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Gartner Says Between Now and Year-End 2014, Overlooked but Easily Detectable Business Process Defects Will Topple 10 Global 2000 Companies

Gartner Analysts Will Provide Insight and Advice at the Gartner CIO Leadership Forum 2011 to be held in Dubai, UAE on 28 February - 1 March 2011 at the Raffles
Dubai, 27 January, 2011 - Between now and year-end 2014 an intensifying focus on process-related skills, competencies and competitive differentiators will increasingly separate process excellence leaders from the laggards among the Global 2000, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner has identified some of its key predictions for business process management (BPM) in 2011 and beyond.

"A key theme in our BPM predictions for 2011 is the rising focus on making business process improvement (BPI) a core competency of the organization -- and on the capabilities and tools required to gain that competency," said John Dixon, research director at Gartner. "Increasing process skills in the Global 2000 will further separate the companies with enlightened process experts from those that are simply competent in the basics -- and will intensify the negative repercussions and devastating consequences from public exposure of process weakness."

Mr. Dixon added that the practices, tools and resources that organizations will increasingly harness to boost their process excellence include business process competency centers (BPCCs), which Gartner expects to be adopted within the majority of organizations by 2012.

"Those who embrace BPM can do things that others cannot," said Mr. Dixon. "While this is true in 2010, by 2014, BPM will clearly deliver benefits to those who have the competencies, and deny a peaceful sleep to those who do not." Other key BPM predictions for 2011 include:

Between now and year-end 2014, overlooked but easily detectable business process defects will top 10 Global 2000 companies.

Broken business processes underpin major business debacles, snafus and embarrassments. Many detectable process defects remain undiagnosed throughout the Global 2000, even though today's state-of-the-art BPM practices and technologies could spot many of these issues before the damage is done.

Companies should build organizational competencies for business process excellence. Invest in the skills and roles (such as business process analysts), tools and techniques (for example, business process simulation), and organization (that is, the BPCC) that are needed to analyze and improve processes.

By 2015, context-aware computing will be used to rejuvenate at least 25 percent of "commodity" enterprise processes that are currently perceived as "low value."

Gartner said organizations that really understand business processes will explicitly or implicitly tier those processes in a hierarchy of value. Through the use of context-aware computing principles such as presence, historical pattern analysis and emotion detection, up to a quarter of these commodity processes can be rejuvenated, made more customer-centric and contribute even more to the organization bottom line.

Organizations that re-examine and revise commodity processes will find opportunities where none existed before. For example, call center emotion detection can transform stoic automated call routing into a more sophisticated customer experience while context-enriched, rote transactions (such as address changes, billing inquiries, simple information requests and check-out) can be transformed into cross-selling opportunities as new insight is gained into the "state" of the customer (for example, just married, recently divorced, moving, or joined military).

By 2014, process templates from "nontraditional application vendors" will be included in the shortlisted options for 70 percent of application purchases.

Process templates are prebuilt business process design, execution and management artifacts that serve as solution accelerators for development, integration and BPI projects. Many factors are driving organizations to consider process templates over traditional applications including: the lack of flexibility in monolithic applications, the need for more visibility into cross-boundary processes, the desire to automate knowledge-based and unstructured processes (which haven't been part of traditional applications), and the increasing role played by "consumerized IT," particularly for unstructured knowledge work.

Gartner predicts that, as the application market shifts from monolithic packaged applications to next-generation composite applications, the definition of what constitutes an "application" will become more blurred, enabling many nontraditional application vendors to play in the enterprise application market.

General BPM certification will grow in value but will not be materially relevant to BPM hiring decisions before 2015.

The need for skilled and experienced personnel to lead and participate in BPM activities is clear. What is also clear is the eclectic nature of that skill set and, by definition, the individuals who possess it.

Gartner said that as BPM maturity progresses and the roles within it become more stable, it is natural for the industry to try to create a certification scheme to validate BPM skills and experience to provide recruiters with a degree of confidence that applicants have the core skills required of the job. However, until BPM certification reaches a critical mass and its value is recognized by hiring companies, organizations will have little to act on in terms of selection criteria. For individuals seeking certification, or for employers seeking to "upskill" their BPM employees, the best approach to take today is to consider general BPM certification as an individual development or continuing-education opportunity and to reassess the industry uptake for certification on a year-by-year basis.

Additional information is available in the Gartner report " Predicts 2011: Business Process Management Competencies Will Expose the 'Haves' and 'Have-Nots'." The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1470334.

Gartner CIO Leadership Forum is an executive-only program, designed to explore critical business, technology and leadership strategies. The forum is designed to help CIOs and IT leaders deliver business value through IT. Gartner analysts will provide insight and advice on how to anticipate changes in the global economic climate identify and act on enterprise growth opportunities and deliver on expanding commitments with declining resources at the Gartner CIO Leadership Forum 2011 to be held in Dubai, UAE on 28 February - 1 March 2011 at the Raffles.

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About Gartner
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the valuable partner to 60,000 clients in 11,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,400 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.

© Press Release 2011