross-selling offers in CRM systems. Many uses of decisionmanagement are in real time or near real time, which implies that at least some of the data used fordecision making has been generated within the past 15 minutes. Other decision managementapplications are not real time because all of the data is more than 15 minutes old (in many cases, allof the data is hours or even days old). When decision management is in real time or near real time,and used for decision automation (not decision support) then it may be implemented on a real-timedecision management platform.




User Advice: Analysts and architects should work with subject-matter experts and businessmanagers to develop an understanding of the kinds of decisions that will be made in the course oftheir operations. They should use the observe, orient, decide and act (OODA) framework to analyzebusiness operations to determine where decision management technology will help (see "ApplyThree Disciplines to Make Business Operations More Intelligent").

Analysts should develop decision models to identify the decision factors, and to determine whichdecision management technologies to use. Some decisions will be implemented with only a ruleengine; others may use prescriptive analytics or rules in conjunction with predictive analytics,complex-event processing, simulation, case-based reasoning, cortical learning algorithms or othertechnologies. In many cases, analysts should prepare influence diagrams to map the factors andlogic that drive decision-making. After the system is in production, decision models should beadjusted frequently.

Most operational decisions were historically made by people, or the logic was hard-wired intoapplication systems where it was hard to modify as business conditions changed. However, acomputer can make or help make some of these decisions faster and better, at lower cost, and withmore flexibility by using decision management technology. Operational decisions should be fullyautomated if a good and complete decision model can be created. Decisions that cannot be fullyautomated because human judgment is required can often still be improved by using decisionmanagement technology in decision support systems. The system recommends a preferred courseof action, and a person can accept and implement the recommendation, or modify or overrule therecommendation as they see fit. The preferred course of action may be determined according torules that reflect prespecified business policies, or the system may dynamically compute a solutionthat maximizes or minimizes the value of a desired objective using an optimization algorithm.

Business Impact: Decision management is one of the key enablers of intelligent businessoperations strategies. Decision management technology can be used in conjunction with businessprocess management and flow management technologies to implement the guided navigationprocess style. Some decision management applications are context aware, meaning that they adapttheir behavior according to current conditions such as the location of a participant, the time of dayor other contextual facts.

Computers can perform more calculations than people can within the time that is available beforeactions must be taken. Virtually all of the data available to people — including transactions,reference data, news feeds, tweets and other unstructured data (content) — is now in digital formso software can process it. Analytics can quickly locate the portion of the data that is relevant to thecurrent decision, perform statistical calculations, compare it to historical or other baselines, and findpatterns faster than people can. However, human judgment is still needed for complex decisions.

The payback from decision management will appear in many ways. It will enable companies toallocate staff time, equipment and other resources more efficiently; capitalize on cross-sellingopportunities more effectively; pay less for goods and services; avoid some losses from fraud;provide higher levels of customer support; and perform better in many other respects.







Sample Vendors: Ayata; Bosch Software Innovations; FICO; Frontline Systems; Gurobi; IBM;InRule Technology; Microsoft; Progress Software; Red Hat; River Logic; Sandia NationalLaboratories; SAP; SAS; Whitestein Technologies

Recommended Reading: "Best Practices for Designing Event Models for Operational Intelligence"

"Commercial Operational Intelligence Platforms Are Coming to Market"



Digitized Processes

Analysis By: Daryl C. Plummer; Michele Cantara

Definition: Digitized processes are technology-enabled information and interactions betweenpeople within a value chain. They also reinvent the way businesses typically operate, by letting acustomer direct the flow rather than having the enterprise control it. Digitized processes may be assimple as online banking transactions, or as complex as reinventing the retail buying experience.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Hype about using digitized processes to realize adigital business strategy is rampant, prompting inclusion in the Hype Cycle report for the first time.Major vendors, such as IBM, have set their sights squarely on delivering digitized processes thatimprove customer engagement (see "IBM Smarter Process Expands to Transform BusinessOperations"). Additionally, 52% of CEOs say their organization is employing a digital businessstrategy, and many organizations plan to hire a chief digital officer in the near future (see "CEO andSenior Executive Survey 2013: Why CEOs Will Want a Digital Strategy This Year").

Automating processes is not new, but an automated process is not the same as a digitized process.Organizations have been automating processes for years by standardizing operations, such asonboarding new customers, to make their businesses more efficient. Automated processes allowthe business, in pursuit of efficiency, to exercise great control over the path a process takes andhow the customer interacts with the process. The Nexus of Forces (social, mobile, cloud and bigdata) disrupts an enterprise's ability to control customer-facing processes. While each of thesenexus forces has been disruptive in its own right, the confluence of nexus forces is driving a newway of working. It shifts process control from the enterprise to the customer, and allows customersto direct and control their engagement experiences (see "Examining the Depth of the Nexus ofForces"). The nexus changes the focus of business process management. While automatedprocesses focus on efficiencies as a business outcome, digitized processes, or digitized flows,focus on a different outcome — optimizing customer engagement. Digitized processes enable adigital business strategy, whereby business models must change to support a truly flexiblecustomer-driven process and experience. Digitized processes accentuate the changes needed in




customer engagement models, business operational constraints and partner ecosystems to allow amore enriched and self-directed customer experience.

Digitized processes involve digitizing all types of customer engagement interactions andinformation. This could include rules, events, collaborations, decisions and social interactions. As aresult, digitized processes can be highly industrialized, dynamic, unstructured and collaborative —at the same time. With digitized processes, customers and value chain partners can activelycollaborate, make decisions and direct their own activities. Digitized processes accommodate thebehavioral changes that foster extreme collaboration between businesses, customers and partners(see "Extreme Collaboration: A Nexus-Enabled Operating Model to Enable PerformanceBreakthroughs"). Notable examples of businesses that have exploited digitized processes includeLendingTree.com and Kiva.org. LendingTree and Kiva change the relationship of lenders to buyersby digitizing the lending process and placing the emphasis on customers' active participation in theprocess. As a result, these organizations have transformed their businesses through crowdsourcing,by getting customers to do some of the work that used to be carried out as business operationswithin the enterprise.

Savvy businesses that employ digitized processes set up a technology framework to enable,monitor and act upon these interactions, so that they lead to optimized engagement outcomes forthe customer and business outcomes from the enterprise. Coordination, rather than processcontrol, becomes the new focus of business process management and also the basis of newbusiness models. Partners within a value chain will digitize their processes, and many will beavailable in the cloud. Businesses will seek to broaden the coordination of digitized processesamong value chain participants. As a result, they will need to establish internal cloud servicesbrokerage (CSB) capabilities or obtain CSB capabilities from an external service provider.

User Advice:

■ Put customer-directed, digitized processes at the forefront of your business strategy.

■ Identify whether nexus-enabled digitized processes represent a business transformationopportunity for you, a threat from competitors or an inevitable evolution of your customer basethat you must address soon. Additionally, identify the architectural impact of nexustechnologies on the solutions and the people that support your business processes and thoseof your value chain partners.

■ Shake up your view of what constitutes a business process and what are the requirements fromprocess improvement efforts. A business process is no longer just a formal sequence of stepsstandardized for efficiency. Instead, a business process is a set of interactions and informationthat customers direct for their own benefit. In this context, the primary objective of processimprovement is to improve the customer engagement experience. Efficiency of the enterprise'sbusiness operations is a secondary process improvement objective.

■ Go beyond traditional approaches to business transformation and process re-engineering, andincorporate iteration, experimentation and crowdsourcing into your process reinvention efforts.Because digitized processes are customer directed and involve collaboration between valuechain partners, they are likely to be unstructured processes that execute differently each time




(see "Leverage Dynamic and Ad Hoc Processes Now for Business Adaptability"). Unstructuredprocesses don't lend themselves to traditional process re-engineering techniques.

■ Set your business process competency center on a mission to establish the acumen andtechnology framework to sustain the process intelligence, analytics and decisioning capabilitiesyou need to achieve profitability and competitive advantage from coordinating digitizedprocesses.

■ Don't expect to plan your way to success with digitized processes the first time. They aretransformational and often uncharted territory for businesses. Use an intelligent businessprocess management suite to rapidly iterate your technology framework to success.

■ If you plan to consume digitized processes as cloud services, develop the skills needed to bean internal CSB or factor into your sourcing strategy the need for a CSB that plays integrationand customization brokerage roles.

Business Impact: Digitized processes are most often seen in customer-facing scenarios. The majorimpact is to allow the customer to shoulder more of the burden of operating the business throughdigitally available processes. For example, when customers check in online for a flight or print a barcode boarding pass to their phone, the need is reduced for them to queue up at airports and waitfor ticket agents. Customer engagement is a low-hanging fruit. Social and mobile interactionpatterns that rely on the cloud and leverage information capabilities are among the easiest toenvision by business consumers, customers and partners. Buy- and sell-side relationships are keyplaces to look since the nexus patterns often draw human interactions into business interactionsthrough purchases. Nexus-enabled commerce interactions will allow retailers to reach out topotential buyers at the time most likely for them to be persuaded to make a purchase. Contextualdata about customer location and communities they participate in can let retailers finely targetadvertising and discounts to increase sales. The future of commerce — particularly for electronicgoods — is social/mobile delivered through the cloud and heavily backed by in-context information(that is, people buy because they see positive reviews from their friends and get a dataset onfeatures and pricing, for example, on their mobile devices). Savvy businesses will leverage digitizedprocesses to transform their business models.



Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: 1010data; Amazon; Bank of America Securities; Friendsurance; IBM; Kiva; KivaSystems; LendingTree

Recommended Reading: "Examining the Depth of the Nexus of Forces"

"The Nexus of Forces: Social, Mobile, Cloud and Information"

"Business Model Innovation: Unleashing Digital Value Everywhere"

"Social and the Nexus of Forces: Supporting People's Interactions"




"Cool Vendors 2012: The Nexus Alters Business and Consumer Strategies"

"Survey Analysis: Transform the Workforce to Keep Pace With Business and Technology Change"

Mobile BPM

Analysis By: Bruce Robertson; Janelle B. Hill

Definition: Mobile business process management (BPM) refers to work performed on a mobiledevice that requires process intelligence and/or orchestration. It is a market concept that is stillevolving.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Due to increased vendor emphasis in marketing andemerging user acceptance, Gartner is creating a new technology profile on the Hype Cycle curve totrack the hype around mobile BPM. Much work by mobile employees has been automated in manydifferent ways for years, but without a strong process context. Past approaches to engage mobileworkers have varied widely, ranging from custom development to simple collaboration andnotification via email or simplistic task-routing tools to — even worse — basic Web HTML orproprietary system interfaces that don't work well on mobile devices. BPM technology providers —most specifically, business process management suite (BPMS) and intelligent BPMS (iBPMS)vendors — are emphasizing mobile BPM conceptually as a way to provide a much stronger processcontext to mobile work, enabling a more varied set of employees (and in some cases,nonemployees) to engage with the process (meaning, the process context is preserved for them) —even from a mobile device. The capabilities of newer mobile devices and their network connectivityare indeed opening up a range of possibilities, all of which are still being explored. Thus triggered,we position mobile BPM pre-peak on the Hype Cycle curve.

Past mobile work approaches included devices that were dedicated or custom-built (for example, apackage delivery service's handhelds, or the handheld systems located at a rental car return), orlaptop PCs with customized applications. Now smartphones and tablets can be exploited — andthese (and their network connections) are BYOD (as in, owned by the worker rather than paid for bythe enterprise). This offers the possibilities to innovate working while mobile. Users can work withina managed process environment in native (or at least very carefully constructed), device-appropriate UIs (such as apps built with UI conventions of iOS and Android), leveraging device-specific capabilities, and connecting back at times to the overall process-orchestration engine forcontent, context and connections. Offline support remains a missing, yet desired, capability inexisting solutions-.

In addition, more sophisticated BPM technologies such as BPMSs and iBPMSs now leveragespecific mobile-context-aware features (such as location, direction, identity and payment options),as well as new content types (such as pictures, audio and video) — in some cases, significantlyaltering the original processes and even business models. Scanning checks or forms with a mobilesmartphone camera is just one example of this game-changing process change.

This specific case of mobile work is just one example of what the market is calling "mobile BPM."Combining mobile BPM with other capabilities (social BPM, cloud BPM and iBPMS) creates an




innovative new approach to process management we call "digitized processes." Mobile BPM hasthe potential to transform how work is performed by enabling the participant to drive the activity (forexample, intent-driven or goal-driven flows), rather than simply to participate in a predefined,server-orchestrated flow. Conversely, it also enables the worker to execute highly detailed processsteps with less initial training and planning, providing more real-time flexibility and effectiveness inservice delivery.

User Advice:

■ Don't assume that all BPM vendor claims about mobile BPM are equivalent (they're not).

■ Rethink the process from participants' perspectives to better understand the potential formobile BPM, as newer mobile device capabilities and connectivity options open a world ofpossible new process designs and business models.

■ Define your requirements for mobile BPM. Are Web UIs sufficient to enable remote access toserver-based functionality, such as task approvals? Does mobile include field workers withlimited connectivity — and thus a need for some kind of data synchronization?

Business Impact: The scope of mobile BPM's impact is huge: By 2014, 50% of processes thatinvolve human tasks will require near-real-time responses that are mobile-enabled (see "Predicts2013: Business Process Improvement Leaders Need to Stop Tackling the Tactical and GetStrategic").

Business impact varies from useful but almost mundane "keep the business running" cases (suchas enabling data entry, simple task prioritization in the field and extending existing applications tonew users) to "grow the business" and, indeed, "transform the business" cases. Simply givingmobile access can greatly improve cost-efficiency of work in the field or with customers directly.Given this range, we've chosen a benefit rating of high, or toward the more transformative side ofthe scale. Working mobile means having work capabilities that include those already automated inapplications — this is the mundane. At the other end, whole processes and business models aretransformed by enabling mobile work and how individuals can interact with a process — and thus,within a process context.

Case example: Insurance claims management provider Crawford & Co. (see www.cio.com/article/720153/How_One_Business_Uses_Social_Networking_and_BPM_to_Handle_Disasters) not onlyenabled its mobile employees but also crowdsourced additional claims adjustors in real time torespond to disaster situations. The company deployed Apple, Android and other apps to enablesign-up of short-term virtual adjusters. The company then enabled the adjusters to queue claimswork by disaster location, and to post claims, including video and pictures, to the overall systemdirectly in real time. The virtual adjusters often brought their own mobile devices (and thusnetworks). This process has transformed how effectively and successfully the work gets done,improved customer satisfaction, and shortened the time in which claims payments are made — notto mention making the work more cost-efficient.




http://www.cio.com/article/720153/How_One_Business_Uses_Social_Networking_and_BPM_to_Handle_Disasters





Sample Vendors: Appian; BizFlow; IBM; Pegasystems; PNMsoft

Recommended Reading: "What a BP Director Needs to Know About an iBPMS"

"BPM Suites Evolve Into Intelligent BPM Suites"

"Examining the Depth of the Nexus of Forces"

"Predicts 2013: Business Process Improvement Leaders Need to Stop Tackling the Tactical andGet Strategic"

"Using Pace Layers to Boost the Business Value From Your SAP ERP Investment"

"Hunting and Harvesting in a Digital World: The 2013 CIO Agenda"

"Business Model Innovation: Unleashing Digital Value Everywhere"

"The Future of Personal Financial Management Tools Demands Radical Changes to BankArchitecture"

Process Style: Case Management/Adaptive

Analysis By: Janelle B. Hill; Kenneth Chin

Definition: Case management is a complex and unstructured process style in which the workflowsare nonsequential, dependent and often cannot be predetermined at design time. Adaptive casemanagement is a subset of this style, in which case handling needs to be extremely flexible. Insteadof modeling the case flow, many adaptive case management solutions focus on modeling interimgoals or milestones as critical determinants of case progression toward the desired outcome.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: We are adding this profile to the Hype Cycle to raiseawareness of this unstructured process style. Case management is just one of many process styles.

Broader recognition of the complex nature of nonroutine work is driving market interest in softwaretechnologies that better enable unstructured processes in general, and case management stylespecifically. Although case management style applications have existed for years, casemanagement is now being adopted as a software design pattern more broadly, in industries beyondgovernment, legal, insurance and healthcare providers. New areas include mortgage origination,investment portfolio management, fraud detection, HR grievances, university admissions, grantsmanagement and customer complaints. Although these are all examples of case managementdomains, the degree of flexibility needed for progressing cases in each varies widely. Casemanagement style processes range from areas where the workflow and data interactions are fairlywell-understood and structured (such as car insurance claims), to highly diagnostic and investigatedcase domains that are far less structured and more data-driven. Those that are far less structuredand unpredictable fall under the hype of "adaptive case management." Investigative cases, asperhaps the most challenging cases, are increasingly described as needing "adaptive" or "dynamic"




case management. Many providers are randomly adopting this terminology, contributing a lot ofmarket hype that confuses buyers.

Many new providers are hyping their case management capabilities. For example, CRM vendors, asthe systems of record for customer data, are hyping their customer case handling capabilities. ERPvendor SAP has introduced a policing case management solution. Even traditional casemanagement application providers are trying to reinvent themselves in order to capitalize on thenew wave of interest in case management.

Intelligent business process management suite (iBPMS) providers are also contributing toheightened market awareness of this process style. iBPMSs differ from earlier, proceduralprogramming in the technologies used to advance a case. Newer products leverage declarativemodels, explicit rules, context metadata, content state, event driven architecture, analytics, andother techniques to advance the case. These techniques are especially critical for adaptive casemanagement scenarios. Furthermore, some providers have introduced case managementframeworks — commercial software frameworks for implementing a case management stylesolution.

User Advice: Identify process improvement projects that are case management style (see "TheCase for Case Management Scenarios"). Understand the resource dependencies of theseprocesses, the complexity of your business rules that affect the case workflow, and how muchprocess intelligence needs to be built into the automated solution to deliver the desired improvedoutcomes.

■ Distinguish potential case management domains by the complexity of the workflow and thecase data. Areas needing the highest degree of flexible workflow, heterogeneous content andthe ability to maintain multiple relationships between the data objects warrant more "adaptive"-style case solutions.

■ With a clear set of requirements for case management, evaluate business process managementsuite (BPMS)/iBPMS providers, case management framework providers, industry-specific casemanagement application providers, and professional services providers that offer casemanagement solution expertise.

Business Impact: Improving the transparency of casework is very valuable to many industries.Case management processes are complex, and better control with flexibility can improve profitlevels and user satisfaction, as well as provide an audit trail for compliance and other regulatoryoversight requirements.




Sample Vendors: Adobe; Amdocs; Appian; EMC Documentum; IBM (FileNet); Image ProcessDesign; Isis Papyrus; K2; Kana; Kofax (Singularity); MicroPact; Microsoft (Microsoft Dynamics




CRM); OpenText; Oracle (Siebel); Pegasystems; Perceptive Software; Pitney Bowes (Software);salesforce.com; SAP

Recommended Reading: "The Case for Case Management Scenarios"

"Leverage Dynamic and Ad Hoc Processes Now for Business Adaptability"

"Expand Your BPM Horizons by Exploring Unstructured Processes"


Analysis By: Betsy Burton

Definition: Business capability modeling is a technique for representing the ways in whichenterprises combine resources, competencies, information, processes and their environments todeliver consistent value to customers. Business capability models are one way to represent thefuture-state capabilities of the business, as well as provide a platform for illustrating how currentcapabilities and business assets (people, processes, information and technologies) may need tochange in response to strategic challenges and opportunities.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The concept of expressing business capabilities andbusiness capability modeling is not new. In fact, business academics and practitioners have beentalking about modeling business capabilities for years. As a result, there are many definitions.However, this approach is being adopted by enterprise architects who are proactively trying tomature their enterprise architecture (EA) efforts to engage business leaders (see "BusinessCapability Modeling Helps Mercy Execute on Business Transformation").

