News

Gartner sees BPM as an opportunity for developers

• By Rich Seeley
• September 24, 2003

The Business Process Management (BPM) trend represents an opportunity for applications developers, Jim Sinur told developers and their managers at the Gartner Application Development Summit 2003 in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

While systems integrators and business users were the first to jump on the BPM cost-cutting band wagon during the recent recession, Sinur, a Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst, sees developers taking control of the space.

Systems integration is needed to make BPM viable and business users are motivated by ROI, Sinur said, but application developers have the skill set needed to make the concept a reality.

He urged developers to "wrest it away from integration, where it doesn't belong."

The skills that are key to BPM are system modeling, design, code handling and repository management, Sinur said. All of those skills are basic to application developers and no one else.

BPM also represents an opportunity for developers to be heroes in their enterprise, since successful BPM implementations deliver consistent savings of 10% to 15% per year, he explained. He said that in Japan where the economy has been in a recession for a decade and companies rely on BPM to cut costs, there is no evidence that the 10% to 15% annual savings atrophies over time. To his surprise, despite a tough business climate, Japanese executives recently told Sinur that they continue to realize 10%+ ROI from BPM even after 10 years.