Skip to main content

BPM Key as CIOs Try to Wrangle Consumerization

Joshua Hoffman
September 29, 2015

Consumerization in the enterprise is often discussed as an IT concepts, and CIOs are the ones bearing the brunt of responding to the trend. The reality that consumerization represents a new way to work, and organizations need to adjust their processes to make sure their technology can respond. Business process management tools are adapting to meet this need, giving organizations access to application development platform functionality that helps them build the process and technological frameworks needed to support consumerization.

Taking the initiative to deployBPM software to handle consumerization could be key, as a recent Fortune report emphasized the growing challenge it is presenting CIOs.

Demands are escalating for CIOs

?Technology leaders are being asked to accomplish more than they have ever had to worry about in the past. According to the news source, CIOs are increasingly having to not just worry about supporting the business and keeping systems running, they also must change the way they are perceived by enterprise users. IT departments are often considered roadblocks to employee freedom when it comes to investing in new solutions that may fuel change - after all tech teams need to maintain stability first and improve as a secondary goal. However, the perception of IT as the "department of no" needs to change, and CIOs are central to altering this perception.

Consumerization presents enterprise IT departments with plenty of challenges.Consumerization presents enterprise IT departments with plenty of challenges.

The report explained that adjusting IT processes to align them with businesses is pushing CIOs to take on new roles that exceed traditional requirements. Some of these include finding ways to get more done while spending less, manage vendors, simplifying the end-user experience and being the catalyst for launching new business models. All of these challenges come out of the core concept of consumerization, as they highlight the way enterprise users increasingly want to consume technology and have more choice in what tools they use, pressuring IT to turn into something of a broker that finds them what they want.

Using BPM to handle consumerization

In an ideal world, tech teams would have the processes, internal app storefronts and app customization tools they need to create this consumer-like experience and empower the business. We may still be some distance away from that dream, but application platforms can get companies one step closer. Using BPM systems as app customization tools lets even non-business users safely adjust apps to align technology functions to process needs. This can be as simple as dragging and dropping components of the user interface, but even these small changes play a key role in creating a positive consumer experience in the enterprise.