Over the past three years, Gartner has engaged with over 650 clients in inquiries, one-on-ones andworkshops on leveraging business capability modeling as the common platform to inform and drivedecision making between business and IT executives. For this reason, we position the businesscapability profile as just below the Peak of Inflated Expectations. At Gartner's EA 2013 Summits inthe U.S. and in Europe, more than 50% of the more than 400 combined attendees of the businesscapability presentation raised their hands, acknowledging that they are working on developing orsupporting business capability models within their organization today. Although this was a biasedgroup, considering the attendees were at a session on business capability modeling, it doesrepresent a significant group that is working on business capability modeling. We, therefore, put themarket penetration in the range of 20% to 50%, with the view that the current overall marketpenetration is closer to 20%.

User Advice: It is essential that organizations create a future-state business anchor model as partof the development of the business outcome statement and enterprise context (see "Define theBusiness Outcome Statement to Guide Enterprise Architecture Efforts"). EA practitioners shouldconsider using business capability modeling as a technique for representing their organizations'future-state anchor models (see "Eight Business Capability Modeling Best Practices") along withother possible models (such as business process, operating and functional). Once used torepresent a future-state root anchor model, business capabilities can be used as a platform forcreating both diagnostic and actionable deliverables (see "Business Capability Modeling Helps




Mercy Execute on Business Transformation"). Deeper, detailed business capability models may beused to illustrate specific decisions within information, business, solution and technologyarchitecture viewpoints (see "Scenario Toolkit: Business-Outcome-Driven EA Addresses theDisruption of Cloud").

Business Impact: The benefit of this business capability modeling is "high," because it enablesbusiness and IT strategic planners to engage in business planning and understand the impact ofthese decisions on business and IT. The value of the modeling is to first and foremost focus on andexplore business direction and plans. It can also be used to help focus and illustrate investmentdecisions. Then, they can link these decisions to architectural changes. Another equally importantbenefit is to enable the EA practitioners to have objective discussions about business capabilitieswithout drilling down into technology, people, processes and information details. Drilling down intodetails too early can derail discussions about business direction and strategy, as well asorganizational optimization.




Recommended Reading: "Business Capability Modeling Brings Clarity and Insight to Strategy andExecution"

"Eight Business Capability Modeling Best Practices Enhance Business and IT Collaboration"

"Starter Kit: Business Capability Modeling Workshop"

"Toolkit: Business Capability Modeling Starter Kits for Multiple Industries"

"Use Business Capability Modeling to Illustrate Strategic Business Priorities"

"To Assess the Impact of Change, Connect Process Models With Business Capability Models"

Business Process Governance


Definition: Business process governance outlines the people, processes and policies accountableand responsible for process change and improvement. "People" refers to those who definebusiness process management (BPM) needs and fund projects; "processes" describe howgovernance decisions are made; and "policies" provide transparent guidelines and criteria formaking those decisions. This ensures that process improvement helps the organization achieve itsgoals by establishing visibility and accountability for end-to-end process performance.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Business process governance appeared last year as anew, separate entry in the Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, and has seen a modestincrease this year. Organizations continue to realize the importance of business process




governance to overall BPM success, and are investing time to set up the elements of a governanceframework (such as process ownership, business process competency center [BPCC], projectmanagement office [PMO], executive steering committee and decision frameworks to support BPMprojects and programs). This is reflected by a modest increase in the business process governanceentry toward the Hype Cycle peak (from 20% pre-peak to 15% pre-peak).

This increase is supported by five key pieces of evidence:

■ Recent ITScore for BPM maturity assessment results indicate a 9% increase in the number oforganizations that have achieved Level 3 BPM maturity, which reflects the growing number ofbusiness process directors who are recognizing the importance of establishing businessprocess governance in their organizations.

■ The ITScore for BPM maturity assessment results also show an increase in the average maturityrating for governance from 2.4 in July 2011 to 2.6 in December 2012.

■ Organizations that completed the ITScore for BPM and have established a BPCC scored anaverage of 2.9 for governance, compared with organizations without a BPCC that scored amere 2.5 for governance — this is strong evidence of the extent to which a BPCC increasesmaturity in business process governance.

■ Despite this result, the number of organizations that have set up a BPCC does not appear tohave changed. It remains at 34% (comparing data from the Gartner BPM Adoption Surveyconducted in September 2010 [n = 593] with recent data from the Gartner BPM AdoptionSurvey conducted in June 2012 [n = 557]).

■ Adoption of single process ownership for a single process targeted by BPM has increasedslightly from 47% in 2010 to 50% in 2012 (again, comparing data from the Gartner BPMAdoption Survey conducted in September 2010 [n = 593] with recent data from the GartnerBPM Adoption Survey conducted in June 2012 [n = 557]).

Challenges persist in making business process governance work because there is no "one size fitsall" solution, and organizations are constantly debating how to make business process governancework in the context, organizational structure and culture of their enterprise. However, businessprocess directors are beginning to realize the benefits of establishing a BPM team that collaborateswith enterprise architecture (EA), enterprise information management (EIM) and projectmanagement (PM) groups to leverage natural synergies and prevent the BPCC from becoming justanother siloed competency center. This will help business process governance reach the HypeCycle peak, because these synergies will deliver better BPM project prioritization as well as animproved understanding of process architecture and process performance.

Ultimately, in the long term, organizations must transform their culture from functional silos to amore process-oriented mindset, where the business takes increasing responsibility for improvingbusiness processes to collaborate across previous silos and drive desired business outcomes.However, this will take time, due to natural resistance to changes in how people work, and also dueto organizational politics.




As business process directors seek to establish a more formal BPM program, they realize that muchmore is required, and currently 30% of BPM practitioners (who participated in the Gartner 2012BPM Adoption Survey) cite business process governance as a top skill that they lack. For example,effective business process governance requires establishing a BPCC (in collaboration with other keygroups, such as EA, EIM and PM) and setting up process ownership to ensure accountability forimproving end-to-end process performance and driving strategic business outcomes. Once there isgreater BPCC adoption and more business process owners throughout organizations, businessprocess governance will peak on the Hype Cycle, and then slide into the Trough of Disillusionmentas organizations struggle to make these mechanisms truly effective.

User Advice:

■ Implement a BPCC to provide the necessary services and resources (including methodologyand training) to support multiple, ongoing BPM initiatives.

■ Set up decision frameworks to ensure that BPM programs deliver business value, as well as toprioritize BPM projects and process change requests, respectively. Each decision frameworkshould identify the relevant actions, decisions and deliverables to be made, and assignaccountability/responsibility for each action/decision/deliverable to the relevant stakeholder.

■ Establish an effective business process owner role for each end-to-end, cross-boundarybusiness process, with clearly defined responsibilities and performance targets. Each processowner should be accountable for the performance of an end-to-end, cross-boundary process,and have sufficient credibility and authority to dismiss any challenges to process-performance-related decisions. To achieve this, he or she should work with the business process director toagree on suitable metrics to measure and improve process performance.

■ Delegate some responsibility for improving process performance to subprocess owners, andalso to owners of activities that significantly contribute to the performance of an end-to-end,cross-boundary process.

■ Provide incentives for users to embrace BPM by including process-related activities in theirperformance objectives.

Business Impact: BPM projects must support strategic business outcomes to demonstratebusiness value; otherwise, people will question their value. Business process governance helps intwo ways:

■ First, it helps by providing clear criteria to decide which BPM projects and process changesshould take priority because they deliver the greatest potential impact on businessperformance. One way this can happen is for the BPCC and PMO to merge into an enterprisePMO that treats all BPM projects as business projects, and ensures that any approved projectcontributes to driving strategic business outcomes.

■ Second, business process governance also supports the achievement of strategic businessoutcomes by establishing visibility and accountability for the performance of key coreprocesses to ensure that process outcomes contribute to business outcomes, and that theorganization ultimately succeeds in executing its business strategy.







Sample Vendors: iGrafx; IBM; Pegasystems; QPR Software; Software AG

Recommended Reading: "Three Best Practices to Avoid Ineffective Process Ownership DamagingYour Business Performance"

"Four Best Practices for Establishing Effective Business Process Governance"

"What the Business Process Director Needs to Know About Business Intelligence"

"Best Practices and Pitfalls for Business Process Competency Center Success"

"CIOs Should Champion the Use of a Business Transformation Office When Faced withFundamental Business Change"


Analysis By: W. Roy Schulte; Teresa Jones

Definition: The term "intelligent business operations" refers to a style of work in which operationalintelligence technologies are integrated into the transactional systems and physical operations thatrun a business. Operational intelligence technologies include monitoring and alerting tools thatenhance situation awareness; decision management tools, such as rule engines and predictive andprescriptive analytics, that enable better decisions; and workflow and process orchestration enginesthat coordinate adaptable and collaborative processes.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The concept of intelligent business operations isnearing the Peak of Inflated Expectations. It appears likely to be adopted in a majority ofdevelopment projects for large, new operational systems within five years — which would put it onthe Plateau of Productivity by 2018.

Industry observers and vendors use many labels for this concept, including IBM's "SmarterProcess" and Tibco Software's "two-second advantage." Companies are able to make theiroperations more intelligent because of the vast increase in available real-time data and thedecreasing cost of computers, memory, mobile devices, sensors and communication networks.Vendors have steadily improved the enabling technology in areas including rule management,adaptive case management, predictive analytics, optimization, business dashboards, businessactivity monitoring, complex-event processing, data discovery and other technologies. New kinds ofsoftware that are intended to facilitate the implementation of intelligent business operations, notablyincluding intelligent business process management suites and operational intelligence platforms,have recently come to market (see "Magic Quadrant for Intelligent Business Process ManagementSuites" and "Commercial Operational Intelligence Platforms Are Coming to Market").




The concept of intelligent business operations is part of a broader movement toward increased useof analytics in business. It is directed specifically at the day-to-day and minute-to-minuteoperational decisions made in the course of the processes that run a business, in contrast to themore traditional, offline use of business intelligence and analytics to make tactical and strategicdecisions. Intelligent business operations apply to information-centric business activities, such asWeb-based retailing and back-office banking operations, and to operational technology (OT)activities. OT is hardware and software that detects or causes a change, through the directmonitoring and/or control of physical devices, processes and events in an enterprise. OT usessensors to detect presence (for example, via RFID tags), location (for example, via GPS units),temperature, vibration and other data. It uses actuators to run machines, dispense medicine andcontrol other devices. One of the primary techniques employed in intelligent business operations isto combine information from the Internet of Things with business applications to support holistic,integrated IT/OT approaches to business.

User Advice: Analysts and architects should work with business managers and subject matterexperts to develop an understanding of their processes and the decisions that will be made in thecourse of their operations. The observe, orient, decide and act (OODA) loop is a good framework touse to analyze operations:

■ If an operation requires enhanced situation awareness, analysts and developers should applysome form of event management technology to implement real-time or near-real-timemonitoring (observe and orient).

■ If the operation requires faster, better or more consistent decisions, analysts and developersshould use decision management technologies such as rule engines, or predictive orprescriptive analytics (decide).

■ If the operation requires flexible and better coordinated processes, analysts and developersshould employ business process management (BPM) flow management tools that supportadaptive case management and collaboration. In some cases, the response to a situationshould be automated (the act phase may be manual or automated).

Where possible, companies should use real-time intelligence to detect leading indicators that warnof situations before they materialize, so that people or systems can be proactive. Where this is notpossible, real-time intelligence can still improve the outcome by reducing the lag between eventsand responses. As companies ramp up the intelligence of their business operations, they shouldcontinue to support and evolve their offline strategic and tactical business intelligence, performancemanagement and advanced analytics programs.

Organizations that pursue the BPM approach to implementing systems are among the mostsuccessful adopters of intelligent business operations. The BPM discipline encourages analysts toidentify where operational intelligence tools should be used, and to define the relevant goals,constraints, business processes, key performance indicators, alerts, visual displays, business rules,patterns and responses.

Business Impact: The impact of intelligent business operations is immediately apparent tobusiness people because it changes the way they do their jobs in obvious ways. The most dramaticchange is an increase in situation awareness. Individual contributors and managers can see how the




company is running, and what is happening in its processes and external environment. Operationaldecisions are better informed, more precise and consistent, and can be made more quickly. Thelevel of collaboration between people within a department or in separate business units orcompanies is improved. The net result is that companies allocate staff time, equipment and otherresources more efficiently; capitalize on cross-selling opportunities more effectively; pay less forgoods and services; avoid some losses from fraud; provide higher levels of customer service; andperform better in many other respects.

Intelligence in business operations is relative, not a binary choice of unintelligent versus intelligent.Companies will gradually ramp up the level of intelligence in their operations over many years.Thousands of vendors support some aspects of intelligent business operations. Those listed beloware just examples of vendors that have focused on this concept and provide products that supportmultiple aspects of it.




Sample Vendors: Access Intelligence; Aha Software; Appian; Aurea; Axway; Bosch SoftwareInnovations; C3global; Cordys; Fujitsu; IBM; Intelligent InSites; JackBe; Kofax; Lavastorm Analytics;Microsoft; OpenText; Oracle; Oversight Systems; Pegasystems; Provenir; Rockshore; SAP (Sybase);Software AG; Splunk; Systar; Tibco Software; Vitria; WestGlobal; Whitestein

Recommended Reading: "Commercial Operational Intelligence Platforms Are Coming to Market"




bpmPaaS

Analysis By: Michele Cantara

Definition: The term "business process management PaaS (bpmPaaS)" refers to the delivery ofBPM platform capabilities as a cloud service by a service provider. A BPM platform minimallyincludes:

■ A graphical business process and/or rule modeling capability

■ A process registry/repository to handle the modeling metadata

■ A process execution, and either a state management engine and/or a rule engine

Other BPM-enabling technologies (BPMTs), such as ABPD, BAM, BI, CEP, optimization andsimulation, may also be part of the platform, but they are not required.




Position and Adoption Speed Justification: bpmPaaS is "middleware as a service" thatcustomers use to build, run, manage and improve their business processes. Business processesare the actual work of a single organization or multiple organizations, and BPM technologies helpmanage that work. Business processes include formally defined activities and informal workpractices. Additionally, business processes may involve human and application activities, and theymay be structured or unstructured.

bpmPaaS is often confused with cloud-enabled BPM (CE-BPM) platforms. bpmPaaS refers to thedelivery of BPM technology functionality as a service by a cloud service provider. In contrast, CE-BPM refers to a cloud-enabled BPM product. bpmPaaS and CE-BPM may use the exact sametechnology. The only difference is in the delivery model. bpmPaaS is delivered as a service, and isdirectly consumed as a service. CE-BPM is delivered as a product, and is then used to provide apublic or private cloud service by an external service provider (ESP) or an internal IT organization(see "Platform as a Service: Definition, Taxonomy and Vendor Landscape, 2013").

Ninety-six percent of organizations surveyed by Gartner in November 2012 indicated that the PaaScapabilities within a software as a service (SaaS) offering were key considerations in their decisionto purchase SaaS. The inability to customize processes is an issue for buyers. Nearly one-third oforganizations that use SaaS see limited customization as a problem, and a major reason for notusing business process as a service includes a lack of process customization to meet business andindustry requirements. Ultimately, bpmPaaS is important to SaaS (and also to business process asa service), since many customers want to be able to customize their applications and processes inthe cloud.

Most new BPM software vendors offer bpmPaaS. For example, three out the five vendors featuredin "Cool Vendors in Business Process Management, 2013" offered their software as bpmPaaS, andnew entrants to the BPM software market always offer bpmPaaS, although they may not offer anon-premises product. Additionally, some vendors are seeing marked shifts in their revenue mix, withmore than 40% of their revenue coming from bpmPaaS in recent quarters (see Virginia Business'"Flying High" for more). Lastly, major vendors, such as Fujitsu (see Fujitsu's "Fujitsu Acquires CloudService Provider, RunMyProcess"), have acquired bpmPaaS vendors to bolster their BPMcapabilities. BizFlow (formerly HandySoft) introduced a bpmPaaS capability this year, and IBMannounced that BPM 8.5 in the Smart Cloud at IBM Impact 2013 (see "IBM Smarter ProcessExpands to Transform Business Operations").

Because of the importance of process customization in the cloud, and because business processmanagement suite (BPMS) vendors have reported higher growth in bpmPaaS versus on-premisessales, we have moved this entry further toward the peak of the Hype Cycle curve. Similarly,penetration has been expanded to 20% to 50% this year to reflect that most buyers now requireBPM software vendors to have bpmPaaS capabilities, even if the buyer does not intend toimmediately take advantage of it (see "What IT Leaders Need to Know About bpmPaas and Cloud-Enabled BPM Platforms").

Buyers are using bpmPaaS:

■ In pilot projects to build a business case for on-premises BPM solutions


http://www.virginiabusiness.com/index.php/news/article/flying-high/318223

http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2013/20130408-01.html

http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2013/20130408-01.html



■ In development and test environments to avoid additional capital expenditures on software andhardware

■ As an elastic deployment option to address spiky and unpredictable demand

■ For global deployments involving a hybrid of on-premises BPM in regions with establishedinfrastructure and bpmPaaS in emerging economies

■ To obtain an end-to-end view of business processes spanning partners and suppliers, as wellas multiple cloud services

bpmPaaS is being used for both differentiating and nondifferentiating processes by large andmidsize enterprises. For example, the U.S. Department of Education is now using bpmPaaS to buildand manage process-based solutions that operate in the cloud (see Government Contracting NewWire's "Appian Application Granted ATO by Dept. of Education").

The buying power of business stakeholders has caused a shift in the type of processes used withbpmPaaS. While IT buyers use high-control bpmPaaS for multistep process compositions andworkflow in complex cross-boundary processes, business stakeholders are turning to lighter-weight, high-productivity bpmPaaS to support decisioning, adaptive case management, socialBPM, collaboration and situational applications (see "Productivity vs. Control: Cloud ApplicationPlatforms Must Split to Win"; note: some of the documents referenced in this research have beenarchived; their content may not reflect current conditions). bpmPaaS offerings (such as KofaxTotalAgility) based on a Microsoft platform are especially popular, due to the ubiquity of MicrosoftSharePoint.

Service providers (such as Genpact and Capgemini) incorporate bpmPaaS into their businessprocess outsourcing (BPO) offerings so that they can deliver differentiated, flexible businessprocesses using a one-to-many, process-centric, model-driven platform that goes beyond thelimited application extensions available in process-enhancing technology and services (PETS; see"How to Evaluate Process Agility and Visibility in Cloud Business Process Services"). Cloud servicebrokerages (CSBs), such as Capgemini Immediate, Talend and Revevol, use bpmPaaS in their CSBintegration and customization roles to develop process-centric, model-driven applications that linkmultiple cloud services together (see "What Types of Model-Driven Applications Are MostAppropriate for a High Pace of Process Change?").

