Social BPM: Is This New And Ground Breaking?
Ian Gotts, 29/07/2010, posted in "Analysis"
Ian Gotts is CEO and Chairman of Nimbus Partners, an established and rapidly growing global software company, headquartered in the UK. He is a very experienced senior executive and ...more info
Ian Gotts is CEO and Chairman of Nimbus Partners, an established and rapidly growing global software company, headquartered in the UK. He is a very experienced senior executive and serial entrepreneur, with a career spanning 25 years. Ian has co-authored a number of books including “Common Approach, Uncommon Results”, published in English and Chinese and in its second edition, "Why Killer Products Don't Sell" and books covering Cloud computing from the perspective of both the prospective buyer, and the software vendor. Having begun his career in 1983 as an engineer for British Rail, Ian then spent 12 years at Accenture (nee Andersen Consulting) specialising in the project management of major business critical IT projects. During this time, he spent two years as an IT Director, seconded to the Department for Social Security (DSS), with a department of over 500 and a budget responsibility of 40 million pounds. ...less info
A question recently asked on eBizQ’s BPM Forum. According to the analysts, Social BPM is new. Certainly the terminology is new, but are the concepts behind it?
In Gartner‘s recent BPM Hype Cycle, SocialBPM is near the bottom starting the climb to the Peak of Inflated Expectations.
But I believe that “the future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed”. By that I mean I can point at 100′s of clients who are routinely engaging their end users to drive business process improvement. Are they using Twitter, LinkedIn or GoogleGroups. No – but they are using these style capabilities embedded within their BPM applications, optimised for driving sustainable, auditable change.
That is why it is easy to get cynical about analysts getting all frothy and excited when a BPM vendor, possibly late to the party, launches their “BPM V6 with added SocialBPM zest” product.
But does that mean companies can sit on their laurels and say “We were doing this since R1.0″. Clearly not. Embracing what is best from the current crop of Social Networking tools can make their products stronger at engaging end users. Because that is what is at the heart of Social BPM.
An end to end process must accurately represent what end users do on the ground, and have the mechanisms to allow them to suggest changes which are rapidly incorporated. At the same time as tracking an auditable change cycle for compliance.
Put mathematically : R = I x A x A > results = initiative x adoption (squared).
Without end user adoption, what is documented and what is actually done will rapidly diverge. And then, even if the processes are in the newest SocialBPM tool it is simply ‘Lipstick on a pig”.
Subscribe via RSS or via email
