bpmNext 2015: The State of the Union

The aim of bpmNext is to get the key players in the BPM arena to share ideas and push each other forward. This is an event where participants can let express directions and opinions without punishment. We were welcomed by Bruce Silver and he challenged the crowd of about 80 to ponder three large canyons that he was seeing in BPM. There are large gaps between Enterprise Architecture and BPM, between process and decision models and finally between BPM and Case. These were going to be the themes of some of the vendor sessions. He then talked about where BPM was expanding it's horizons via the internet of things (IoT), cognitive computing and optimization focused process mining.

Nathaniel Palmer then gave his vision for BPM 2020 and stated that we needed to change from BPM today where the processes are just data driven, intelligent and adaptive only to a BPM tomorrow where processes that also give credence to robots, rules and relationships.

Next Clay Richardson talked about the importance of reinventing BPM for the new age of the customer where he indicated that customers would be more demanding and capable of switching organizations that service them better in a blink of an eye. Clay backed this up with tons of survey data.

After a panel on growing BPM bigger, Neil Ward-Dutton then talked about the size of the BPM market and growth rates at the single digit rate. While the audience pushed back on the conservative rate of growth, Neil did lay down the challenge to link BPM to transformation to accelerate that growth.

Remy Glaisner of Myria then talked about the relationship between BPM and the growing number of specialized robots in the non-manufacturing sectors. He challenged the BPM folks in include robots and cognitive bots in their processes as resources.

Ignite Demos: We then kicked off 30 minute fast demos after a brief context setting for each vendor:

Thee first two were by SAP & W4 that included the IoT. SAP demonstrated a oil pipeline problem with a dispatched service person with the proper pump replacement. The visual approach here was done very well. W4 then demoed a fall sensing capability for managing folks who are living alone without help.

WhiteStein/Living Systems then demoed a goal driven approach that used changing goals based on an emerging case. I followed up with a presentation on goal directed and swarming processes where any of the resources can become part of the processes dynamically.

Trisontech & Comindware then demonstrated their tools that more highly linked enterprise. architecture with processes. I really liked the neighborhood approach and linked tasks/entities pictured below:

Sapiens & Signavio demoed their ability to manage and model rules

Kofax & IBM then dueled on mobile content scanning and cleansing; both did a good job.

Robert Shapiro from Process Analytica demonstrated his ability to mine and understand process related logs in the heath care industry for patient care.

Net; Net: 

While all the sessions are not complete, this bpmNext is a great improvement over the past. I look forward to the next one :) The state of the process union is good and progressing. All is well, but we all want it better.