User Advice:

■ Take advantage of BPMS products that are available via bpmPaaS offerings for your BPM pilotprojects. This approach can give you some quick wins that can help build a business case foran on-premises solution or more widespread use of the bpmPaaS approach.

■ If you are evaluating bpmPaaS as an option for hybrid deployment, then limit your search tothose vendors that offer both bpmPaaS and CE-BPM, and use the same technology and thesame code base. This will help minimize testing efforts and simplify maintenance.

■ Beware of vendor lock-in. Understand how easy it will be to move your process artifacts fromone bpmPaaS provider to another.


http://www.govconwire.com/2010/08/appian-application-granted-ato-by-dept-of-education



■ Understand that not all bpmPaaS is equally elastic. Only half of the vendors offering bpmPaaSfeature an automated mechanism for handling elasticity. The other half of the vendors requirethe customer to provide some sort of advance notification to increase or decrease servicecapacity.

■ Plan your budget with the understanding that, even when "elasticity" is automated, it's usuallyonly automated to increase, rather than decrease. As a result, your payments may stay thesame, even though your consumption decreases.

■ As with many PaaS offerings, bpmPaaS vendors may require minimum terms of service, usually12 months. Early terminations result in the forfeiture of the remaining contract value. Factor thecontract length into your total-cost-of-ownership analysis.

Business Impact: bpmPaaS will produce high benefits to businesses, particularly to midmarketcompanies that previously could not afford or lacked the bandwidth to support on-premises BPMsolutions. bpmPaaS will also help larger enterprises move as much application infrastructure aspossible into the cloud to avoid the capital expense of deploying it on premises. As a result, moreorganizations can use these tools to improve business processes by making them visible to allprocess stakeholders. This trend will be further strengthened by the expansion of enterprise valuechains involving multiple partners. Enterprises will need to manage end-to-end business processesacross multiple organizations in the value chain. These cross-enterprise processes have no singlelocation and no real requirement for on-premises BPM. As a result, bpmPaaS is a more naturaloption for these efforts.

bpmPaaS vendors typically do not offer infrastructure as a service (IaaS), but when they do, theyare more likely to be a traditional IT services provider already (for example IBM and Fujitsu).However, most software vendors that offer bpmPaaS partner with an ESP for hosting. The mostcommon hosting partners are Amazon, followed by Windows Azure and Rackspace. bpmPaaS isalso spurring the development of CSBs, such as Capgemini Immediate, which hosts a bpmPaaS(Cordys), provides custom application development services through its consulting arm and alsoprovides custom managed services for ongoing support of the solution. In this way, bpmPaaS willhelp reshape the IT service value chain with regards to application and business process services.




Sample Vendors: Adeptia; Appian; AppPoint Software Solutions; AuraPortal; BizFlow; BP Logix;Cordys; Fujitsu; IBM (Blueworks Live); Integrify; Interneer; Knowesia; Pegasystems; PNMsoft;Questetra; RunMyProcess; Software AG; Sparkling Logic; Tibco Software; Vitria; XMPro

Recommended Reading: "What IT Leaders Need to Know About bpmPaas and Cloud-EnabledBPM Platforms"

"Now Is the Time for Mainstream IT Organizations to Understand PaaS"




"Gartner Position: BPM Is Critical for the Adoption of Applications and Business Processes in theCloud"


"Predicts 2013: Platform as a Service Takes on More IT Responsibilities"

"Four Best Practices for Customization Brokerage of Business Processes in the Cloud"

"Platform as a Service: Definition, Taxonomy and Vendor Landscape, 2013"


Analysis By: Betsy Burton

Definition: Gartner defines "enterprise business architecture" (often called "business architecture")as the EA activities that create deliverables to guide people, process and organizational change inresponse to disruptive forces and toward desired business outcomes.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Business architecture is nearing the Peak of InflatedExpectations, as evidenced by:

■ Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo conference (Orlando 2012) saw more than 2,000 people attendGartner's presentation, "Business Architecture: Uniting Business and IT."

■ A Gartner webinar (April 2013) hosted over 430 attendees.

■ Since early 2012, Gartner's EA research team has taken more than 180 client inquiries fromclients pursuing business architecture as part of their overall EA efforts.

Some consultancies and technology providers have recently begun using the term "businessarchitecture" as if it's something separate from, rather than a part of, enterprise architecture.

Business architecture ensures that implications of the business direction (strategy and operations)are clearly articulated, and that changes and enhancements to business functions, processes,financials/investments, people and organizational structure are fully optimized in support of thebusiness strategy. Business architecture describes and guides the aspects of how the businessneeds to change or evolve to reach the overall business future state. This guidance may come in theform of deliverables such as models, road maps, principles, process maps and business outcomestatements. This is a focus, or viewpoint, of EA and is not a separate endeavor.

During client inquiries, the two major reasons clients cite for an interest in business architecture arethe need to better integrate and align the business and IT, and the need to demonstrate thebusiness value and impact from EA efforts. The challenge is that, although the desire and hype ishigh, the tools and practices of supporting business architecture are fairly immature.

A 2013 Gartner webinar survey (n = 180) found that 74% of organizations were either Level 1 orLevel 2 maturity. For this reason, we place the time to maturity in the range of five to 10 years, with




the view that maturity of business architecture is much closer to the 10-year side of that range. Tohelp them gain traction and support of business leaders, we are finding that organizations areexperimenting and trying different approaches, including business capability modeling, processmodeling, business ecosystem modeling and job role categories (see "Business CapabilityModeling Helps Mercy Execute on Business Transformation").

User Advice: Start by taking a high-level, broad approach to business architecture to gain a holisticunderstanding of the enterprise and its environment. In subsequent iterations, go deeper into morespecific business areas, based on the need (see "How to Develop Enterprise BusinessArchitecture"). This may include developing specific principles and models within a businessarchitecture and its dimensions (people, organization, processes and financials).

■ Determine enterprise demand for business architecture work, and use this to properly scopeand prioritize the overall EA effort, including business architecture development (see "Toolkit:Determine Your Business Vision for EA"). Also, ensure that you have and/or are focused ongaining business sponsorships and support.

■ Prioritize and iterate time-segmented efforts as needed to match business-strategy-drivenchange requirements.

■ Do not underestimate the effort needed to involve key business (not IT) stakeholders in the work(see "Six Best Practices for Enterprise Business Architecture").

Business Impact: To effectively manage and enable business change and transformation,organizations must consider expanding their enterprise architecture to include businessarchitecture. Focusing on supporting business architecture as part of an overall EA effort can helpimmediately in more effectively engaging the business, demonstrating business value, and aligningbusiness and IT efforts.

If supported as an integral part of EA, business architecture can be used by the business and IT toensure that business capabilities, processes, financials, people and organizational structure are fullyoptimized, along with information and technology, in support of the business strategy.




Sample Vendors: Accelare; Mega; OpenText

Recommended Reading: "Define the Business Outcome Statement to Guide EnterpriseArchitecture Efforts"

"Scenario Toolkit: Using EA to Support Business Transformation"

"Toolkit: Assess Your Ability to Execute Business Strategy"

"Enterprise Architecture Leaders Focus On Business Impact"




Intelligent Business Process Management Suite

Analysis By: Teresa Jones; W. Roy Schulte

Definition: An intelligent business process management suite (iBPMS) is an integrated set oftechnologies that support built-in analytics, complex-event processing and knowledge workercollaboration. It brings together different forms of intelligence, while leveraging business-usablemobile and cloud platforms.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: While the iBPMS is still a young concept, numerousparallel forces are creating good uptake; therefore, we've moved this technology firmly into thePeak of Inflated Expectations this year. Although the iBPMS only appeared on the Hype Cycle in2012, the contributing forces of process intelligence, event processing and social BPM have beenthere a while. An iBPMS encompasses the integration of real-time and on-demand analytics(combining big data for intelligence and complex-event processing for pattern recognition), togetherwith business rules; it also requires social, process-centric collaboration, allowing potential processcontext adjustments, thereby permitting processes to be more agile. This combination of factorssupports intelligent business operations (IBO) (see "The Trend Toward Intelligent BusinessOperations"). To emphasize the point, innovative intelligent processes with stronger, differentiating,business outcomes are rolling out much faster than initially expected (see "BPM Suites Evolve IntoIntelligent BPM Suites"), although examples of such intelligent business processes are still far fromthe norm today.

User Advice: Business professionals now have a process platform in which they can have moredirect control if they need to leverage change quickly. These processes not only help visualizebusiness results, but also give notifications on patterns that are out of the norm. In extreme cases,the processes can suggest change and/or make the change with predefined constraints. Thetechnology is no longer the constraint, but is now how fast the human element can adapt tobusiness change and progress toward desired outcomes.

Business Impact: The application of embedded intelligence in agile processes gives businessprofessionals a strong weapon in their arsenal that already includes applications and services. Thedifference here is that the iBPMS can be used to create differentiation around brittle best practiceswhile reaching new opportunities with an intelligent, flexible and visually adjustable set of processesthat can be outcome-driven and/or key performance indicator minimally linked.




Sample Vendors: Appian; Bosch; Cordys; IBM; OpenText (Metastorm); Oracle; Pegasystems;PNMsoft; Software AG; Tibco Software; Vitria Technology; Whitestein Technologies

Recommended Reading: "The Trend Toward Intelligent Business Operations"

"Embedded Analytics Will Impact Business Application and BI Strategy"




"Selection Criteria Details for Intelligent Business Process Management Suites"



Automated Business Process Discovery


Definition: Automated business process discovery (ABPD) is the application of software tools tounderstand existing computerized business processes. ABPD techniques (also referred to asprocess mining) start from event logs (audit trails, messages, transactions, databases and so forth),and try to discover patterns to fit a process model from the information obtained from the events. Amajor benefit of ABPD is process discovery across the "white space," the process knowledge gapthat exists between departments and functions, and at the edges of processes.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: ABPD, a complementary approach to traditionalbusiness process modeling, has moved slightly up the Hype Cycle this year, as we are seeingincreasing interest in the topic, especially in academic circles (for example, Process Mining Camp2013, held in Eindhoven, Netherlands, in May, had around 100 attendees). ABPD overcomes manyof business process modeling's shortcomings, and can create a business process model in afraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost from the traditional way. Traditional businessprocess modeling can be a costly and time-consuming process that is vulnerable to humaninterpretation, lack of business knowledge and lack of objective validation techniques.

By observing the details of how processes are executed in the supporting technology, ABPD usesunstructured, event-level data to automatically build process definitions and models, and to exploreprocess variations. Because of the quantitative nature of this data, the derived process modelsenable rich and interactive analysis.

The underlying techniques are strong enough so that users don't have to specify a process model;it is created from scratch by pattern recognition (some tools can even create Business ModelProcess and Notation [BPMN] models). Moreover, ABPD delivers information on bottlenecks,variances, root causes and the distribution of the process instances, thus enabling meaningfulsimulation. It's all about capturing what has happened in a real-life process. ABPD is a form ofprocess optimization, and can also be used to ensure compliance with a specific process.

Of course, ABPD does not capture informal human tasks that are not automated and representedas events in an audit trail or transaction log. This is why ABPD is best combined with techniquesfrom social business process management (BPM) and more traditional business process analysis.However, ABPD accelerates process discovery and identifies previously unseen process patterns.Today's ABPD tools are starting to support social interactions and collaboration, adding socialnetwork analysis to the picture (for example, so that it is possible to see who interacted with whomwithin a process).

Business process analysts must still conduct interviews to capture informal work practices, butorganizations no longer need to spend as much time using interviews to discover the implicit




processes previously hidden in automated solutions. In general, BPM practitioners recognize thatthere are several ways for this discovery process to go wrong. Interviewers need a lot of experiencewith the modeling methodology, especially in the areas being modeled. Sending several consultantsinto an organization to capture a certain process will likely result in more models than consultants.Furthermore, people don't always correctly tell interviewers what they do — they will argue amongthemselves, oversimplify to defend their own process knowledge or overstate the complexity of theprocess to exaggerate their own importance. These problems can be addressed by usingparticipant observer techniques, such as contextual inquiry, but it is often difficult to find a sufficientnumber of practitioners who are trained in these techniques. This recognition drives the adoption ofABPD in the BPM market.

Because many traditional BPM-enabling technology (BPMT) vendors (such as business processmanagement suite [BPMS] or intelligent BPMS [iBPMS] providers) are not yet aware of theavailability of ABPD technology, most have not yet embraced the strength of the technology.However, in the new iBPMS market, we are starting to see ABPD tools being incorporated, as wellas in-line ABPD, which uses the output events from the BPMS to redesign the process models thatare executed using the iBPMS. The few vendors that have started to use this technology arebecoming more visible, but interest has not as yet reached the peak of hype.

User Advice: Consider using ABPD in combination with traditional interviews, as well as othersocial BPM techniques, to capture business processes — especially where compliance andstandardization are important. This will result in more complete business process models, and willsave time when designing "to be" process models. Assess the objectives of your organization'sbusiness process models, and align the right ABPD techniques and supporting tools to theseobjectives. ABPD functionality in a BPS tool has other capabilities than the same functionality in acomplex-event processing tool. Apply ABPD to discover exceptions within your businessprocesses, and use process mining to find their causes. Many avoidable costs are tied to theseexceptions. Start exploring ABPD in a simple and limited project as a quick, low-risk, round-tripbusiness process improvement initiative.

Business Impact: ABPD is a tool worth considering to understand the dynamics of businessprocesses, and to improve the quality of process models. ABPD and the traditional businessprocess discovery are, in many ways, complementary. Furthermore, it is easy to get started andquickly deliver results with low risk, because ABPD doesn't affect the day-to-day running ofsystems (although there is a need to ensure that the right log files are accessible). As with all goodBPM initiatives, process architects and analysts should first investigate the processes that are mostvaluable to the organization.



Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: BeyondCore; Celonis; Cordys; Deloitte; Fluxicon; Fujitsu; Inc.; OpenConnect;OpenSpan; Perceptive Software; QPR Software; Software AG; StereoLOGIC; Verint Systems




Recommended Reading: "Automated Business Process Discovery Improves BPM Outcomes"

"Understand How ABPD Can Help Improve Business Processes"

"Leverage Automated Business Process Discovery for Business Benefits"

"Identify ABPD's Business Benefits and Understand Vendor Strengths"


Analysis By: Michael Maoz

Definition: Business process management (BPM) for customer service uses business rules andoptimization technologies to orchestrate and optimize customer service processes acrossinteractions and channels such as telephone and the Web, as well as between departments andteams. To achieve this, service process optimization technologies enable organizations tosystematically suggest (then institute) continuous process improvements, which increase theefficiency and effectiveness of the servicing department.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The desire for service enhancement, combined withfunctional omissions from large customer service suite vendors, is accelerating the adoption ofthese best-of-breed niche technologies. Many of the established service process optimizationtechnologies will eventually be absorbed into megasuite vendors' portfolios; however, futureinnovation will ensure the emergence of technologies that will help fuel this constantly evolvingmarket.

User Advice: Leading-edge organizations should explore these technologies to improve theirestablished customer service investments, especially as they support multiple channels; however,organizations need to be wary of vendor capabilities and inflated ROI predictions. There are multipleapproaches to business process deployment. Companies need to carefully examine the referencesprovided by vendors to understand the trade-offs between adopting a BPM approach to processmodeling versus establishing the practices of writing procedures and developing workflows. Eachapproach has its benefits, and the choice lies largely in the type of process to be supported.

Business Impact: BPM for customer service and support provides a deeper understanding ofprevious customer contacts and underlying processes to enhance current and future interactions byunderstanding the customer's intent and the intent of the business.



Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: Avaya; ClickFox; Genesys; IBM (SPSS); Interactive Intelligence; Nice Systems;Pegasystems; SAP

Recommended Reading: "Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center"




"Toolkit for Developing a Pace-Layered Approach to CRM Service"


Analysis By: Janelle B. Hill

Definition: Optimization and simulation tools support process experimentation, using a morescientific, data-driven approach to delivering higher business outcomes. These tools use an explicitprocess model (that is, an imitation of a business process) and enable the user (that is, theexperimenter) to experiment with the process and the resources leveraged in a process over time.These tools allow the experimenter — perhaps a business process analyst — to see how theprocess holds up over time in response to specific events or changing conditions.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: We have advanced the position of business processmanagement (BPM) simulation and optimization to reflect growing interest and usage, consistentwith advancing BPM maturity that we are seeing in our client inquiries, in our conference attendeesand in our ITScore for BPM maturity data. Simulation has been sporadically leveraged by advancedorganizations for quite a while for testing alternative process designs. However, it has not taken offmore broadly, because many organizations are still benefiting greatly from using less-rigorousanalytical methods to redesign processes. Once the easy-to-reach benefits are exhausted,simulation and optimization become more important in order to gain incremental benefits in theprocess improvement cycle. Most simulation has been leveraged as an upfront design assist, and itis only beginning to be leveraged for "in flight" processes, using the actual operational data. Onceorganizations dig deeper into process improvement and advance their maturity, in-line simulationand optimization will continue to rise in visibility among savvy business process owners, withassistance from their business process analysts.

As organizations gain confidence in the benefits of efficient processes, and realize that valuablepredictive business signals appear first in processes, the importance of simulation and optimizationwill rise to a greater level of adoption. Since optimization comes later in the business processmaturity journey, many companies have not yet focused on building the skills necessary to supportoptimization and simulation. Simulation is moving faster in this category than optimization for now.Also, all business process management suites (BPMSs) have some degree of simulation andoptimization capabilities. However, we anticipate an increased interest in predictive analytics (oneform of optimization) in the coming year as new, easier-to-use tools come to market.

User Advice: Organizations that want to design a process in an experimental mode under differentload and cost assumptions will find simulation a great discipline and technology to leverage toexperiment with alternatives without risk. Optimization of existing process designs allows for a"champion-challenger mindset" that looks for more productivity from the contributing processresources of people, systems, content, information, events and so on. Use simulation to:

■ Identify alternative business scenarios

■ Test alternative designs under varying conditions

■ Test the optimization algorithm with actual operational data




■ Leverage other optimization algorithms, such as predictive analysis and correlation, as needed

Optimization helps answer typical questions about impending changes. Does the process break?What might we predict, based on past behavior? Are there enough resources to handle all the calls,loans, claims and so on? Should I shift resources, and are they available? In other words,optimization and simulation enable the process to be run as if it were running in the real world.However, unlike the real world, if the optimized and simulated process breaks, no one gets hurt. It isall a simulation, and it can be reoptimized and rerun. Process simulation and optimization toolsverify the assumptions, constraints and scenarios of a process context with more certainty beforethe process design (or improvement) is actually deployed in the real world.

Clearly, a prerequisite for performing business process optimization and simulation is having anexplicit business process model — the "imitation" mentioned above. This business process modelgraphically shows how the business process execution and associated strategies are interrelated.Process modeling is used to better understand and diagnose business process execution behavior,including all the participants, constituents and resources. While process modeling is generally astatic representation of the business process under study, simulation adds a dynamic component.The advent of the intelligent BPM suite (iBPMS) is expected to accelerate the maturity of thistechnology.

