For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Xerox Jolts The Document Processing Services Market With A Major BPO Acquisition

Xerox's Acquisition Underscores BPO, ITO, And DPS Convergence

by Craig Le Clair, October 5, 2009

On September 28, 2009, Xerox announced the purchase of business process outsourcing company Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), in a deal valued at approximately $6.4 billion. Xerox's acquisition sends a clear signal about the strategic direction of the . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Best Practices: Mastering Output Options For Customer Communications

Simple Ways To Cut Costs And Improve Customer Experiences Are Hard To Achieve

by Craig Le Clair, Sheri McLeish, September 29, 2009

A new generation of document output for customer communications management (DoCCM) technology promises to reduce costs, improve the customer experience, and expand output beyond the print channel. Yet best practices must also evolve to achieve these promises. . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Lean: The New Business Technology Imperative

Lean Thinking Is Central To The Shift From IT To BT

by Connie Moore, Clay Richardson, John R. Rymer, Ted Schadler, Dave West, September 29, 2009

Everyone wants to be lean these days, whether when stepping off a scale in the morning or reviewing the cost of running a successful business. But just how do you define "Lean" — especially in the context of business and technology? Do you think of Lean . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Warning: Don't Assume Your Business Processes Use Master Data

Synchronize Your Business Process And Master Data Strategies

by Rob Karel, Clay Richardson, September 21, 2009

Business process management (BPM) professionals understand the need for data but often only pay it lip service, doing little to take responsibility for ensuring data quality within their processes. Data management professionals, on the other hand, drive . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

From Information Technology To Business Technology: An Interview With George F. Colony

by Connie Moore, George F. Colony, September 16, 2009

For the past four years, Forrester Research CEO George F. Colony has been preaching the gospel of converting information technologists into businesspeople. The number of converts has been lower than we hoped, but a generational change in IT and business . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

The Importance Of Matching BPM Tools To The Process

Single Vendor Solutions Are Not Ready Yet To Meet Customers' Full Needs

by Ken Vollmer, Clay Richardson, Craig Le Clair, September 4, 2009

The world is a complex place, and business process management (BPM) is no exception. Forrester defines BPM as a discipline for continually improving cross-functional business processes. In contrast, BPM suites (BPMS) have a narrower focus as software . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Transparency Is The Next Step In Compliance . . . Bring On Enterprise Content Management

Compliance Processes Remain Untamed And Short On Insight

by Craig Le Clair, Chris McClean, August 28, 2009

Milestones in regulation such as the USA PATRIOT Act, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act, and amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) helped drive substantial enterprise content management (ECM) enhancements for better document management and . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Forrester TechRadar™ For BP&A Pros: Business Process Management Suites, Q3 2009

The Need For Increased Business Agility Drives BPM Adoption

by Clay Richardson, Ken Vollmer, Craig Le Clair, August 13, 2009

Business process management (BPM) refers to a broad category of software, typically sold as a suite, that automates, improves, and optimizes business processes across the full range of process activity — including human-, document-, and integration-centric . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Vendor Snapshot: HandySoft OfficeEngine Whips Unstructured Processes Into Shape

by Clay Richardson, July 15, 2009

The cat's out of the bag: Business processes are not always as structured and straightforward as you've been led to believe. Although the majority of business processes are structured and capable of being managed in a typical business process management . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Use Lean Discovery To Accelerate The Return On Your BPM Investment

by Clay Richardson, July 14, 2009

In these lean economic times, business process professionals watch their budgets get slashed, while at the same time, the hunger for business process management (BPM) and process improvement continues to accelerate across the enterprise. To meet these . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Case Study: Archstone, Drowning In Paper, Surfaces With A High-Impact BPM Solution

by Connie Moore, March 17, 2009

Archstone is a leading provider of apartment-style dwellings, with real-estate holdings in 13 states, including 180 communities and 2,600 associates spread across the United States. Stuck using manual processes, associates relied on mountains of paper . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Vendor Snapshot: Lombardi Blueprint Bridges Gap Between Process Discovery And Execution

by Clay Richardson, February 6, 2009

Austin-based Lombardi Software's latest offering, Blueprint, positions the vendor to extend its leadership in human-centric business process management (BPM) and takes direct aim at Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Visio as the tools of choice for process . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

