More business leaders should drive BPM: survey

When it comes to implementing business process management (BPM) in North American insurance companies, business leaders need to become more involved in the process, a May 2005 Gartner survey suggests.
Right now, “the IT organization continues to play a visionary role” in the implementation of BPM solutions within the North American market, according to Kimberley Harris-Ferrante of Gartner Research, a firm that consults on IT and business process outsourcing.
Harris-Farrante presented Gartner’s survey results at an educational seminar in Toronto sponsored by iter8, which offers business solutions for the insurance industry.
Unlike their counterparts in Asia and Europe, North American business leaders play a comparatively small role in “driving BPM” in an organization, Gartner’s research shows. Gartner’s survey is based on a study of 338 companies throughout the world.
In 78% of the Asian companies that Gartner surveyed, business leadership reported driving BPM solutions within their organizations. The number dipped slightly to 76% in European organizations. But among North American respondents, only 58% of the organizations’ business leaders reported driving the BPM process in their organizations.
“Business leadership must step up to driving BPM,” Harris-Ferrante wrote in her presentation notes, adding that IT organizations can’t implement useful BPM solutions without the participation of business leaders in developing new technologies.
The insurance industry is an obvious candidate for BPM, Harris-Ferrante said, because it is a “world of complexity” that could be improved through better business process and rules management.
For example, she said, BPM could help an insurance company overcome any number of complicated dynamics within the industry, including: redundant systems and applications, complex integration requirements, a diverse partner network, a large investment in aging computer and other systems, hardening economic conditions, and the accelerated speed of change in the industry.