(This entry does not cover constraint-based optimization [CBO] and simulation tools that are usedfor digital control systems, factory scheduling, transportation route scheduling, and other operationsresearch and decision management applications that are not centered on process models.)

Business Impact: The benefits of leveraging the resources that a process employs can pay offquite directly to the bottom line, mostly in cost savings and productivity gains. Simulation andoptimization tools can also contribute strongly to increasing efficiency, effectiveness and riskmitigation. Depending on the process domain, simulation and optimization tools can also helpgenerate top-line revenue growth. For example, simulation can be used to identify how muchadditional capacity may be needed to increase production outputs by x%.




Sample Vendors: 1010data; FICO; Fujitsu; IBM; Kofax; KXEN; Lanner; Meta Software; OpenText;Oracle; Pegasystems; ProModel; River Logic; Simul8; Software AG; Tibco Software; Vitria;Whitestein Technologies

Recommended Reading: "A Vision of Advanced Business Process Simulation and Optimization"

"ITScore for Business Process Management, 2012"

"The Why, When and How of Business Process Simulation"




Case Management Frameworks

Analysis By: Janelle B. Hill; Kenneth Chin

Definition: Case management frameworks are commercial software meant to reduce thecomplexity of creating case-style process solutions by embedding some best practices into theframework. They provide out-of-the-box design patterns and executable software components(such as case folders, content indexing, role-based workbenches, business rules, activities andmilestones) to be configured and extended by buyers.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Case management frameworks are commercialsoftware that packages "best practices" for implementing a case management style of process.Case management is a prime example of a largely unstructured process style. By definition,casework is nonroutine; each case is a unique situation that involves complex interactions betweencontent, people and business or regulatory policies to achieve an optimal outcome. Casework usesinformation, judgment, experience and policies as inputs to reconcile and resolve multiple (andoften incongruent) perspectives about rights, entitlements, settlements, risks and money. The goalof case handling is to achieve an optimal — not perfect — outcome for all involved parties.Ultimately, as a matter of judgment, casework typically is closely audited for adherence to corporateand government regulations. Although case management as a process style is not new, commercialcase management frameworks are relatively new.

Case management solutions are complex because the workflow cannot completely be predefinedand easily codified at design time. The progress of a case is influenced by human judgment, eventsand changes to the information in the case. Cases often move forward a few steps and thenregress, based on changes in the information content or decision steps that trigger the work to goback to a previous step, before it moves forward again. Progression of a case to resolution is drivenmore by human decision making and content status than by factors that can be predetermined forall cases and implemented in a single software design. In other words, often, each case follows adifferent workflow and a different execution path. Enabling this flexibility in a solution is very difficult.New case management frameworks add event-driven architecture, rules and context metadata, inaddition to human interaction and content state, to progress cases individually.

Furthermore, case management processes typically require tracking the case itself, as well astracking dependent workflows related to the contributing information content and human judgment.Cases typically reflect parent-child relationships between workflows performed by the contributingresources — people and information. As the progression of work cannot be completely anticipatedduring design, any solution needs to be able to accommodate more flexibility in the execution ofeach case, often using decision and content state changes to trigger the next step in the workflow.The complexity of casework has kept it a "specialized" software application area for years. Also,some case handling relies on milestones — points in the workflow at which all data is comparedand looked at holistically, and a decision is made about how to progress the case further. For somekinds of cases, these milestones and their sequencing can be predetermined at design time,although what happens in between milestones is event- or data-driven. This event- or data-drivenapproach is commonly referred to as "adaptive case management." Cases needing this level of




flexible and dynamic handling as they progress are the most complex examples of casework. Thisbehavior is typical of fraud detection and other investigative casework.

Although industry-specific case management applications and system integration specialists haveexisted for years, such solutions have been expensive, not very flexible and very specialized. Casemanagement frameworks emerged a few years ago to address growing market demand for aneasier and more flexible approach to case handling. Today, more work is seen as case-oriented inindustries beyond government, legal and insurance, which have managed work as "cases" foryears. New areas include mortgage origination, university admissions, grants management, frauddetection, HR grievances and customer complaints. This trend has stimulated an emerging marketfor case management frameworks.

Many new providers are hyping their case management solution capabilities. For example, CRMvendors, as the systems of record for customer data, are hyping their customer case handlingcapabilities. ERP vendors have introduced industry or horizontal case management solutions.Business process management suite (BPMS) and intelligent BPMS (iBPMS) providers are alsocontributing to heightened market awareness. These suites differ from earlier, proceduralprogramming in the technologies used to advance a case, leveraging declarative models, explicitrules, context metadata, event driven architecture, analytics and other techniques to advance theworkflow. Many of these vendors offer case management frameworks as add-ons to their platform.Industry-specific case management application providers are also trying to reinvent themselves andreposition their products in order to capitalize on the new wave of hype.

However, hype has reached the peak since our last Hype Cycle report; we see tell-tale signs ofdisillusionment from end-user companies that have attempted to implement such frameworks.Complaints include high costs relative to the value delivered, heavy dependence on systemintegration skills, and functional weaknesses in the frameworks themselves. Multiple vendoracquisitions (and the resulting disruptions to product plans) since late 2011, combined with highimplementation costs, continue to cause buyers to hesitate about investing right now. Therefore,the time to plateau of five to 10 years reflects the immaturity and lack of production deployments todate for these frameworks.

User Advice: Identify process improvement projects that are case management style. Understandthe resource dependencies of these processes, the complexity of your business rules that affect thecase workflow, and how much process intelligence needs to be built into the automated solution todeliver the improved outcomes anticipated.

■ With a clear set of requirements for case management, consider doing a pilot. Evaluate casemanagement framework providers, industry-specific case management application providersand professional services providers that offer case management solution expertise.

■ In some situations, workflow and process management needs dominate the requirements. Inthis situation, pick a BPMS/iBPMS with strong content support (since most casework requiressignificant amounts and variety of content). Case management frameworks are a great way ofimplementing a "design by doing" type of process (see "Social BPM: Design by Doing").

■ When content and collaboration take priority over workflow control, then consider casemanagement frameworks from an ECM vendor that has acquired a BPMS.




■ When business rules to guide decision making are the most critical factor for the softwareimplementation, look for a BPMS with a strong rule engine and strong content repositoryintegration.

■ When prebuilt industry domain expertise is most important, look for an industry specialist,especially one whose solution is built on a model-driven BPM platform.

Business Impact: Improving the visibility of work status within a "case" is very valuable to manyindustries. Case management processes are complex, and better control with flexibility can improveprofit levels and user satisfaction, as well as provide an audit trail for compliance and otherregulatory oversight requirements.



Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: Appian; AWPL; Eccentex; EMC; IBM; IPD; Iron Data; Isis Papyrus; K2; Kofax;MicroPact; OpenText; Oracle (Fusion); Pegasystems; Perceptive Software; SAP

Recommended Reading: "Balance Process Agility and Process Integrity Choices Along theApplication Continuum"

"What Types of Model-Driven Applications Are Most Appropriate for a High Pace of ProcessChange?"

"The Case for Case Management Solutions"

Gamification

Analysis By: Brian Blau; Brian Burke

Definition: Gamification is the use of game mechanics and design to drive engagement in a targetaudience for nongame purposes to achieve a target business outcome. Many types of gamesinclude game mechanics, such as points, challenges, leader boards and incentives, that makeplaying games enjoyable. Gamification applies these game mechanics to motivate the audience tohigher and more meaningful levels of engagement. Humans are "hard-wired" to enjoy games andhave a natural tendency to interact more deeply in activities framed in a game construct.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Gamification is used to change behavior, developskills or drive innovation. Some examples of gamification's many uses include customerengagement, education, employee performance, innovation management and healthcare. While theconcepts behind gamification are not new, its first use in 2007 coalesced specifically around usinggame mechanics derived from video games. Today, gamification is gaining traction in theenterprise. But its current "sweet spot" is the consumer market, which has the most deploymentsand gamification is integrated into marketing campaigns, customer loyalty programs, productdesign of mobile apps and services, and is intended to increase customer interaction and




engagement. The fastest-growing segment of gamification is internal-facing enterprise uses, inwhich it is deployed to increase employee engagement in areas like training, innovationmanagement, collaboration and employee performance. This trend is set to accelerate as largervendors, such as salesforce.com, begin to integrate game mechanics and analytics into theirsoftware offerings.

Early adopters, such as consumer brands and services, and mobile apps, show that gamificationhas had significant positive impact on user engagement rates when applied in a suitable context.However, gamification also has significant challenges to overcome before widespread adoptionoccurs. Designing games is no easy task — during four decades of video game development, manygames have failed despite developers' best intentions. A basic level of game mechanics (pointssystem, leader board, achievements, awards or basic challenges) is often not enough to sustainincreased engagement, as incentives and rewards must be aligned to motivate the target audience.Gamifying activities represent another challenge, one that requires careful planning, execution anditeration. Overcoming these challenges will require successive integration of gamification in a widevariety of consumer and enterprise scenarios.

User Advice: Gamification can increase user interactivity and change behaviors, resulting in greateruser engagement. When fun is built into the interaction model, users are more likely to continue toengage. Gamification has many uses that target consumers, customers, employees or any otherdefined audience, and it impacts many areas of business and society.

Organizations planning to leverage gamification must clearly understand the target audience theyintend to engage, what behaviors they want to change, what motivates the audience and maintainstheir engagement, and how success will be measured.

Gamification technology comes in three forms;

■ General-purpose gamification platforms delivered as software as a service that integrate withcustom-developed and vendor-supplied applications

■ Purpose-built solutions supplied by a vendor to support a specific usage (for example,innovation management or service desk performance)

■ Purely custom implementations

Organizations must recognize that simply including game mechanics is not enough to realize thecore benefits of gamification. Making gamified solutions sufficiently rewarding requires carefulplanning, design and implementation, with ongoing adjustments to keep users interested. Designinggamified solutions is unlike designing any other IT solution, and it requires a different designapproach. Few people have gamification design skills, which remains a huge barrier to success ingamified solutions.

Enterprises trying to encourage new employee behaviors can use gamification as motivation.Organizations are beginning to use gamification as a mechanism to inspire and reward newinitiatives, and to recognize contribution and participation that augments and furthers the purposeof their businesses and their customer communities. Implementing gamification means matching




player goals to target business outcomes to attract and sustain a deeper level of interactivity,relationship or engagement with users.

Business Impact: Gamification techniques can be used in a wide range of scenarios to enhanceproduct and service strategies. Its use is relevant, for example, to marketing managers, productdesigners, customer service managers, financial managers and HR staff, whose aim is to bringabout longer-lasting and more-meaningful interactions with customers, employees or the public.

Although gamification can be beneficial, it's important to design, plan and iterate on its use to avoidthe negative business impacts of unintended consequences, such as behavioral side effects orgamification fatigue.

User engagement is at the heart of today's "always connected" culture. Incorporating gamemechanics encourages desirable behaviors, which can, with the help of carefully planned scenariosand product strategies, increase user participation, improve product and brand loyalty, advancelearning and understanding of a complex process, accelerate change adoption, and build lastingand valuable relationships with target audiences.



Maturity: Emerging

Sample Vendors: Badgeville; BigDoor; Bunchball

Recommended Reading: "Technology Overview for Gamification Platforms"

"Business Model Games: Driving Business Model Innovation With Gamification"

"Gamification: Engagement Strategies for Business and IT"

"Best Practices for Harnessing Gamification's Potential in the Workplace"

"Gamification: The Serious Side of Games Can Make Work More Interesting"


Analysis By: Andrew White; Benoit J. Lheureux; Deborah R Wilson

Definition: A multienterprise business process platform (ME-BPP) is Gartner's high-levelconceptual model of a multistakeholder environment, where multienterprise applications areoperated. Multienterprise applications are those that are purposely built to support the uniquerequirements for shared (collaborative) business processes, that span more than one businessentity or organization. They replace multiple business applications integrated in serial fashion.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The ME-BPP is a combined set of shared IT,solutions and services that enables multienterprise business process design, modeling,




improvement, composition, execution and management. A ME-BPP is not a specific "technology,"but rather a commitment by an organization, to govern the many tools, applications and dataservices it uses for all its B2B interactions — with external parties, through a single lens — in orderto rationalize and simplify the formerly many moving parts. Newly emerging cloud services brokersmay play a key role in the formation of ME-BPPs.

ME-BPP technologies and assets will be governed in a shared fashion; B2B data and applicationintegration technologies and a range of packaged business application solutions, coupled with:technology services related to (supply chain) visibility; business intelligence; analytics; data qualityand consistency; compliance; performance management; workflow; business process managementtechnology; multienterprise master data management; multienterprise security and governance; andcommunity management services and portals. A business service repository (BSR) will be used andimplemented in a shared environment, where reusable services are exposed to support compositionand integration.

The relative shift from a predominantly internal approach, to an increase in dominant partner andshared multienterprise processes, will result in more community-centralized management andcontrol of multienterprise applications and data, that can facilitate more scalable and innovativeprocesses. Organizations can implement IT innovations on a shared application and infrastructurejust once — for the benefit of all the B2B community members. Examples of innovative ITtechnologies being deployed to drive continuous process improvement include: business analytics,master data management (MDM), business activity monitoring (BAM), and various business processmanagement (BPM) technologies, such as rule engines, business process templates andoptimization software.

ME-BPPs were hyped significantly a couple of years ago, but its peak came and went without anymaterial impact in the market. As such, the technology has shifted, almost quietly, from one side ofthe peak (increasing hype) to the other (declining hype) within just a year. With the ageing andfluctuating economic climate in hand, the risks associated with the development and support forME-BPPs remain fluid overall; the reality is that some solutions have grown or emerged that onlyhave some characteristics of ME-BPPs, but are typically oriented to a narrow set of businessprocesses (such as Wesupply) or a narrow set of industries. Such vendors in this Hype Cycle entry(see below) do not offer full-blown ME-BPPs with the necessary flexibility and extensibilityenvisaged by the definition of a ME-BPP, but they share some of the capabilities. Thus the "flavors"of ME-BPP might be further along the Hype Cycle individually — but as a category, they are asshown. More recently we have seen some vendors offer some of the capabilities in a cloud servicesenvironment — we call this group cloud services brokers.

The vendors represented in this Hype Cycle entry have varying degrees of increased productmaturity — but no vendor yet offers a complete, ME-BPP. The demand for a ME-BPP capabilitycontinues to increase, and if the economic recovery bolsters, we predict that by 2018, the adoptionof multienterprise applications in support of shared business processes will become widespread(though not all or even necessarily via a complete ME-BPP). Those firms that remain paperboundwill tend to adopt older, mostly proven and widely adopted enterprise-oriented applications.Whereas established enterprise applications will seek more differentiation with extended enterpriseapplications. Those enterprises looking for game-changing collaboration with peers will be morelikely to adopt multienterprise applications.




Users will have to continue to opportunistically seek out ME-BPP-like offerings among the multitudeof business process hubs (BPHs), business process networks (BPNs) and cloud services brokersoffered in the market. The barriers that are slowing the adoption and development of ME-BPPs aregradually eroding. Its obstacles include: lack of maturity in infrastructure; trading partners not at thesame stage of IT maturity or readiness; insufficient use of metadata-driven approaches to masterdata and application modeling; a lack of shared-governance models (although industry- andcommunity-based process and data standards will help) and inertia (current investment plans havereturn on investment targets that still have to be met). Currently, ME-BPPs are less hyped than theenterprise version of BPP, which matured as a discipline earlier — since it is older in concept andpertinent to every enterprise. It is quite likely that the hype related to ME-BPP will always be lessthan its enterprise-oriented version.

User Advice: To gain a good understanding of their multienterprise processes, clients should createa multienterprise process architecture road map that identifies needs for differentiatingmultienterprise processes, versus needs for standardized, enterprise-oriented business processessupporting system-of-record requirements. The former should be targeted at a ME-BPP and thelatter toward the legacy ERP or core business applications. Business process analysts at channelmaster/brand owner companies (those with the power), or collaborating teams of organizations,should first focus on designing the differentiating and innovative multienterprise processes forchange (according to a Pace-Layered Application Strategy), and on working with their own andpartner IT organizations to implement the first iteration of such processes. This should include astrategy and plan for ongoing changes to keep them differentiating, or to move them gradually intothe core as competitors catch on and copy their approach. Users might conclude that they need tosimplify their overall B2B complexity, but you will not be able to deploy a ME-BPP without thenecessary leadership, investment and organizational maturity to drive adoption of something asforward-planning as a ME-BPP.

Leverage emerging component parts or delivery vehicles for your current B2B strategy (BPHs,BPNs and cloud services brokers) that are building toward a ME-BPP offering, to implementconfigurable, extendable, shared multienterprise processes. Recognize that a ME-BPP is part-technology and part-application infrastructure design concepts, with people/roles, process andmethodologies to support a multistakeholder-governed infrastructure. A ME-BPP supports abusiness strategy enabled by technology that involves communities of interest (businessrelationships), communities of trust, shared infrastructure (including integration as a service), andshared or multienterprise business applications. Develop a multienterprise strategy involving a"portfolio approach" of B2B interactions that might, over time, rationalize a move toward fewermethods. Seek to consolidate separate B2B projects on one infrastructure; incorporate your B2Bintegration strategy into your business application strategy, and establish clear metrics for trackingthe success of your multienterprise projects.

Business Impact: Initial adoption is visible in a number of areas, notably global trade, complexproduct design, validation and/or testing (for environmental safety), monitoring carbon footprintsacross a value chain, third-party logistics, distributed order fulfillment, procure-to-pay andmultienterprise collaboration. In the longer term, we expect to see more adoption acrosswidespread deployed business processes, such as those found in application domains, such as




CRM, ERP, procurement, product life cycle management and supply chain management, as well asindustry-specific applications.

Initial implementations have been generally narrow in scope, supporting one or two steps in aprocess and improving productivity. For example, vendor-managed inventory solutions havefocused on sharing current inventory levels and demand for a narrow set of products. Over time,solutions will be significantly more effective, enabling a much broader set of steps in a process, aswell as with an expanded set of partners. We expect multienterprise solutions will enable entirelynew activities that we can only begin to imagine, such as multitier supply chain visibility,community-level risk management, and original solutions orchestrator (OSO).




Sample Vendors: Ariba; Capgemini; e-Builder; E2open; Elemica; Ernst & Young; Evenex; GHX;Hubwoo; IBM (Sterling Commerce); One Network; Perfect Commerce; SciQuest; Take Solutions;TradeCard

Recommended Reading: "2012 Strategic Road Map for Multienterprise Business ProcessesEnablement"

"Moving Beyond ERP With Multienterprise Process Enablement"

"Findings: Ownership of Processes Distinguishes Internal BPP From Multienterprise BPP"

"The Emergence of the Multienterprise Business Process Platform"



Definition: Business process management (BPM) consulting and system integration (C&SI) refers toexternal service providers' use of a BPM approach in business process improvement (BPI) projects.BPM in C&SI uses many of the same capabilities used in traditional business C&SI, but a BPMapproach emphasizes the following:

■ Unstructured and structured processes that change frequently or unexpectedly

■ Process optimization versus standardization

■ Build to change versus build to last

■ Agile methods

■ Use of metadata and model-driven BPM platforms




Position and Adoption Speed Justification: BPM is an approach to BPI. BPM is a set ofmanagement disciplines that treat processes as assets that directly contribute to enterpriseperformance by driving operational excellence and business process agility. The distinct differencesbetween BPM and other approaches to BPI are discussed in "Two Factors That Help Identify theBPM 'Sweet Spot.'"

