Although the potential benefits of Business Process Management (BPM) are commonly accepted by now, its concrete tool-based implementation seems to be afflicted with major difficulties. This is the conclusion drawn by the administrators of "bpm-guide.de", who are watching the BPM software market in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in the capacity of vendor-neutral analysts. Their conclusion is based on a survey of 200 organizations, which has been performed during the first half of 2007.

According to bpm-guide.de, some 36% of respondents indicated that the BPM software acquired by their organization has only partially met expectations. The cause seems to be an extremely low level of transparency of the BPM software market, which can be attributed to the heterogeneity of the tools offered by vendors. Jakob Freund, manager of bpm-guide.de, stated that this leads up to a situation in which unsuitable BPM software is acquired, not just poor software.

Freund expects the BPM software market to consolidate in the medium term and to reach a higher level of transparency. Obviously, organizations have the choice between waiting until the fog clears, or move forward and realize tangible benefits with suitable software today. According to Jakob Freund, the recipe for finding the suitable software solution is simple: "Define goals, define requirements, make use of information resources."

The original article was published in e-commerce-magazin (in German).

The cost involved with performing thorough software evaluation, or, in other words, doing things right from the beginning, is almost nothing compared to the cost involved with the acquisition of unsuitable BPM software, and eventually failure.