Baseline - June 2007

Business Process Management:

Getting Work in Order

BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE IS NOT ONLY HELPING COMPANIES REPLACE PAPER FORMS. IT’S ALSO BEING USED TO CHECK RECORDS FOR ACCURACY, ROUTE DOCUMENTS AND FILES TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE AT THE RIGHT TIME, AND MAKE ORGANIZATIONS MORE EFFICIENT. BY VIRGINIA CITRANO

BEFORE FOLEY & LARDNER, ONE OF America’s top law firms, takes on a new client, it must check for conflicts with existing engagements. That means looking to see not only whether the Milwaukee-based firm already represents a competitor, or someone involved in an action against the prospective client. It has to check all the way up to the parent-company level, across 17 Foley & Lardner offices, as well as the files of some 1,000 attorneys.

Six years ago, the firm had paper forms that weren’t routinely used, says Bob Plastine, the firm’s Milwaukee-based director of projects and applications. Instead, an attorney would send an e-mail to the conflicts department, which managed the checks, with details—the client’s name, nature of the potential work and the like.

When the conflicts department got the e-mail, staff would re-enter the information into a specialized conflict check program from a legal software vendor. If details were missing, a conflicts staffer would call the attorney, and if he were out, leave a message and wait for somebody to reply. “It was screaming for a unified process,” Plastine says.

Foley & Lardner found one, in the form of business process management software from Baltimore-based Metastorm. Instead of collecting 20 conflict checks a day and taking up to two weeks to turn them around, the firm now handles 200 checks a day and clears them in 48 hours.

The software, called Metastorm e-Work, begins with standardized forms for taking in information. The attorney enters the data from his computer. Then, the system generates an alert for

the conflicts department. Other units in the firm that need to weigh in, such as accounting, get a heads-up.

Plastine’s team used e-Work to set up rules for how the files would be routed. If a key person is away when a sign-off is needed, there’s a rule for how the file should be re-routed.

Business process management software, which evolved from workflow and document imaging systems, is still used to automate manual processes such as opening a bank account. Several vendors have taken BPM to a more sophisticated level, building software packages that not only replace paper forms, but check forms for accuracy, alert users to missing information, route them to the right depart-

ments and employees in many different areas for approval, and re-direct them as necessary to keep the process moving.

Gartner Dataquest puts the market for business process management software at $1.69 billion in 2006, up 18.5% from 2005. It is expected to keep up that double-digit pace through 2010. The software helps financial services firms manage regulatory compliance, and it’s also being used in health care, manufacturing, retail and government to gather information and act on it in a consistent, predictable way.

Gartner counts 170 vendors now in the market, ranging from point-solution providers such as Axway in Scottsdale, Ariz., to companies such as Pegasystems of

Business Process Management: Aiming for Efficiency

WHAT IT IS: Business process management software includes automating manual processes and managing workflows, as well as consolidating and standardizing existing automated systems. Some vendors offer components to handle targeted functions like establishing rules for how a process should proceed. Some vendors are grouping these components into software suites.

KEY PLAYERS: BEA Systems’ Fuego, Global 360, Fujitsu, IBM’s FileNet, Lombardi Software, Metastorm, Savvion, Pegasystems.

MARKET SIZE: $1.69 billion in 2006 (Gartner Dataquest)

IMPLEMENTATION COST: BPTrends says 58% of the respondents to its 2006 survey spent less than $500,000 on BPM, 34% spent between $500,000 and $5 million, and 5% spent more than $10 million.

WHAT’S HAPPENING: BPM SOFTWARE MARKET, WORLDWIDE

Some 170 vendors offer

BPM software, but consul- $3.20 tancy Gartner anticipates ^BPM ^tools_$2.75a shakeout. It expects ^BPM ^suites_$2.36major software vendors in $2.00 other categories to enter $1.69 the market—following the ^$1.43lead of BEA, which purchased Fuego in 2006.