BPM requires a mix of skills from the service provider:

■ Transformational skills that motivate people to change the way they work

■ Operational skills that identify what processes to change and how to change them

■ Technical skills for building and evolving the software that supports process improvement

Many of these skills are the same as those needed for traditional BPI consulting, but the degree ofprocess visibility, accountability and adaptability required for BPM results in some key differences— mainly in the pace at which change is managed, the degree to which citizen development isencouraged, and the emphasis on providing intelligence and analytics in the context of an end-to-end process instance (see "15 Skills Critical to Business Process Management Success").

BPM for C&SI has moved slightly downward past the Hype Cycle peak. Demand is still strong forBPM C&SI, since organizations that are undertaking BPM initiatives lack skills in all three areas. AGartner primary research survey of more than 500 respondents worldwide who were involved in BPIprojects found that more than one-third of them lacked skills in business strategy and IT alignment,process modeling and design, process benchmarking, process measurement and metricsframeworks, process governance, and use of BPM technologies. These challenges drive BPdirectors, process owners and senior IT executives to use BPM C&SIs for help. As with all C&SIcapabilities, BPM consulting was initially the bastion of smaller, boutique consultancies, but ascompanies become more mature with BPM and pursue multisite projects and multiprojectprograms, they require multinational and global program support. Smaller C&SIs may struggle tosupport these larger, multicountry initiatives. Customers are beginning to look to largeconsultancies with global delivery models to support BPM programs. In response, Tier 1 C&SIs areestablishing BPM capabilities. For example:

■ During 2012, Tier 1 C&SI Accenture matured its BPM practice to include 5,000 consultants, andpublished the book "Value-Driven Business Process Management."

■ BPM continues to be one of Capgemini's top service line initiatives for its consulting andoutsourcing businesses (see www.capgemini.com/news-and-events/news/capgemini-launches-its-new-global-business-process-management-service-line-at-the-gartner-bpm-summit-in-london).

■ PwC and KPMG have dedicated BPM practices, as do most offshore service vendors.

■ IBM's BPM consulting practice has delivered more than 5,000 BPM consulting projects in thepast three years.

The entry of large global C&SIs into the BPM market signals that BPM has moved into themainstream, and warrants the post-peak positioning of BPM C&SI on the BPM Hype Cycle. It also


http://www.capgemini.com/news-and-events/news/capgemini-launches-its-new-global-business-process-management-service-line-at-the-gartner-bpm-summit-in-london





suggests that within two to five years, BPM C&SI capabilities will be an intrinsic part of mostconsulting vendors' skill sets. Lastly, as more C&SIs establish BPM capabilities, demand for talentincreases and a shortage of skills will contribute to customer disillusionment.

User Advice:

■ Organizations that want to improve business processes need to establish a business processcompetency center that provides transformational, operational and technical competencies (see"Toolkit: Building a Business Process Competency Center").

■ For successful BPM, look for C&SI firms that can deliver the appropriate levels oftransformation capabilities, and that have a solid foundation in operational competencies. Don'tjust focus on their software-enablement capabilities.

■ Look for a C&SI firm that has a track record of providing mentoring and knowledge transfer inBPM projects. Include acceptance criteria pertaining to mentoring and knowledge transfer inyour project contract. BPM is intended to foster a culture of continuous process improvement,and your organization will need to be self-sufficient.

■ Ideally, BPM is a "build for change" approach. As a result, projects should be delivered usingagile and iterative methods. Projects should take three to six months and run through all phasesof the process life cycle. Larger projects should be broken down into subprojects.

■ Go through the steps outlined in "Toolkit: Identify the Roles and Skills Needed for SuccessfulBPI Projects, and Where to Get Them"to determine which skills and which roles you will need toget from a C&SI.

■ Use the criteria in "Four Best Practices for Selecting Consulting and System IntegrationVendors for Business Process Management"to select the appropriate BPM C&SI vendor.

Business Impact: Using a consultant or system integrator to assist with a BPM initiative can yieldpositive results, ranging from incremental process improvement (such as cost and cycle timereductions) to wholesale business process transformation. Reference checks with customers thatused consultants for BPM projects indicate that smaller, boutique consultancies have been moresuccessful in implementing solutions in the BPM "sweet spot" compared with larger Tier 1 C&SIs.

In addition to providing a more agile process infrastructure and access to innovations in themarketplace, C&SI resources can help prioritize business processes, implement governancepolicies, establish an appropriate framework for encouraging continuous BPI, and disseminate BPMmethodologies and practices throughout the enterprise. Depending on your business processneeds, using these resources can be an effective and efficient way to mobilize and grow your BPMefforts.







Sample Vendors: Accenture; Amentra; Atos; Avio Consulting; Booz Allen Hamilton; BP3; BusinessTransformation Institute; Capgemini; Cognizant; Confiance; Fujitsu; HCL Technologies; IBM GlobalBusiness Services; Infosys; InfrasoftTech; IPT; ITC Infotech; KPMG; Logica; Mahindra Satyam;Modus21; Oracle Consulting; Princeton Blue; PwC; Tata Consultancy Services; Virtusa; Wipro

Recommended Reading: "Four Best Practices for Selecting Consulting and System IntegrationVendors for Business Process Management"


"Toolkit: Identify the Roles and Skills Needed for Successful BPI Projects, and Where to Get Them"

"Toolkit: Job Description for a Business Process Consultant"

"Toolkit: Clarify BPM Role Confusion by Defining Activities and Responsibilities"

Sliding Into the Trough

BPM-Enabled BPO


Definition: Business process management (BPM)-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO)refers to a BPO provider's use of BPM technologies within its BPO, offering to balance processinnovation and control.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: BPM-enabling technologies include simplediagramming and process-mapping tools, business process analysis (BPA) tools, BPM platforms,business rule engines, business rule management systems, business activity monitoring (BAM),business intelligence (BI) tools, workflow and process execution, optimization and simulation, BPMsuites (BPMSs), and intelligent BPMSs (iBPMSs), as well as automated business process discovery(APBD) tools (see "Use the BPM Sweet Spot Framework to Identify the BPM Technology YouNeed").

The idea of BPM-enabled BPO is not new. In 1989, DST Systems pioneered the use of BPMtechnologies for BPO. Another example of BPM in BPO is the SunGard acquisition of BPMS vendorCarnot in 2006. Carnot is now part of SunGard's Infinity Process Platform, which underpins some ofits BPO offerings. Finance and accounting (F&A) BPO providers such as Genpact also haveestablished partnerships with BPMS vendors. Up-and-coming F&A BPO providers, such asCognizant and Infosys, have multiple alliances with BPM vendors for consulting and BPO. CSC hasestablished alliances with BPMS vendors such as Cordys, DST Systems and Oracle. Fifty percent ofthe top 25 BPO providers listed in "Market Share Analysis: Business Process Outsourcing,Worldwide, 2012"use BPM platforms, BPMS, or iBPMS in one or more of their BPO offerings, andall of them utilize BPM-enabling technologies. Numerous business process management suite(BPMS) vendors (such as Bosch, Pegasystems, PNMsoft and Newgen Software) have establishedBPO practices and solution frameworks to specifically target BPO providers as a channel to the




market. A BPMS is a highly sophisticated and comprehensive BPM platform (see "Market Update:Match BPMS Vendors to Your Usage Scenarios"). Some BPO providers, such as Wipro, with itsBase))) platform, have developed their own BPM platforms. Because of the pervasive use by BPOproviders, BPM-enabled BPO is positioned post-peak and at a high degree of market penetration.

BPM-enabled BPO is moving toward the Trough of Disillusionment, as BPO providers arepromoting the use of process enhancement technology and services (PETS) as vehicles for processdifferentiation and innovation (see "Outsourcing Trends 2013: Increase Productivity With BusinessProcess Outsourcing"). Many PETS offerings use a collection of best-in-breed BPM technologiesthat limit process agility and prevent real-time end-to-end process visibility. These can handlestructured processes quite well, and can reduce costs, but they do not exploit the breakthroughinnovations in unstructured, collaborative and intelligent processes (see "Use Intelligent BusinessOperations to Create Business Advantage" and "Extreme Collaboration: A Nexus-EnabledOperating Model to Enable Performance Breakthroughs").

Gartner predicts that, by 2016, 70% of the most profitable companies will manage their businessprocesses using real-time predictive analytics or extreme collaboration (see "Predicts 2013:Business Process Improvement Leaders Need to Stop Tackling the Tactical and Get Strategic"). Asa result, sophisticated BPM technologies such as BPMS and iBPMS are needed for innovationinvolving structured and unstructured processes, for dynamically altering processes in response toreal-time events, and for providing comprehensive real-time predictive analytics. Business processowners who use BPO providers that rely on sophisticated technologies such as BPMS and iBPMSfor PETS will successfully navigate through the Trough of Disillusionment to realize significantbusiness value.

User Advice: When differentiating or strategic business processes have already been outsourced orare candidates for outsourcing, business process owners, business process directors, and CIOsacting as chief process officers should:

■ Create a business capability model to re-evaluate whether the business process they haveoutsourced, or seek to outsource, is a commodity or a differentiated, strategic businessprocess.

■ Evaluate whether the BPO provider uses BPM-enabling technology necessary to deliver theprocess agility and visibility needed by and to manage both structured and unstructuredprocess patterns required for a differentiated or strategic business process.

■ Determine what degree of business process improvement (BPI) maturity they will need by takingthe ITScore for Business Process Management diagnostic.

■ Use the organizational, technology, governance, process competency, metrics andmeasurement guidelines in the ITScore for Business Process Management to evaluate the BPOprovider's ability at the desired maturity level to deliver the business outcome necessarily forthe success of their end-to-end BPI program.

■ Understand the BPO provider's road map for providing intelligent business operations andextreme collaboration capabilities.




Business Impact: BPO providers who offer PETS can greatly reduce the organization's cost tosupport a business process, as well as provide scale and process consistency. These benefits arecritical to improving structured processes that are readily standardized. However, intelligentbusiness operations and extreme collaboration are trends that require organizations to exploit thelargely untapped BPI opportunity represented by unstructured processes. Unstructured processesmake up 50% to 70% of processes, and are typically unmanaged (see "Expand Your BPM Horizonsby Exploring Unstructured Processes"). The PETS offerings of most BPO providers are not gearedtoward supporting these unstructured processes. Organizations that are looking to exploit thelargely untapped BPI opportunity represented by unstructured processes could find that their BPOprovider is a roadblock to helping them be highly adaptive in their pursuit of dynamically changingbusiness goals.



Maturity: Early mainstream

Sample Vendors: Accenture; Advantage IQ; ADP; AmerisourceBergen; Avow Systems; Capgemini;Capita; Cognizant; CSC; DST Systems; EXL; First Data; Fujitsu; Genpact; iGATE; IBM; Infosys;Logica; Maximus; McCamish Systems; McKesson; Medco; Mercer; MphasiS; Nasco; Postecom;Steria; StoneRiver; SunGard; Target Group; Wipro; Wow Global; Xchanging

Recommended Reading: "Agenda Overview for Business Process Management, 2013"



"Reliance on Business Process Standardization Is at Odds With a Focus on DifferentiatingProcesses"

"Six Best Practices for Moving to a Culture of Extreme Collaboration"

Organizational Change For BPM

Analysis By: Elise Olding

Definition: Organizational change encompasses the discipline, frameworks and methods used toaddress the "people" challenges associated with business process transformation, technologyimplementations or changes to organizational structures from activities like mergers or outsourcing.It employs a set of techniques that engage stakeholders, enabling them to actively contribute,prepare for continued change and develop skills to better embrace it.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: This is a new profile, and has been added becauseorganizational change is a critical component of any change initiative success. The capability toembrace and master continued change will be what defines competitive advantage for more and




more enterprises. The pace of change continues to increase, with many organizations alreadyreporting they are experiencing "too much change" (see Prosci Institute's 2011 benchmarkingstudy; for more information, go to www.prosci.com). John Kotter states that 70% of businesstransformation efforts fail. This rate of failure is not acceptable, and can be overcome with effectiveorganizational change activities tailored to address the behavior and cultural changes required forthe desired outcomes. Successful business process transformation efforts and incrementalinnovation, or continuous improvement efforts, will mandate attention to these concerns. It will beessential to create mechanisms to educate, influence and engage those impacted, preparing themfor changes and reinforcing the behaviors that will sustain the new ways of working.

While change management has been a well-established discipline for many years, recentdiscoveries in the fields of cognitive neuroscience and employee engagement have dramaticallychanged the work from informing and telling people to change, to engaging those involved, co-creating the future state and equipping them to become more "changeable" in the future. From abusiness process improvement (BPI) perspective, there is increasing awareness that these activitiesare critical to program and project success, and many organizations are exploring or embarking onorganizational change programs to develop the needed competencies. The danger always lurks thatorganizational change activities will be cut from the BPI scope if they are not directly tied to theoutcomes. This mindset leaves organization change dangling between the peak and the trough. Thedevelopment and penetration of these competencies are expected to evolve slowly over time, asthey prove to be successfully applied and inextricably linked to success.

The research emerging from cognitive neuroscience provides convincing evidence that has notbefore existed. We believe this will accelerate the adoption of these techniques and quantify thevalue gained from effective organizational change methods.

User Advice: Attention to the people involved in BPI projects and programs is essential forsuccess. Shadow processes will crop up and benefits will erode if those who need to change arenot informed about, involved in and accepting of the changes to their work. Organizational changeskills are needed by IT and line-of-business leaders, and if an existing organizational changemethodology does not exist, the business process (BP) director must introduce this to theorganization. A comprehensive approach that encompasses these groups working together willdeliver the optimum solutions with the minimal disruption to the organization.

Change fatigue is an often overlooked factor, and many times is the root cause for a lack of changeor adoption of new ways of working and technologies. Applying organizational change techniques,particularly ones rooted in cognitive neuroscience, can identify these risk areas and supportrealigning business process work so that the new behaviors and work habits have time to take hold.This adjustment time can mean the difference between adopting new ways of working, andcontinuing with the old habits and behaviors, all of which can sabotage BPI efforts. Many businessleaders lack the skills to successfully lead change and influence others to adopt new behaviors.These skills require a mastery that is acquired over a period of time. Start now and build thecapabilities that will resonate with your unique culture and specific business objectives.

Business Impact: The adoption of organizational change practices is a critical step in maturing anenterprise's ability to successfully realize the benefits from investments in BPI, and position it totake advantage of competitive opportunities. An effective organizational change program will


http://www.prosci.com/



identify missed areas and potential land mines, engage those impacted by changes and ensure thatthe proposed solution will meet the needs of the organization. It will also assess the ability ofstakeholder groups to adapt to the changes, creating new habits and reinforcing new ways ofworking so that shadow processes are not developed. Lastly, it will instill a culture of continuousinnovation, which is the ultimate payoff for BPM programs.

At the present time, many of the methods and techniques are completed manually. Over time, asthe importance of this critical capability is recognized, we do expect to see technology enabling andsupporting assessments, feedback and actions.



Maturity: Emerging

Recommended Reading: "Organizational Liquidity: Change Management for Tumultuous Times"

"Using a Communications Cascade to Align Program Execution With Strategy"

"Toolkit: Identify Stakeholders Impacted by Changes for Better Business Outcomes"

"Peer Advocates Put a Face on Organizational Change"

"Use a Communication Framework to Gain Alignment and Success"


Analysis By: Bruce Robertson

Definition: "Process metrics and measurement" refers to the effort to define metrics for processes,and then to measure processes for those metrics to see how they are changing.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Since business process improvement (BPI) dependson metrics and measurement, Gartner has decided to track the hype around this term — and westart post-peak of hype, heading slowly toward the Trough of Disillusionment. Our ITScore forBusiness Process Management (BPM) maturity scores on the metrics and measures dimensionbarely changed from 2.86 to 2.91 from 2011 to 2012. Most — 71% — are not training for this,either.

Everyone defines some metrics, and measure some of them. So, the peak of the hype is past.However, we still often hear: "Defining metrics is one of our next tasks in BPM." Moreover, fewerdefine metrics that have business value beyond the narrow scope of a single specific process, sothe metrics may not matter, and aren't worth measuring. For example, in our 2012 Worldwide BPMAdoption Survey, "Establish a set of key performance indicators and metrics framework formanaging performance" was a top five BPI approach, currently or planned, for 41% of respondents.This was the second highest choice behind standardizing processes, but was still less than half.This is consistent with data from our BPM ITScore maturity model as described in " "BPM ITScore




2011, Part 3: Results Indicate the Need for Focus on Measures and Governance." YE12, BPMITScore results indicate that only 10% have mostly or completely defined any metrics hierarchy orlandscape, while only 20% say they have mostly or completely defined standard metrics for criticalprocesses. Thirty-two percent of line-of-business executives focus mostly or completely onenterprise or cross-functional metrics in addition to their own functional ones.

Furthermore, while metrics may be defined, they may not be actually measured for benefitsrealization. YE12 BPM ITScore results show 30% are mostly or completely measuring metrics, and21% are mostly or completely using key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure processes.Consequently, while the hype of process metrics and measurement was enough to get many tostart using them, most organizations are not comprehensive in their use nor are they delivering thebest business value. In that same survey, the highest answer (cost reduction, at 48%) to "How doesyour organization currently measure or plan to measure the business results for BPI at yourorganization?" was still less than half. While respondents could pick multiple choices, the fact thatonly 48% were measuring even the most common cost reduction indicates the low pickup on a fullmetrics and measurement approach.

User Advice:

BPI leaders must:

■ Establish with business stakeholders a metrics framework or continuum that links worker tasksto KPIs that are relevant to supervisors, managers and business executives, in order to createalignment between BPI metrics and business strategy.

■ Work with corporate performance management, BI and other constituencies to refine thisportfolio level view of business value.

■ Leverage metrics collections including Gartner's Business Value Model and Business RiskModel to help assure complete yet compelling business stakeholder choices (see "The GartnerBusiness Value Model: A Framework for Measuring Business Performance" and "The GartnerBusiness Risk Model: A Framework for Integrating Risk and Performance").

■ Use this metrics continuum repeatedly for specific processes (and within specific changeprojects).

■ Instrument processes, collect KPIs on a timely basis, and make KPIs/metrics visible to processparticipants and other stakeholders (via dashboards and other approaches).

■ Leverage business activity management (BAM) tools — along with more general BI tools (butthese may not be focused on process metrics alone) — to measure processes; such capabilitiesare also incorporated into iBPMS suites. Leverage the built-in measurement capability of BPMSand iBPMS platforms for processes delivered there. However, since these software systems donot magically pick the right metrics to measure, the BPM team must help the enterprise do theother steps above.