In Good Times And Bad, Document-Centric Web Transactions Lower Costs And Improve Experience

Use BPM And DOM Technologies To Move To On-Demand Transactions

by Craig Le Clair, December 17, 2008

Despite delivering tangible cost savings, document-centric transactions have moved to the Web rather slowly for a number of years. Yet the need for electronic statement delivery, tying customer self-service events into accounting opening, and moving document-centric . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Drive BPM Initiatives To Higher Business Value

Move Beyond Automation To Business Optimization

by Connie Moore, October 6, 2008

The business process management (BPM) value proposition goes far beyond simple process automation, but unfortunately, that is where many organizations end their efforts. And while automation certainly provides tremendous efficiency, productivity, and . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Vendor Snapshot: Illuminate Solutions Breaks Through Traditional BI Barriers

by James G. Kobielus, August 8, 2008

Illuminate Solutions is a young Spain-based analytic database vendor that offers a compelling new approach optimized for complex, dynamic, ad hoc queries. Illuminate's correlation database uses what it calls "value-based storage" to greatly reduce the . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Business Intelligence Platforms, Q3 2008

by Boris Evelson, July 31, 2008

In Forrester's 151-criteria evaluation of enterprise business intelligence (BI) platform vendors, we found that IBM Cognos and SAP Business Objects maintain their leadership positions, while Oracle and SAS Institute move into leadership positions in enterprise . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

The BPM COE Is Here: Now What?

Answers To Frequently Asked Questions

by Craig Le Clair, June 20, 2008

Forrester receives many inquiries from information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals within enterprises implementing business process management (BPM) centers of excellence (COEs). Many questions concern COE goals, key roles, and organizational . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Many Users Are Satisfied With Product Offerings From Mainstream BI Vendors  (396 KB PPT)

by Boris Evelson, June 12, 2008

Forrester surveyed 89 BI users as a part of the Wave evaluation of enterprise reporting and analysis platforms, expected to publish in Q3 2008. These data charts highlight the results from that user survey.

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

How The Convergence Of Business Rules, BPM, And BI Will Drive Business Optimization

by Boris Evelson, Colin Teubner, John R. Rymer, May 14, 2008

With change endemic, business flexibility paramount, and the lines between strategic, tactical, and operational decision-making blurring, information and knowledge management (I&KM) pros must find new application architectures for a new generation . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

I&KM Pros: The New Business Analyst Takes Center Stage

by Connie Moore, May 6, 2008

Business analysts have always been an important part of any information and process-oriented IT initiative. They serve as intermediaries between business and technology stakeholders, analyzing the business processes that create, update, and consume information, . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Search + BI = Unified Information Access

Combining Unstructured And Structured Info Delivers Business Insight

by Boris Evelson, Matthew Brown, May 5, 2008

Search and business intelligence (BI) really are two sides of the same coin. Enterprise search enables people to access unstructured content like documents, blog and wiki entries, and emails stored in repositories across their organizations. BI surfaces . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Case Study: Qwest Uses Process Simulation To Move At The Speed Of Business Change

by Colin Teubner, April 23, 2008

Qwest, a telecommunications company located in North America, provides voice, video, and data services to residential, SMB, and enterprise-level customers. Its provisioning operations were experiencing significant gaps in process automation and documentation, . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Vendor Snapshot: Itensil Brings Process To Web 2.0 Collaboration

by Colin Teubner, April 11, 2008

San Francisco-based Itensil delivers new, browser-based collaboration tools to the market that are focused on a workflow model. These unique tools bring process-centric repeatability to ad hoc, knowledge-intensive tasks normally supported by unstructured . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Appliance Power: Crunching Data Warehousing Workloads Faster And Cheaper Than Ever

by James G. Kobielus, April 4, 2008

Appliances are taking up permanent residence in the heart of the enterprise data center — the data warehouse (DW). DW appliances — in all their bewildering proliferation — are moving into the mainstream. The reason? They are preconfigured, modular devices . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Strong Partners Are Key To Successful BI Initiatives

by Boris Evelson, Tim Sheedy, February 12, 2008

Business intelligence (BI) initiatives are unlike most other enterprise software projects. They do not fit well into the traditional software development life cycle (SDLC), and are notoriously difficult to outsource. Even though many enterprises have . . .