Demand for business process management software is rising quickly, as businesses around the world are striving to implement strategic process automation to overcome organizational barriers. A recent Companies and Markets study found that the global BPM software market revenues will rise from approximately $2.6 billion in 2011 to $7 billion by 2018.
The study found that growth in the BPM sector can be attributed largely to the growing interest in better control over process automation within the enterprise. Background automation is becoming an increasingly important part of enterprise operations because it provides the ability to streamline tasks that would otherwise severely limit productivity. It also enables better integration between internal systems, allowing organizations to break down departmental barriers that would get in the way of collaboration.
To a great extent, the need for process automation and integration between diverse parts of the business comes because many organizations are seeking more operational flexibility. The study explained that many companies are using BPM to overcome the regulatory challenges that come with using cloud computing, social media and mobility plans to enable more effective operations.
According to the study, BPM is ideally suited to build a paper trail of documentation behind all enterprise processes. This is making the solution an ideal regulatory compliance tool because it makes it much easier for organizations to track how data flows through the enterprise and impacts day-to-day operations.
Using BPM as a regulatory tool is especially important in light of the challenges presented by cloud computing, mobility and social media. When information is crossing organizational barriers and flowing between such diverse technological environments, it can be extremely difficult to identify where information is at any time and ensure it is available and secure. A significant level of transparency is needed to provide insight into these background operations.
Using process automation provides the first layer of transparency, as data flows through prescribed patterns as it travels through corporate systems. Implementing BPM to improve automation and document operations ensures that the right data gets to the right users and provides the tracking and documentation capabilities to support regulatory compliance. Because of these capabilities, BPM is uniquely suited to solve many of the major regulatory problems created by emerging technologies in the enterprise sector.