Business Impact: Businesses that quantify and monetize the benefits of proposed initiatives beforeimplementation realize better project success and business outcomes. This goal-setting activity canalso alleviate many controls over detailed activities, since defining the goal may allow for many




different process approaches, rather than a single standardized one. This is true in IT as well as inbusiness (see "Top Performers Use More Metrics"). Wharton professor David Larcker showed thatcompanies that implemented a model (such as, "metrics quantify and monetize the benefits ofproposed initiatives before implementation realize") earned 2.95% higher return on assets and5.14% higher return on equity (see "Coming Up Short on Nonfinancial Performance Measurement,"Harvard Business Review, November 2003). Getting metrics right is certainly not easy — but nottrying to measure things certainly precludes many opportunities to change processes for the better,and to deliver better business outcomes.




Sample Vendors: Accenture; Appian; Capgemini; Deloitte; IBM; Oracle; Pegasystems

Recommended Reading: "Reliance on Business Process Standardization Is at Odds With a Focuson Differentiating Processes"

"Use BPM to Drive Revenue, Not Just Efficiency"

"Follow the Money: Prioritizing BPI Projects by Business Spend"

"Opening the BPM Methodology Toolbox: The Balanced Scorecard"

"Toolkit: Framework for Assessing BPM Measurement/Metrics Prowess"



Definition: Two definitions are required before discussing business rule management systems(BRMSs):

■ Business rules are implicit and explicit business directives that define and describe guidance fortaking a business decision.

■ Business rule management (BRM) is a structured discipline guiding business rule definition,categorization, governance, deployment and use.

A BRMS is a comprehensive business rule offering that facilitates the creation, registration,classification, verification, deployment and execution of business rules in support of BRM.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The BRMS is the evolving state of the art forenterprise BRM efforts. Although BRM and BRMSs are more well-established among the adherentsand customers of the traditional business rule target industry (for example, underwriting), in thecontext of business process management (BPM), BRM and BRMSs are still young concepts that


http://hbr.org/2003/11/coming-up-short-on-nonfinancial-performance-measurement/ar/1



are only now starting to show wider benefits. Vendors of BPM suites (BPMSs) must offer rule-process capabilities in their suites; however, few have offered the full slate of rule capabilities foundin a BRMS. Furthermore, most BPMS vendors treat rules with less importance than their traditionalfocus on process flow. To this end, they will often leave their rule-processing support to partners(forgoing direct ownership of a powerful business rule engine [BRE]), or they will incorporate "justgood enough" rule-processing capabilities in their BPMS offerings. Although there are exceptions(such as Pegasystems and IBM), most BPMS vendors are still not leveraging the power of rules aseffectively as they will during the next five years. Too many vendors place more emphasis on simplyhaving access to a BRE (whether through direct ownership or partnership) and less on delivering therobust BRMS feature set.

The BRE, unlike the BRMS, is mature, and the BRE is commoditizing due to the availability of low-cost and open-source offerings, as typified by JBoss' efforts. For years, the core rule technologylargely consisted of a development environment and a rule-execution engine, collectively the BRE.Although these two components provided baseline tools to facilitate rule creation and complex-ruleexecution, more functionality is required to fully support a complete BRM vision and strategy.Vendors are delivering BRMS platforms; the hype has been reduced and is now being replaced byreal-world experience and implementations. Indeed, the use of BRMS to support (and oftenautomate) business decision making is becoming more widespread, although many organizationsare still very early in their real-life adoption of business rules. We are starting to see providers ofBPA tools expand their offerings to include rule modeling as well, indicating the gradualunderstanding of the importance of clear business rules.

Therefore, we are moving BRMS along the path to maturity, but realize that it has not yet passedthrough the Trough of Disillusionment — something that few concepts and technologies will be ableto bypass. We expect the BRMS to pass through the trough and move to the Plateau ofProductivity, but for now, organizations are more interested in changing rules, rather than managingtheir long-term impact. The ride through the trough will be determined by the state of the market,the power of the full BRMS technology stack, and the success of the various use cases. That test isforthcoming.

User Advice: A BRMS goes well beyond a BRE and broadens the historical technology ecosystemto incorporate rich support for seven key component areas:

■ Execution engine

■ Repository

■ Integrated development environment

■ Rule model simulation

■ Monitoring and analysis

■ Management and administration

■ Rule templates

As vendors build out the seven categories of complementary features, BRMS offerings will continueto evolve and will raise the ante against rule engine vendors that offer only basic BRE functionality




or more-restrictive BRMS offerings. In the end, business rule technology must be acquired as partof a comprehensive BRM strategy. Lacking such a strategy, any rule technology purchase (BRE orBRMS) is likely to be suboptimized and poorly managed. Organizations should invest now in a BRMstrategy. Of the two, a strategy for BRM is much more important than the purchase of any particularrule-enabling technology, whether BRE or BRMS.

BRM is a science for exposing and managing business policies and procedures in explicit form, sothat they can be treated as business managers intended them to be treated — corporate assets andhigh priorities across the business applications that they touch. BRM is a management practice thatis supported by technology. Users will find that BRMS offerings add value to a BRM strategy. BRMremains a complex topic; it is often ethereal and confusing — who is in charge, the IT organizationor users? Which rules do we need to worry about? How much agility should we expect? The BREtook a long time to mature and reach beyond its niche status. Although we believe the BRMS willnot take as long, we have still elected to err on the side of caution, because any downturn in BRMas a concept will have a similar downturn in the uptake of BRMS technology. Also, any technicalstumbles will be a setback to the grand BRMS vision. The advent of the intelligent BPMS (iBPMS)will accelerate the need for BRM.

Business Impact: BRMS offerings provide a high degree of benefit. They enable new ways ofdelivering horizontal and vertical applications (through the use of explicit rules) and can result insignificant cost savings brought about through the benefits of agility. There are additional benefits inbusiness performance consistency and reduction of errors on a daily basis. BRMS technology is notlimited to any particular vertical or horizontal domain; all industries can benefit from the increasedscrutiny and control that come from powering a BRM strategy with a BRMS.

Explicit rules codify an enterprise's agile response by providing an archive of the changes orinterventions made. A rule repository, combined with an audit log and the results of the scenarioand optimization prework, provides a "living history" of the rationale and driver of a particular agilechange. Business process owners, business strategists, business analysts and other affectedparties (for example, unions, auditors and board members) can literally see why certain agilechanges were required and how the decision for change was made. IT and business alignment isintensified by a shared rule-based communications framework. Furthermore, explicit rules create aframework for automated sensing of problems and opportunities (for example, as when a particularrule fires, indicating a policy violation). Rule audit trails can explain "why something happened."Business process owners at all levels can be notified of out-of-tolerance conditions and interventionopportunities (for example, a rule triggers and indicates an opportunity to respond appropriatelywhen a client's credit limit is reached). Those responsible for sensing transactional and operationalactivities will benefit greatly.

The ability to understand why rules are triggered and to provide auditability is powerful; however, asa retrospective tool, that does not, by itself, warrant assigning a high benefit rating to BRMSs. Whatdoes justify the high rating is the fact that business rules, when properly managed, enable anenterprise to perform at a higher level of agility. By becoming more agile, an enterprise — throughits applications and automated systems — can react to opportunities that arise and capitalize onthose opportunities more effectively than can the competition. Business-rule-based agility enablesan enterprise to react faster to internal and external sources of change. An agile enterprise can




respond more effectively with new pricing structures, new discount levels, and more-attractiveterms and conditions. By enabling faster rule changes, an enterprise can take economic advantageof changing market conditions; it can capture revenue, reduce expense, or avoid sanctions or fines.Furthermore, by prepackaging rules into policy sets (that is, a collection of rules that apply under aspecific scenario), rule-driven enterprises can quickly institute policy changes as needed, based onthe prevailing scenario (such as a price collapse, supply shocks, demand surges and so forth). Thisdegree of agility is coveted and justifies the high benefit rating for the BRMS's potential.




Sample Vendors: Be Informed; Bosch; FICO; IBM; InRule Technology; Oracle; Pegasystems;Progress Software; Red Hat; Sparkling Logic; USoft

Recommended Reading: "12 Powerful Use Cases for Business Rule Management"

"Vendors in the Business Rule Market, 2012"

"The Art and Science of Rules vs. Process Flows"

"The Anatomy of a Business Rule Management System"

"Rule Engines and Event Processing"

BPM Discipline


Definition: Business process management (BPM) is the discipline of managing processes (ratherthan tasks) as the means for improving business performance outcomes and operational agility.Processes span organizational boundaries, linking together people, information flows, systems andother assets to create and deliver value to customers and constituents.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: BPM as a discipline has moved just through thetrough in 2013, reflecting increasing momentum to maturity (time to plateau now down to five to 10years) and greater market penetration (at the high end of the 5% to 20% range, possibly higher).

BPM is distinguished from business process re-engineering (BPR) in its recognition that, in today'sglobal economy, operational processes must continuously adjust to changing market and customercontexts. BPM emphasizes continuous process improvement and innovation by empoweringprocess participants to dynamically adjust both in-flight work items and the process itself tooptimize outcomes. Rather than process standardization, BPM emphasizes managed processvariation. Thus, beyond the traditional benefits of increased efficiency and cost savings, BPM addsprocess effectiveness and operational resilience as new and critical measures of operationalexcellence.




There are many case studies available that highlight the benefits realized from BPM discipline in oneprocess domain. Yet, despite the perennial appeal of BPM, there are few examples of organizationsthat have consistently achieved higher enterprise performance results attributed to a sustained BPMprogram applied to multiple processes. Although the acceptance of BPM is growing well, mostorganizations are still early on their BPM journeys and still struggling to apply BPM as an enterpriseprogram. Only some are reaching higher levels (3 and above) of BPM maturity, with the ability tomake their operational processes more effective, innovative and agile. But, this has improved in2012: Our latest 2012 ITScore data has the 2010 to 2011 2.50 average maturity score moving to2.74 in 2012, and from 14% in 2010 to 2011 to 26% of 2012 of respondents with scores 3 andabove. For most process practitioners, BPM's newer measures of business operational excellence— effectiveness and operational resilience — still remain an aspiration.

Some firms may still become discouraged during this period — encountering obstacles to BPMadoption that inhibit benefit realization. The chief inhibitors continue to be organizational politicsand the wrenching cultural changes required for sustaining cross-boundary process excellence, incomparison with the more typical focus on functional excellence. In these situations, new BPMchampions will be required who focus on the good progress that has been made and point the waytoward the opportunity for more. Good ROI can be achieved.

Unfortunately, many misperceive that BPM technologies (such as business process analysis toolsand BPM suites) alone can drive BPM adoption. Consequently, they don't develop appropriatecommunications, training, business process competency centers (BPCCs), metrics and benefitsrealization, and change management efforts to coincide with the new technology implementations.When BPM is initiated by the CIO (or another IT leader), it is often difficult for these individuals toinfluence business executives' understanding of BPM, and to change their management behavior.

The global economy continues to be especially volatile and difficult, driving even greater needs foroperational resilience. The forces of globalization will continue to challenge operational managers tofind better and more-intelligent ways of managing globally dispersed operations. We describe thisneed as "intelligent business operations" (see "The Trend Toward Intelligent Business Operations").Thus, leading organizations will continue to aggressively apply BPM, supported with newer BPM-enabling technologies (BPMTs). These make explicit one or more process aspects, such as theworkflow, the activities, and the organizational unit or role that performs the work, via abstractmodels. They can discover and experiment with new approaches, increase their hands-on expertisein BPM subdisciplines, and implement process changes faster and more easily — not only tobecome more proactive in their responses to market dynamics, but also to focus increasingly onnonroutine work.

The real acceptance of BPM will be associated with the renewed (but slower) acceptance of a morescientific and data-based approach to business operations management, for structured as well asnonroutine work. For today's senior operational leaders, the required kinds of behavioral changesand new skills will not come easily; change may not really happen until younger, midlevel managersadvance to senior leadership roles. For BPM to reach the Plateau of Productivity, new managerswith formal process management training and skills will be needed (see "Toolkit: A Skill Template toCreate a Sustainable Staffing Model for BPM"). Considering all these factors but now seeing some




change in adoption, we shorten our time frame for BPM to reach mainstream adoption to five to 10years.

User Advice: Applying BPM to daily operations should be a long-term goal for all enterprises. Thisdoes not mean that BPM disciplines must be applied to every business process. Rather, BPMshould be applied primarily to high-value processes, particularly the fast-changing and end-to-endprocesses that contribute to competitive differentiation and involve valuable resources. A high-valueprocess is one that differentiates the enterprise from competitors and is therefore likely to havehigher requirements for process flexibility, whereas a lower-value process is one that should largelybe standardized across the enterprise to maximize efficiency. Processes most appropriate for BPMare most likely categorized as systems of innovation and systems of differentiation in a GartnerPace-Layered Application Strategy (see "Balance Process Agility and Process Integrity ChoicesAlong the Application Continuum").

BPM as an enterprise program requires practitioners to advance BPM maturity beyond Level 2,coordinated processes, as defined in Gartner's BPM Maturity Model (see "ITScore for BusinessProcess Management, 2012"). Two critical steps to advance to Level 3, cross-boundary processmanagement, are: (1) establishing a BPCC with appropriate skills; and (2) establishing effectiveprocess ownership and metrics for the top-level, enterprisewide processes, as defined in theorganization's process landscape or topology or hierarchy (see "To Assess the Impact of Change,Connect Process Models With Business Capability Models" and "Improve Business Outcomes byAdvancing From BPM Maturity Level 2 to Level 3").

Business Impact: BPM can and does produce a pronounced change in business performance —typically, cutting costs, increasing productivity, shrinking cycle time and increasing revenue. Thetransformation comes from the wholesale adoption of BPM — especially for high-value, cross-functional processes within an enterprise and even between enterprises (for example, within asupply chain or for business process outsourcing). This level of change requires making processmanagement an organizational competency.

First, BPM establishes a routine emphasis on regular process performance evaluation — in terms ofoutcomes — and provides a means to effectively explore how to improve them. Second, BPM putsin place, as an everyday management tool, the business process model that business managersown, update and regularly employ to visualize, assess and improve process performance outcomes.Third, through the transparency that comes with BPM, there is an important motivation for all tocontinue to innovate and to do well: Everyone is watching. Finally, running BPM as a programactually lessens the need for a centralized BPCC over time as BPM disciplines become embeddedas "normal operating procedures" in the organization's culture (see "Case Study: Business ProcessManagement at Siemens Canada").

Organizations that aggressively adopt BPM and invest in formal training programs must allocate thetime to build the skills needed to advance their process maturity. Required skills include findingskilled business process improvement leaders, and aligning roles and responsibilities appropriatelyacross business, IT, enterprise architecture teams and competency centers. They also includeformalizing process governance, and driving cultural and organizational changes. This will widen thedistance between organizations and their competition, and increase their chances of becomingindustry leaders.




For more examples of the business impact of BPM, consider our 2013 BPM Excellence Awardwinners:

■ "Gartner Announces Winners of 2013's Business Process Management Excellence Awards inEMEA," 25 February 2013

■ "Gartner Announces Winners of the 2013 Business Process Management Excellence Awards inNorth America," 7 March 2013

■ "Gartner Announces Winners of 2013 Business Process Management Excellence Awards inAsia/Pacific," 8 April 2013




Recommended Reading: "Business Process Management as a Discipline"

"Agenda Overview for Business Process Management, 2013"

"Achieving Agility: BPM Delivers Business Agility Through New Management Practices"

"Improve Business Outcomes by Advancing From BPM Maturity Level 2 to Level 3"

"Research Index: Best-Practice Advice for Succeeding in Business Process Management"


"Case Study: Business Process Management at Siemens Canada"


M. Hammer and J. Champy, "Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution,"HarperBusiness Essentials, 2003



Definition: The chief process officer (CPO) is an emergent senior leadership role that providesstrategic oversight and direction for managing business processes and, particularly, improvingbusiness processes that cut across the organization. The CPO is accountable for understanding,tracking, measuring, and optimizing an enterprise's end-to-end business processes, focusing onimproving business performance. Originally promoted by Michael Hammer in 2004, it is only nowthat Gartner is seeing evidence that such a role exists and is delivering value.


http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2347315








Position and Adoption Speed Justification: New evidence of this role's use within organizationshas prompted Gartner to move CPO much further along the Hype Cycle — from prehype toposttrough.

Gartner has defined business process management (BPM) as a "management discipline that treatsprocesses as assets that directly contribute to organizational performance through operationexcellence and business agility." This definition highlights two key elements. "Processes as assets"highlights the value of processes in their own right, and the need to care for, own and manage themjust like any other enterprise asset. "Directly contribute to organizational performance" relates to therealization that processes across industries are among the key differentiators for organizations andhas reached a critical mass (see "BPM Survey Insights: Maturity Advances as BPM GoesMainstream"). This rising importance of process, as well as the act of managing process (as in, todiscover, analyze, redesign, execute and monitor business processes over time), has led to anincrease in focus from senior leaders and has driven a need for executive oversight of thisdiscipline. The role of the CPO is advancing to fill this need.

In 2004, Michael Hammer, of business process re-engineering fame (seewww.informationweek.com/news/18201404), promoted the idea of a "chief process owner." Thatrole differs from the already existing business process director, because its scope, vision andauthority are considerably enhanced. Now we have evidence of numerous organizations —shipping, supply chain management, healthcare, automotive, retail and geographies — in the U.S.,Europe and Canada appointing CPOs. Gartner's 2013 CIO Agenda Survey (see "Hunting andHarvesting in a Digital World: The 2013 CIO Agenda") reported that 30% of CIOs see this as analternate job function for them (but not reporting "inside IT"). This increased evidence, and theincreasing hype surrounding this role, have led to changing this year's positioning from prehype toposthype, and even into plateau.

The challenge for some organizations will be the rationalization of responsibilities between thebusiness process director and the CPO (see "Toolkit: Sample Job Description for a BusinessProcess Director"). While for many years business process directors have headed BPM activitieswithin an organization, they typically reported to the CIO, the office of the CIO or the COO. Theanalogy can be drawn between an IT director and a CIO. One is more technically or domain-focused; the other is more outward looking and strategic. For some organizations, this differencewill be minor; for others, it will be significant.

Upending our view last year of infancy, we now see the role is expanding to a significant number ofcompanies. The skill set for the role is still maturing, with CIOs (as noted above), ex-CIOs, ex-business-unit leads and heads of HR fulfilling the role. There is discussion on the amount of ITexperience versus business experience needed to successfully execute the function. A number oforganizations are noting that the role needs to come from within, rather than being fulfilled byconsultants/contractors, because they lack the organizational knowledge necessary to "hit theground running." This also suggests that overcoming organizational politics, and leveragingbusiness contacts, are significant elements of the role. The greater enterprise focus may be onereason CIOs are a good fit — CIOs have worked with multiple BU partners before on joint valueprojects.

Gartner views the role of CPO as moving toward wide adoption.


http://www.informationweek.com/news/18201404



User Advice:

■ The CPO role should be implemented when senior management realizes the need for intensefocus on improving business processes and organizational performance.

■ While specific skills can vary for each position, clarity must be provided for the success criteriafor the CPO role in advance of an appointment. This focus must include measures/metrics thatdemonstrate how the enterprise performance has improved as a result of the appointment ofthis senior role.

