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Vivek M. Jain, CEO, StrApp Business Solutions

D. Murali

IBM buying FileNet, AptSoft and ILOG; Oracle acquiring BEA Systems; and SAP purchasing Yasu Technologies… Yes, we are talking about BPM, or business process management, which is all about “efficiently aligning an organisation with the wants and needs of clients”, as Wikipedia defines it.

BPM is already being touted as one of the key technologies in our current economic climate, reports www.insurancenetworking.com. “IDC reports that the BPM market is growing 44 per cent each year, and could grow to a $5.5-billion market by 2011.”

Within the country, how is BPM seen as evolving in the long term? For the kind of growth that our companies have witnessed, there is a dire need for them to automate, and bring in systems and processes in place, and BPM is best suited to facilitate this, says Vivek M. Jain, CEO, StrApp Business Solutions, Bangalore ( www.strapp.net), a company that works on BPM systems and custom Web applications, apart from working on automating defined ISO processes.

Jain expects BPM to become an integral part of an ERP in the next five years. “SAP acquiring Yasu validates the point,” he adds, in an email interaction with eWorld.

Excerpts from the interview:

Why BPM?

Typically, enterprise applications are built with specific objectives. With changing business scenarios, modifying the software can be complex. But with BPM systems, changing a business process can be very simple and less time-consuming.

For any organisation, having a well-defined process is important, and a BPM solution can quite easily have people adopt the processes as defined by the organisation.

BPM systems help organisations go paperless — benefits being cost reduction, environment-friendliness, and access to information from any part of the world. Also, BPM helps integrate processes from different departments seamlessly, with visibility in every stage of a process.

What difference can BPM make for SMEs, a space that you are predominantly operating in?

For an organisation in the growth phase, systems and processes are essential to manage growth. BPM can help ensure that people follow processes as defined by the company. For instance, an organisation which is ISO-certified, needs to follow the processes defined, and a BPM can ensure that people comply with that, hence reducing people dependency. Typically, an organisation with 50 people and above would be a good fit for BPM.

Do you see benefits from BPM for larger organisations too which may, in all probability, be deploying some ERP system or the other? Are there gaps that the common ERP systems leave open?

Certainly. For instance, we are currently working with a large software company which has an Oracle ERP. Our solution automates the purchase requisition process, and once the purchase is confirmed, the data become inputs to the existing ERP, to generate the purchase order. Of course, a few ERPs have this process, but cost is a very important factor; user licences, being expensive, inhibit more people from using the systems, and this is where a BPM can fit in well.

A few examples of how BPM helps companies…

Take, for instance, a leading retail coffee chain we are working with. By automating its ‘outlet opening process,’ we could not only achieve the objective of defining a process for the same but also reduce the time to set up a retail outlet by 1.5 months, with a direct impact on the top and bottom line. Since this company is aggressively setting up outlets, it is able to manage the opening of new outlets without having to increase the staff strength.

Another example is of a leading hospital group in Singapore, with four hospitals in the city, which has implemented BPM. Its 48 processes have been automated, and the primary objective was to have the information on patients, suppliers, and so on centrally available. This is being used across various departments, and has helped the hospital go paperless.

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