Organisations are increasingly using business process
management suites linked with service oriented architectures to
drive efficiencies, according to a Forrester Research
report.
The technologies enable businesses to respond more quickly to
new requirements, while providing more visibility and control over
business processes, it said.
Forrester Research principal analyst Ken Vollmer said the
technologies complement each other well, resulting in more powerful
systems than either could provide on its own.
He said the emergence of standards such as BPel, XPDL and BPNM
has helped with this.
"These standards are making it possible for BPM products to
support a model-driven approach to process improvements that can be
significantly more agile than earlier methods. At the same time,
improvements in SOA-based repository technology are facilitating
the storage of business meta data in a common location, where it is
easier to share, reuse, and modify without affecting applications,"
said Vollmer.
BPM tools enable real-time end-user process monitoring, allowing
problems to be corrected more quickly. Several BPM products allow
end-users to change business rules on the fly, without having to
involve IT. And business personnel can obtain more direct control
over the design, monitoring, and optimisation of core operations,
said the report.
For its report Forrester examined systems from more than 20
suppliers, including BEA, Fuego, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sun,
Tibco and webMethods.