■ The CPO must never own the business processes (it should be "officer," not "owner" asHammer proposed), but process owners should have a strong working relationship with theCPO. This ensures that conflicts between business units or functional leads, and the needs ofthe business process owner are challenged at an appropriately senior level within theorganization.

■ The CPO should have input to the rating process of business unit heads where cross-organizational business processes are impacted by their performance.

Business Impact: The CPO role can deliver significant benefit to an organization by providingsenior-level focus and commitment to improving business processes and, in return, improvingbusiness performance. Care needs to be taken, however, that the role does not become overlyfocused on developing capabilities in BPM and "empire building." The focus must remain centeredon delivering business benefit. The CPO should not own the business processes (that should be theresponsibility of business unit leads and functional managers), but rather own the process ofprocess management.




Recommended Reading: "Starting Up the Business Process Competency Center"

"Role Definition and Organizational Structure: Business Process Improvement"

"Hunting and Harvesting in a Digital World: The 2013 CIO Agenda"

Climbing the Slope

BPM Standards

Analysis By: Nicholas Gall

Definition: "BPM standards" is a collective term for the subset of open standards andspecifications used to model and execute business processes, especially the three most prominent




standards: Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) 2.0, Web Services Business ProcessExecution Language (WS-BPEL) 2.0 and XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) 2.1.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Business process management (BPM) standardshave not changed their position or pace on the Hype Cycle in the past year. The goal of BPMstandards has been typical of other standards efforts — to ensure skill reuse, definitional clarity,interoperability and portability — and has been focused specifically on process managementefforts. BPM standards are primarily, but not exclusively, used within:

■ Workflow engines, composition environments, integration suites and BPM suites

■ Business process analysis modeling tools

■ Certain process-enabled business applications

For the restricted definition used here, BPM standards attempt to define a common representationalapproach to key BPM activities. The two most common are:

■ The capture of a model of a business process (typically an automated one)

■ The model-driven execution of a business process

For example, BPMN 2.0 is a popular and successful standard for process modeling in which a usercreates a graphical, often automatable, representation of a business process, using uniformprimitives for common activities. Likewise, WS-BPEL 2.0 is a process specification languagewhereby an important subclass of business processes (those that are based on model-drivenexecution enabled strictly through Web services) can be expressed in XML. Finally, XPDL 2.1effectively serves as a way to exchange formal process models (typically based on BPMN) amongtools offered by different vendors.

The BPM standards entry appears on the 2013 Hype Cycle in the same position as last year. In thepast year or so, the BPM standards rush has faded, and the hype has diminished, so progress hasslowed. As we first observed in 2011, the prevailing view of BPM standards has undergone a shift— a shift that both reinterprets the concept and moves it forward slightly on the Hype Cycle. For toolong, a common BPM standards mindset was to ensure that processes operating in one processengine could be transferred to another engine and still remain operational. In reality, although usersmay want to execute subsets of an overall process model in different execution engines (forexample, multiple BPM technologies), whole processes are rarely transferred from one engine toanother at the technical implementation level.

Expectations that focused on process implementation portability (moving processes at theexecution level) have been replaced by those that focus on process design reuse (sharingprocesses at the model level). In addition, many minor proposed standards have failed to achievetraction (such as BPML). Given this mindset shift, the concept of BPM standards is now focused onvendor adoption and user acceptance of three key BPM standards: BPMN 2.0, WS-BPEL 2.0 andXPDL 2.1. These key standards collectively under the label "BPM standards" have been positionedas slowly rising from the Trough of Disillusionment.




One new BPM standard is expected to be announced in 2H13 — The Object Management Group'sDecision Model and Notation. This specification is expected to begin the standardization ofbusiness rule and decision table notations. However, do not expect to see it ratified or implementeduntil well into 2014.

User Advice: The overall goal of standardizing BPM technology has become less important andless comprehensive. Important BPM standards are few — really, just BPMN 2.0, WS-BPEL 2.0 andXPDL 2.1. Although narrowly scoped, these BPM standards deliver tangible value, and they canenforce a collective wisdom of "how things are done" — always an aid when a new concept isembraced. As for practical advice on which standards to select, consider these seven points:

1. Seek process design reuse (sharing a process model across multiple roles within a singleprocess toolset) through process-modeling-focused standards (for example, BPMN 2.0). If youmove across process-modeling platforms, realize that vendor implementation differences willmake tool-to-tool process design reuse more complex, but it is still a worthwhile effort.

2. Seek process execution interoperability (for example, connecting discrete processenvironments and BPM technologies at runtime) through process-execution-focused standards(for example, WS-BPEL 2.0).

3. Keep the distinction between process design reuse and process execution interoperability clearin your review of BPM standards. They are not the same thing, but can confuse the discussion.

4. Use caution when seeking process implementation portability (for example, transferring processimplementations wholesale from one process engine to another), because this is often of moretheoretical than practical value.

5. Beware of proprietary extensions to base standards. While these extensions often add missingfunctionality, they render portability impractical.

6. Combine standards where it makes sense (for example, combining BPMN 2.0 for processmodeling and WS-BPEL for process execution, as defined in Chapter 15 of the BPMN 2.0specification).

7. Above all, do not let BPM standards become the central point in a vendor or productdiscussion.

Business Impact: BPM is a transformative discipline, but the standards that support the modelingand automation of business processes are merely ranked at a low benefit rating. BPM standardsease the creation, reuse and sharing of business processes, but they are not, by themselves,transformative.

Benefit Rating: Low



Sample Vendors: OMG; World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)




Recommended Reading: "What the Business Process Director Needs to Know About BPMN 2.0"

"Market Profile: Business Process Management Infrastructure 2011"



Definition: Content collaboration is a style of unstructured process in which multiple parties cometogether to co-create or co-author some kind of content, such as a book, contract, proposal orRFP, or a new product design blueprint. As collaboration, the flow of interactions between thehuman, machine and information (content) resources cannot be predetermined. Contentcollaboration can be a top-level process (such as in publishing) or a subprocess within a larger,more structured process (such as new policy underwriting).

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: We are adding this profile to the Hype Cycle to raiseawareness of technological changes that affect how this mature process style can be implemented.Content collaboration is just one of many process styles.

Modern workflow technologies can make the dynamic, ad hoc and unstructured nature of contentcollaboration more visible and, thus, more manageable. Broader recognition of the complexity ofnonroutine work is driving market interest in software technologies that better support unstructuredwork. Social media especially has increased the hype around collaborative work. Contentcollaboration is a form of mass collaboration, although all mass collaboration is not necessarilyrelated to content creation.

For years, content collaboration has largely occurred in an ad hoc fashion, relying (at best) on emailwith attachments, or various forms of file and document sharing, for workflow. However, thesepredominant methods for content collaboration are unmanaged; both management and participantshave little ability to manage the exchanges of information between parties to the desired outcome.These ad hoc approaches are fraught with weaknesses, including inability to:

■ Track status

■ Ensure version control

■ Secure the content and knowledge sharing that is typical of such interactions

■ Audit decisions

■ Track participation levels for compliance with policies (such as peer review)

■ Progress toward the desired outcome

Modern technologies with embedded workflow (such as SharePoint and Windows WorkflowFoundation) — plus growing requirements to improve the effectiveness of the interactions, and tobetter manage the attainment of desired outcomes — are driving a renewed focus on contentcollaboration as a process style.




Only recently has content collaboration been recognized as an unstructured style of work that canbe better enabled with modern workflow technology. Newer, nonprocedural workflow technologiescan be applied to better coordinate (not automate) the interactions between people, machines andinformation content, making them visible to facilitate management of this process style. Modernworkflow technology enables nonsequential, unpredictable routing. Thus, it can mimic the ad hocflow of email interactions, yet add transparency, control and auditability of the interactions and thecontent.

Social phenomena have really increased the focus on collaboration in the workplace and, evenbeyond, in the value chain. For example, mass collaboration scenarios often bring together largemasses of individuals with no previous relationships. This is bringing all kinds of new softwaretechnologies to the fore to better support collaborative work. Just some of the options are:

■ Social servers that unify social-style collaboration and communications

■ Cloud-file-sharing utilities

■ Cloud-based social collaboration spaces

■ Office productivity tools and suites

■ Various BPM platforms (on and off premises)

■ ECM suite workflow improvements

Buyers are just beginning to distinguish styles of collaboration based on attributes such asaudience, participation, choreography, scope, scale and duration. Content collaboration is just onestyle.

User Advice: Process improvement leaders should:

■ Begin to identify co-authored or co-created types of information content used in theiroperational business processes. The relative importance of this content to business outcomesshould factor into any evaluations of technology to support content collaboration.

■ Provide best-practice guidelines to the workforce for maximizing the value of alternativecollaboration technologies in place.

■ Consider if the current software infrastructural technologies are appropriate to support contentcollaboration needs, especially for differentiating and innovative processes. If not, then newersocial and BPM platforms with modern, metadata-driven workflow should be considered, tobetter enable this style of work.

Business Impact: Incremental efficiency and effectiveness gains are possible by making today's adhoc interactions more transparent and coordinated. By coordinating the interactions across theresources, time delays are typically reduced and version control is improved. These benefitstranslate into efficiency gains. Effectiveness benefits derive from the better manageability of theinteractions.







Sample Vendors: Alfresco Software; Appian; EMC Documentum; Microsoft; OpenText (Metastorm);Oracle

Recommended Reading: "Leverage Dynamic and Ad Hoc Processes Now for BusinessAdaptability"


Analysis By: Janelle B. Hill; Michele Cantara

Definition: Guided navigation refers to a business process style in which the software guides theparticipant through alternative workflows in order to get to a satisfactory outcome. Although thisstyle has existed for years, unlike earlier programmatic approaches, newer business processmanagement suites (BPMSs) leverage declarative models, explicit rules, context metadata andother techniques to more intelligently guide the participant.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: We are adding this profile to the Hype Cycle to raiseawareness of the technological changes that have occurred to make such workflows more dynamic.Guided navigation is just one of many process styles.

Although guided navigation as a software solution design has existed for years, we position it aspost-trough to reflect the maturity of more modern technologies to enable this style. For example,most portal products include workflow scripting or other prescriptive approaches (such as nesteddecisions and menus) to guiding participant behavior. BPMSs differ from earlier, proceduralprogramming techniques. Newer products leverage declarative models, explicit rules, contextmetadata and other techniques to more intelligently guide the workflow. This style is alsosometimes referred to as "guided procedures," "guided workflows," "business process guidance"or "next best action." Most self-service portals include some type of guided navigation. Otherexamples include contact center agent coaching, and leading field service agents through the bestpractices for repairing a utility outage.

Organizations use guided navigation for the following reasons:

■ They are looking for ways to accelerate the adoption of these best practices in order to reducetraining times and on-the-floor support requirements for new staff, especially when theworkforce is distributed, or experiences a high degree of turnover.

■ They need to provide just-in-time guidance to workers when those workers need to carry outhighly complex and variable business processes.

■ They need a combination of best-practice guidance and tracking for audit or compliancepurposes.




■ They want to enable self-sufficiency such that participants can accomplish their objective (forexample, opening a new bank account online) without having to interact with experts, such as acontact center agent or manager.

Uptake of guided navigation as a process style has been common in services industries such asbanking, investments and insurance, where it has been used to help workers decide on the optimalprocess path (to reduce risk, maximize share of wallet, or increase customer satisfaction) whenmultiple process alternatives are possible, and for Web self-service portals. However, there are newmarkets for guided navigation to penetrate. For example, BPOs have an opportunity to use guidednavigation to move from full-time-equivalent-based commercial models to more outcome-basedcontracts. Also, interest in the Internet of Things and the growing importance of IT/OT integrationhas prompted some business process management suite (BPMS) vendors to integrate machine-to-machine (M2M) capabilities into an intelligent BPMS (iBPMS). Vendors who have this functionalitycan help field service workers from utilities, equipment manufacturers and even automobilemechanics get just-in-time access to best-practice repair guidance that can dynamically alter basedon real-time performance indicators emitted by device sensors. The use of the newer technologies(those mentioned above) can extend this style to process areas that are more automated, with lessdependence on human interaction and judgment to progress the workflow. Another example isCrawford & Co. Leveraging Appian's BPMS, Crawford uses mobile BPM features to guide tasks forinsurance adjustors in the field (see www.cio.com/article/720153/How_One_Business_Uses_Social_Networking_and_BPM_to_Handle_Disasters andwww.appian.com/bpm-customers/story/crawford.jsp). Other vendors have developed context-aware guidance that can sense the user's context and deliver the appropriate instructions at themoment of need. Gartner estimates that 40% to 50% of large enterprises employ guided navigationin customer service domains. Because this style is so well-proven and in use in mainstream BPMSinstallations, we position this process style as post-trough and early mainstream.

User Advice:

■ Business process owners in organizations experiencing a high degree of worker churn shouldensure that guided navigation is a primary feature of their applications and BPM solutions.

■ All traditional coded applications, including self-service portals, use embedded (implicit)workflow that guides the participant to predetermined options. Changes to the navigationusually require IT to make time-consuming changes. Business process owners who areresponsible for continuously improving highly complex processes should consider the use of aBPMS, business rule management system (BRMS) or other techniques to make the navigationguidance explicit and readily modifiable by business analysts, rather than programmers.

■ Within the next two years, CIOs in utilities, and those who service or manufacturer devices orequipment, should actively plan to use an iBPMS or BRMS with M2M integration to gaincompetitive advantage from their field service processes.

Business Impact: The business impact of guided navigation is often high. In businesses with highemployee turnover, it can greatly reduce the time it takes to train new employees, as well as tosubstitute for some expenditures on ongoing training. It can also improve efficiency, reduce errorsand enhance customer satisfaction:




http://www.appian.com/bpm-customers/story/crawford.jsp



■ A retailer experienced 120% ROI after deploying guided navigation — www.tibco.com/customers/#carphone-warehouse-nimbus.

■ HSBC used guided navigation in its self-service payment inquiry solution to reduce the numberof open inquiries by 25% — www.pega.com/sites/default/files/HSBC-Case-Study-Mar2013.pdf.

■ The customer service center at Health New England uses guided navigation to answer memberquestions within 10 seconds, increase staff capacity by 20% without added head count, andreduce training requirements by 60% — marketing.panviva.com/acton/media/1856/gartner.

■ EDP, a provider of renewable energy, uses a BPMS to detect turbine outages, and hasimplemented guided navigation processes to collaboratively resolve those outages with expertslocated in disparate regions — www.appian.com/bpm-resources/datasheets_cases/case_edp.pdf.

■ Austrian Gas uses a BPMS to manage gas distribution across its pipeline, and employs guidednavigation to help partners and suppliers rapidly resolve questions about distribution andcapacity management — www.bosch-si.com/company/customers/energy-management/austrian-gas-grid-management/austrian-gas-grid-management.html.




Sample Vendors: Appian; Bosch Software Innovations; IBM; Knowesia; Panviva; Pegasystems;Tibco Software

Recommended Reading: "Four Best Practices for Understanding Your Business's Needs for'Workflow'"

"Market Update: Match BPMS Vendors to Your Usage Scenarios"

"Liberate Your Business Processes From Your ERP With BPM for Agility"

"What IT Leaders Need to Know About bpmPaas and Cloud-Enabled BPM Platforms"

Business Process Competency Center


Definition: The business process competency center (BPCC) acts as an internal consultancy andpromoter for business process management (BPM) — including training and awareness — andoffers a "one-stop shop" that provides training and services to multiple BPM projects, programsand initiatives. The BPCC implements, chooses and supports the guidelines, standards and toolsand offers services based on a methodology toolbox that enable the enterprise to progress with andadopt BPM.


http://www.tibco.com/customers/#carphone-warehouse-nimbus

http://www.tibco.com/customers/#carphone-warehouse-nimbus

http://www.pega.com/sites/default/files/HSBC-Case-Study-Mar2013.pdf

http://marketing.panviva.com/acton/media/1856/gartner

http://www.appian.com/bpm-resources/datasheets_cases/case_edp.pdf

http://www.appian.com/bpm-resources/datasheets_cases/case_edp.pdf

http://www.bosch-si.com/company/customers/energy-management/austrian-gas-grid-management/austrian-gas-grid-management.html

http://www.bosch-si.com/company/customers/energy-management/austrian-gas-grid-management/austrian-gas-grid-management.html



Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The creation of a BPCC is recognized as a necessarycomponent, and has taken hold as an essential element, for successful BPM within organizations.Organizations are using the BPCC to consolidate existing improvement initiatives and drive a stepchange in the scope, scale and impact of business process improvement (BPI) projects embracingBPI programs. Data from our 2012 Worldwide BPM Adoption Survey (see "Reliance on BusinessProcess Standardization Is at Odds With a Focus on Differentiating Processes") shows that 34%have a BPCC, and those with BPCCs are more likely to focus on differentiating (69% versus 59%)and innovative (43% versus 38%) processes. Numerous system integrators and vendors offerservices to implement a BPCC as part of their BPM offerings.

Issues still create stumbling blocks for BPCC adoption. Gaining organizational adoption can bedifficult because the BPCC needs to mirror the culture and maturity of the organization, as well asdeliver results that build trust; however, the value being realized is minimizing this issue. There aremany options for the staffing and reporting structure, services offered, engagement model, andprojects and programs selected. The optimum implementation is a blended model in which IT andthe business drive BPM projects. However, for the first project, it is recommended to take a simplerapproach and have the BPCC team report to IT or the business. In the last 12 months, the BPCChas been merging with the PMO or EPMO function to form business transformation offices,enabling more holistic coverage of process, information, technology and people — and this hasbeen key in enabling both areas to move up the maturity curve.

User Advice:

■ Implement a BPCC to advance organizational maturity of BPM, and to continue to mature thecapabilities of the BPCC over time.

■ Assess the best operating structure, given the BPM goals and organizational capabilities.

■ Clearly define the services, standards and governance offered by the BPCC.

■ Staff the group with highly competent individuals with varied backgrounds.

■ Define the interfaces, and ensure the BPCC is integrated into existing competency centers(especially BI) or governance models.

■ Create a communications plan that sells the value of the BPCC and captures successes andlessons learned, and then communicate regularly with key stakeholders to keep collaboratorsand users engaged in BPM work.

■ Establish a discrete set of BPCC services to simplify this engagement with business partners,and set expectations on delivery and deliverables.

Business Impact: The creation of a BPCC is a vital step in maturing an enterprise's BPM efforts,because it:

■ Mitigates the risk of failure or loss of interest by promoting a holistic view of process throughoutthe enterprise.




■ Widens the reach of BPM knowledge and skills, and ensures that resources are applied to thehighest-value projects.

■ Enables continued and consistent use of BPM techniques in the organization.

The BPCC is the key construct for organizations that want to improve their operational effectivenessby rationalizing and reusing process assets. Organizations that fail to establish a cross-functionalBPCC will find that their efforts do not deliver the promised results in the long term. Their BPMefforts stagnate at the project level and deliver meager results, often resulting in an abandonment ofBPM initiatives. The BPCC enables an organization to move from BPI projects to BPI programs —an essential step for an organization looking to mature its BPM capabilities. Organizations that planfor and provide resources to establish and evolve the BPCC will be able to move from discrete BPMprojects to transformational BPM programs in six to 12 months.




