OK, I know what you're thinking. Business Process Management (BPM) is yet another unnecessary buzzword the ThomasNet IMT folks dug up. I can assure you that this is not the case, as a few recent developments in the BPM space indicate that a vast majority of manufacturers need to get on the ball when it comes to breaking down silos and cleaning up IT infrastructures, the cornerstones of a solid BPM practice. While the business benefits derived from BPM are impressive, the cost and complexity involved is even more impressive…in a bad way.

First, a few words about BPM from Aberdeen, who addressed the subject in a recently published report dubbed "Achieving More Value From Enterprise Applications":

Business process management is not optimized due to poor integration at the information
technology (IT) level. In many enterprises, business processes consist of silos of enterprise application software connected by the slap-dash integration software equivalent of duct tape, chewing gum, and string. No organization runs on a single enterprise application, so, by definition, the integration of enterprise applications is a necessary reality. But often, this reality is the cause of enormous lost business value generating opportunity as well as rancor between the IT department and business units.

This begs the question: Can't we all just get along? The surprising answer is "yes." At least, in Aberdeen's world it is:

…the antiquated and brittle IT that routes business processes is being changed for the better. Enterprises are focusing on best-of-breed functionality, advanced business intelligence capabilities, and especially service-oriented architectures (SOA) as a technological means to, once and for all, eliminate the break-fix cycle that has plagued IT development and maintenance for more than a decade.

Heck, even if your job responsibilities are far removed from your company's IT department, the "break-fix" cycle certainly sounds like a familiar scenario we can all relate to. But it's a major problem that inhibits manufacturers from obtaining better and more timely visibility into business operations, reducing operating costs and improving customer service. And we all want to improve customer service, don't we? If you're hip to BPM, take a closer look at the Aberdeen report, as it makes pretty solid recommendations for manufacturers of all shapes and sizes that fall under "laggards", "industry average" and "best-in-class" categories.

I guess the bummer about BPM is the cost. A recent IDC report finds that a lot of external stuff is needed to kick-start BPM, especially as it relates to SOA, which is mentioned above. IDC forecasts that worldwide spending on SOA-based external services will reach $8.6 billion in 2006, experiencing a 138 percent increase from $3.6 billion in 2005. By 2010 global SOA-based services spending will reach a wallet-busting $33.8 billion.

Other than the cost, it seems that there are many different ways to approach SOA as a Manufacturing Business Technology article points out. SOA, according to Manufacturing Business Technology "is a technology infrastructure in which software applications are broken into modular components — called services — and placed in a repository where they can be easily accessed either by users or other services. When done properly, a company can implement new business processes almost at will by writing procedures that call for specific sets of services to interact with one another."

But the kicker comes from a Daryl Plummer of Gartner Research, quoted in the piece: "People haven't understood — until they've had a few failures — that you can create an SOA in a thousand ways. Though there are many ways to implement them, many don't deliver the consistent value that SOA promises."