BPM in an ERP Environment

If Maritz's need to change business process quickly strikes a resonant chord with you, you're not alone. BPM has become one of the most important decisions for CIOs and their C-level peers right now, says Sharyn Leaver, VP and research director at Forrester Research. Now that companies have invested millions in ERP implementations, upgrades and overhauls with software vendors such as Oracle and SAP - and in many cases have built their core business processes around those products - they've learned that this kind of software cannot be customized easily or quickly.

But business will no longer sit still for long development cycles. Business-side execs simply demand that IT provide them with the ability to change quickly in order to respond to markets and customers that also demand speedy change and delivery.

This is not a matter of one-off fixes. "It's not even just a question of how customizable the software can be," Leaver says. "It's about how flexible it can be for eternity." That's why more and more businesses, like Maritz, are using BPM software to put a "wrapper" around key processes.

What kinds of business processes merit this approach?

"Firms are using BPM to wrapper existing apps for processes that require a high degree of flexibility and really differentiate them from the competition," Leaver says. Some examples include proposal generation, customer service, order management, claims and dispute processing, and new account opening. In other words, key processes that directly touch customers.

Companies may be able to wait for their big-package vendors to "get" BPM within the next few years; according to Leaver, those vendors are working on it now. But to truly deliver on the flexibility promise of BPM, the big package vendors must undertake pretty massive architectural shifts, which will take years, she says. Not all processes require great flexibility. "Accounting is the perfect example where there are no points for creativity," she says.

"But for processes where differentiation can make or break the success of a company, like customer service or order management, best practices just aren't good enough and therefore, static packaged apps alone aren't good enough," Leaver says. "When it comes to those differentiating processes, companies could easily get leapfrogged by the competition if they wait for the app vendors to 'get' BPM."

Or as Maritz's Phillips puts it, "A lot of vendors dabble on the side with [BPM]. We looked at the massive package vendors but they weren't even close to what we wanted to do."

Maritz couldn't wait. One of the company's keys to success is customer loyalty. Some customers have been using Maritz for 30 years, and the company's annual renewal rate tops 90 percent. Those loyal troops were demanding that Maritz get more nimble and how loyal they'd remain if Maritz didn't was an open question.