Recommended Reading: "Reliance on Business Process Standardization Is at Odds With a Focuson Differentiating Processes"

"Toolkit: Internal Marketing for a Business Process Competency Center"

"Starting Up the Business Process Competency Center"

"Best Practices and Pitfalls for Business Process Competency Center Success"

"Toolkit: Building a Business Process Competency Center"

"Predicts 2012: Organizational Politics Hampers, Gamification Motivates BPM Adoption"

"CIOs Should Champion the Use of a Business Transformation Office When Faced WithFundamental Business Change"

Entering the Plateau

Business Process Management Suites


Definition: Business process management suites (BPMSs) provide an integrated set oftechnologies for designing, implementing and orchestrating composite processes that includeinteractions among people, systems, information and policies/rules. The suite of technologiessupports the full cycle of process discovery, analysis, design, implementation, execution,monitoring and optimization. Its model-driven composition approach enables business and ITprofessionals to work together more collaboratively than what is possible with traditional codedapproaches.




Position and Adoption Speed Justification: BPMSs provide strong support for business processmanagement (BPM) projects that leverage software solutions to enable much of the work within aprocess. In a BPMS solution, graphical models are used by business and IT professionals to directlymonitor and adjust the process, and the work flowing through the process. The explicit processmodels typically expose lower-level, configurable and parameterized models and objects, such asuser interfaces (UIs), organization models, data objects, decision models, key performance indicator(KPI)/reporting dashboard models and integration models. In most BPMSs, the process model usesBusiness Process Model and Notation (BPMN), a visualization of XML metadata, which is thentransformed into an executable format. In this way, a BPMS can execute the process model asdesigned and a dynamically adjusted process model or instance of the process. Unlike pastcomputer-aided software engineering tools or static business process analysis tools, the visualmodels of the best BPMSs are synchronized with their execution. This ensures that informationmade visible to business managers and participants via models (including KPI models and activityflow models) is always an accurate reflection of what is happening in the real-time softwareproduction environment. This loose coupling of the visual model and its execution form enablesprocesses to be more flexible than the technological approaches of the past. The XML model andthe physical resources can be altered independently of each other, yet dynamically synchronized.This model-driven approach to process management blurs the traditional distinction betweendesign time and runtime. In this way, operational managers and process participants (with the rightprivileges) can adjust — in response to changing market dynamics — the execution flow and statusof work items in progress, improve business process outcomes, and achieve continuous processimprovement. Thus, a BPMS addresses the desire of business managers to see and gain hands-oncontrol of their operational processes to better manage work outcomes.

The dot position on the Hype Cycle reflects the rapid maturation of BPMSs as a product categoryand mainstream market. There are a number of forces and innovations — most notably, socialmedia, mobility, cloud and big data/information — that have moved BPMSs up the Slope ofEnlightenment and onto the Plateau of Productivity quickly. These innovations are already reflectedin the next generation of suites, intelligent BPMSs (iBPMSs).

The market for BPMSs went mainstream in 2010. Since then, BPMSs have become the most widelyadopted, model-driven application infrastructure stack. The 2012 market revenue for BPMSs wasnearly $2.4 billion (see "Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide, 2012"). In late 2011, westarted to see some vendors, which had introduced their third generations of BPMSs, beginning tobetter address unstructured processes (see "Expand Your BPM Horizons by Exploring UnstructuredProcesses") and social BPM, as well as supporting a usage scenario we describe as intelligentbusiness operations (see "Use Intelligent Business Operations to Create Business Advantage"). Thisshift is pushing the current generation of BPMSs through the trough very quickly. However, it willtake at least two years before the iBPMS is broadly adopted. The current market for BPMSscontinues to offer good growth opportunities for many vendors.

In many ways, the BPMS market is a "long tail" market (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail forinformation on the long tail theory by Chris Anderson). The operational agility that a BPMSimplementation enables makes it very appealing as a platform to address the thousands of uniqueprocess management challenges that haven't been addressed by commercial or custom-builtsoftware. BPMSs, especially when combined with process templates, are increasingly attractive to


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail



mainstream buyers to more quickly address their need for differentiating and innovative processes.Similarly, service providers (such as for the cloud and business process outsourcing) that want aplatform for flexible applications — personalized to each of their customers — have also beenadopting BPMSs.

User Advice: A BPMS should be considered for processes that have balanced requirements forcoordinating human efforts with automated activities and information flows to deliver higher workoutcomes. When close management of the resource interactions and interdependencies among allthree resources (people, systems and information) is critical to optimizing work outcomes, a BPMSshould be considered as the implementation approach of choice. Processes with thesecharacteristics are often cross-functional, complex, long-running, external-facing and differentiatingto the business or industry. (Gartner defines a "long-running process" as one that takes at least onehour to complete a single work item. The dependency on human interactions is the primarycontributor to process instance duration.) Such processes also are typically considered systems ofdifferentiation and systems of innovation (see "Balance Process Agility and Process IntegrityChoices Along the Application Continuum" and "What Types of Model-Driven Applications Are MostAppropriate for a High Pace of Process Change?").

Comprehensive BPMSs that include workflow, business rule management, and human and contentcollaboration to support sales, customer service, and other external-facing and less structuredbusiness processes should also be examined. Additionally, BPMSs should be used to moreeffectively manage exception and subsidiary processes, which create a high percentage of theongoing risks and costs of business transactions.

Midsize organizations or those with low process skills (in areas such as modeling, analysis,measurement and simulation/optimization) should evaluate BPM platform-as-a-service offerings,especially those that also offer process templates. These are likely to be better-suited to their needfor fast deployment and business results than an on-premises BPMS would be.

Business Impact: BPMSs change the way processes are automated to be more inclusive, usingsoftware to coordinate all activities and resources (people, systems and information), not just toautomate the routine, repetitive and transactional aspects of work. This, in turn, changes howprocesses are managed — from implicit approaches to explicit approaches — using new graphicalmodels as UIs to see and manipulate work in progress. This greater level of visibility andcoordination also enhances the way people work, with a greater emphasis on collectivecontributions versus individual task management.

A BPMS implementation approach to broad, cross-functional process coordination can transformthe way the organization works, impacting its culture and its management approaches. The BPMSmakes the process itself, as well as work within the process, visible (via executable models), highlyadaptable and fully accountable for all changes using a consolidated audit log for recording allevent-state information. The BPMS approach shifts process management responsibility, includingchange control rights, back to business process owners (rather than the IT organization havingexclusive change control rights) by enabling designated business roles to more directly change aprocess design, and to change in-flight (aka executing) work items. Although BPMS capabilities arepowerful, most companies lack the BPM maturity to fully take advantage of them (see "Improve




Business Outcomes by Advancing From BPM Maturity Level 2 to Level 3"). Solutions composedusing a BPMS typically reduce process costs, cycle times, resource consumption and risk.


Market Penetration: More than 50% of target audience

Maturity: Mature mainstream

Sample Vendors: AgilePoint; Appian; Aurea; Bizagi; Bosch; Cordys; DST Systems; Fujitsu; IBM;Intalio; K2; Kofax; Newgen Software; OpenText; Oracle; Pegasystems; Perceptive Software;PNMsoft; Red Hat; SAP; Software AG; Tibco Software

Recommended Reading: "Use Intelligent Business Operations to Create Business Advantage"



"Improve Business Outcomes by Advancing From BPM Maturity Level 2 to Level 3"

"Balance Process Agility and Process Integrity Choices Along the Application Continuum"

"What Types of Model-Driven Applications Are Most Appropriate for a High Pace of ProcessChange?"

Process Style: Forms-Driven Workflow

Analysis By: Janelle B. Hill; Teresa Jones

Definition: Forms-driven workflow is a prime example of a dynamic, structured process style. It isextensively used in all industries for "request for approval" processes. The workflow is very well-established and predictable, with routing logic based on either following the management hierarchyor using dynamic, explicit rules.

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: We are adding this profile to the Hype Cycle to raiseawareness of this mature process style and of the technological changes that have occurred tomake such workflows more dynamic. Forms-driven workflow is just one of many process styles.

This style of workflow has existed for years, and has matured as human workflow technology hasevolved. The importance of such workflow applications ranges from mission-critical (such asrequests for credit card approval and purchase order approval requests) to administrative (such asrequests to hire and requests for vacation time). Many of these processes have relied on email orECM repositories for their workflow technology. The dramatic rise in adoption of Microsoft'sSharePoint over the last three to four years and of newer mobile tablets have significantlycontributed to the awareness and leverage of this process style for forms-driven data collection andapproval flows, prompting us to put it on the Hype Cycle with our other process styles. ModernBPM-enabling workflow technologies use activity state metadata, human interaction and explicit




rules to advance the work item (as in, the form request). Using state data and explicit rules makesthe flow more dynamic than earlier workflow technology. Mobile apps have also changed the designof many of these types of workflows.

The use of explicit rules enables more dynamic routing compared to traditional human workflowpatterns, conditional logic and procedural coding. As an example, an explicit rule might state thatthe request should be routed to the next available second-line manager above the requester. Ratherthan developers coding "if-then-else" logic that names appropriate second-line managers, theruntime rule engine can determine itself to whom the item should be routed. This approachseparates the workflow from the organizational hierarchy model so that logic continues to executeeven when the organizational model changes.

User Advice:

■ Distinguish various process styles based on the resource interaction patterns, the degree offlexibility needed in the workflow, and the degree to which the workflow can be predeterminedand prescribed at design time. Forms-driven workflow is one of the most common styles, andmay be combined with other styles, all within the context of an end-to-end managed process.

■ Evaluate modern workflow technologies, such as those found in business process managementsuites (BPMSs) and other BPM platforms, and mobile app design principals to address forms-driven workflow requirements that need more flexibility and dynamic behavior.

Business Impact: Use of mature, forms-driven workflow technology can increase both theefficiency and effectiveness of many "request for approval" types of applications by reducing timedelays and routing errors. In addition, implementing these types of requirements in a modernworkflow technology versus email provides greater visibility and management control.


Market Penetration: More than 50% of target audience

Maturity: Mature mainstream

Sample Vendors: AgilePoint; BizFlow; K2; Metasonic; Microsoft (SharePoint); Nintex; OpenText(Metastorm); SAP; Winshuttle

Recommended Reading: "Leverage Dynamic and Ad Hoc Processes Now for BusinessAdaptability"

Appendixes




Figure 3. Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, 2012

Technology Trigger

Peak ofInflated

Expectations

Trough of Disillusionment Slope of Enlightenment

Plateau of Productivity

time

expectations

Plateau will be reached in:

less than 2 years 2 to 5 years 5 to 10 years more than 10 yearsobsoletebefore plateau

As of July 2012

Subject-Oriented BPM (S-BPM)


Cloud Business Rule Management(BRM) Services

Case Management FrameworksSocial Network Analysis for BPM

Social BPMBPA for the Masses

Intelligent Business ProcessManagement Suite

BPM Certification

Information Semantic Services

Business Process GovernanceIntelligent Business Operations

BPM Platform as a Service (bpmPaaS)Business Process Optimization and Simulation

Enterprise MetadataManagement

Cloud BPMProcess Templates

BPM-Enabled BPO


Composite Content Applications

Business Process Management, the DisciplineBusiness Rule Management Systems

BPM Standards

Business Process Competency CenterEnterprise-Class Agile Development

Automated Business Process Discovery Complex-Event Processing




Business Process Management Suites

Business Activity Monitoring





Hype Cycle Phases, Benefit Ratings and Maturity Levels

Table 4. Hype Cycle Phases

Phase Definition

Innovation Trigger A breakthrough, public demonstration, product launch or other event generatessignificant press and industry interest.

Peak of InflatedExpectations

During this phase of overenthusiasm and unrealistic projections, a flurry of well-publicized activity by technology leaders results in some successes, but morefailures, as the technology is pushed to its limits. The only enterprises makingmoney are conference organizers and magazine publishers.

Trough ofDisillusionment

Because the technology does not live up to its overinflated expectations, it rapidlybecomes unfashionable. Media interest wanes, except for a few cautionary tales.

Slope ofEnlightenment

Focused experimentation and solid hard work by an increasingly diverse range oforganizations lead to a true understanding of the technology's applicability, risksand benefits. Commercial off-the-shelf methodologies and tools ease thedevelopment process.

Plateau ofProductivity

The real-world benefits of the technology are demonstrated and accepted. Toolsand methodologies are increasingly stable as they enter their second and thirdgenerations. Growing numbers of organizations feel comfortable with the reducedlevel of risk; the rapid growth phase of adoption begins. Approximately 20% ofthe technology's target audience has adopted or is adopting the technology as itenters this phase.

Years to MainstreamAdoption

The time required for the technology to reach the Plateau of Productivity.


Table 5. Benefit Ratings

Benefit Rating Definition

Transformational Enables new ways of doing business across industries that will result in major shifts inindustry dynamics

High Enables new ways of performing horizontal or vertical processes that will result insignificantly increased revenue or cost savings for an enterprise

Moderate Provides incremental improvements to established processes that will result inincreased revenue or cost savings for an enterprise

Low Slightly improves processes (for example, improved user experience) that will bedifficult to translate into increased revenue or cost savings





Table 6. Maturity Levels

Maturity Level Status Products/Vendors

Embryonic ■ In labs ■ None

Emerging ■ Commercialization by vendors

■ Pilots and deployments by industry leaders

■ First generation

■ High price

■ Much customization

Adolescent ■ Maturing technology capabilities and processunderstanding

■ Uptake beyond early adopters

■ Second generation

■ Less customization

Early mainstream ■ Proven technology

■ Vendors, technology and adoption rapidlyevolving

■ Third generation

■ More out of box

■ Methodologies

Maturemainstream

■ Robust technology

■ Not much evolution in vendors or technology

■ Several dominant vendors

Legacy ■ Not appropriate for new developments

■ Cost of migration constrains replacement

■ Maintenance revenue focus

Obsolete ■ Rarely used ■ Used/resale market only


Recommended ReadingSome documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

"Agenda Overview for Business Process Management, 2013"

"ITScore for Business Process Management, 2012"

"Predicts 2013: Business Process Improvement Leaders Need to Stop Tackling the Tactical andGet Strategic"


"How to Set Up and Sustain a Strategically Vital Business Process Competency Center"




"Successful Approaches to Business Process Improvement"


"Commercial Operational Intelligence Platforms Are Coming to Market"

"Liberate Your Business Processes From Your ERP With BPM for Agility"



"Leverage Automated Business Process Discovery for Business Benefits"

"What a BP Director Needs to Know About an iBPMS"

"Four Best Practices for Understanding Your Business's Needs for 'Workflow'"

"Pick Your Successful Onramp to BPM Benefits"

"Use BPM to Drive Revenue, Not Just Efficiency"

"Reliance on Business Process Standardization Is at Odds With a Focus on DifferentiatingProcesses"

"Bust the Myth of the Overarching BPM Methodology and Leverage a Toolbox Approach to Bridgethe Gap"


"Innovation Insight: Neurobusiness Validates Behavioral Sciences as a Transformational BusinessDiscipline"

"Six Best Practices for Moving to a Culture of Extreme Collaboration"

"BPM Worst Practice: Treating BPM as Just a Technology and Ignoring BPM as a Discipline"

"BPM Summit Survey: Organizations Must Adapt to Face the Uncertainty Caused by IncreasingProcess Change or Perish"

"Master Social BPM to Build a Social Organization"

"The Eight Building Blocks of CRM: Processes"

"Overcome Global Process Standardization Hurdles in Manufacturing Operations"

"Financial Institutions Need BPM for Risk and Compliance Management"

"P&C and Life Insurers Focus on Maximizing BPM Effectiveness and Results"

"Expedite BPO Benefits Delivery with Business Process Management Technologies"




"Understanding Gartner's Hype Cycles"

Note 1 Quick Overview of Gartner Hype Cycles

Gartner Hype Cycles track changes in key areas of concern for each topic:

■ They offer a snapshot of the relative adoption of technologies, IT methodologies andmanagement disciplines, and highlight overhyped areas.

■ They estimate how long technologies and trends will take to reach maturity.

■ They provide a priority matrix, highlighting which items are most likely to produce the highestbusiness impact in the shortest amount of time.

For a deeper general description of how to use Hype Cycles in technology planning, see"Understanding Gartner's Hype Cycles, 2013."

Evidence

1 The figure on page 19 of Gartner's CIO survey summary in "Hunting and Harvesting in a DigitalWorld: The 2013 CIO Agenda" shows the following as the top 10 global business strategies for 2013(the previous two years' rankings are noted in parenthesis, with No. 10 highlighting the previous fiveyears):

■ 1 = Increasing enterprise growth (1, 1)

■ 2 = Delivering operational results (5, 9)

■ 3 = Reducing enterprise costs (3, 3)

■ 4 = Attracting and retaining new customers (2, 2)

■ 5 = Improving IT applications and infrastructure (new)

■ 6 = Creating new products or services (4, 4)

■ 7 = Improving efficiency (6, 8)

■ 8 = Attracting and retaining the workforce (8, 12)

■ 9 = Implementing analytics and big data (new)

■ 10 = Improving business processes (13, 5, 1, 1)

2 The BPMS market slightly declined in 2012, but its growth is expected to resume. It grew at 10%in 2011, but declined in 2012 by 1% to $2.3 billion. Gartner attributes this revenue dip to a variety ofmarket factors, including vendor consolidation and cloud solution availability (see "MarketSnapshot: Business Process Management Suites, Worldwide, 2013").




3 Gartner's "Market Snapshot: Business Process Management Suites, Worldwide, 2013" alsoforecasts growth for the years up to 2017. Demand remains strong: Gartner's 2012 worldwide BPMadoption survey results show that 60% of respondents still project increased spending in 2013.

4 Page 6 of Gartner's CIO survey summary in "Hunting and Harvesting in a Digital World: The 2013CIO Agenda" discusses this "quiet IT crisis" where "the world outside of IT changed: Recessionreplaced growth, volatility replaced stability, dynamic change replaced predetermined plans andfront-office digital technology became more important than back-office operational IT."

5 This Nexus of Forces is tracked widely by Gartner research (see "Examining the Depth of theNexus of Forces," as well as BPM-centric research, including "Extreme Collaboration: A Nexus-Enabled Operating Model to Enable Performance Breakthroughs" and "Master Social BPM to Builda Social Organization").

6 Between June 2011 and May 2013, BPM analysts participated in over 2,000 client interactions onBPM technologies and discipline.

7 See the table titled "CIOS have multiple roles outside of IT" on Page 29 of Gartner's CIO surveysummary in "Hunting and Harvesting in a Digital World: The 2013 CIO Agenda."

8 Page 9 of Gartner's CIO Survey summary in "Hunting and Harvesting in a Digital World: The 2013CIO Agenda" describes how "Digital technologies create a new context for the business and IT." Atfirst blush, it seems to say that process is not included: "At some level, every technology is a digitaltechnology. In this report, digital technologies refer to a specific set of new technologies: those thatcreate value by applying information, rather than automating business transactions. Mobile,analytics, big data, social and cloud are the key digital technologies we discuss." But this is the old,limited view of process and BPM that's being discussed here. The new view needed mustovercome the limited "automating business transactions" to enable new types of businessoperations, as well as new business models to drive differentiation and innovation, leading togrowth and revenue. This Hype Cycle shows how Gartner tracks this change.




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