IBM announced a set of new Business Process Management (BPM) products and services, including the IBM Business Process Manager, at the IBM Impact 2011 conference in Las Vegas.
LAS VEGAS -- IBM delivered new software and services aimed at
helping organizations transform their business processes to increase
efficiency, reduce costs and find new ways to grow their businesses.
At the IBM Impact 2011
conference here, IBM delivered a new unified Business Process
Management (BPM) platform, IBM Business Process Manager, which gives
clients visibility into key business operations so they can model,
automate, monitor and adjust plans instantly. In an interview with
eWEEK, Paul Brunet, vice president of WebSphere and BPM product
marketing said the new software enables companies to continuously
improving business processes, such as those found in product
development, customer service and finance departments.
"With the Business Process Manager we're leveraging a lot of the capability we got when we acquired Lombardi," Brunet said
At Impact 2011, IBM announced more than 60 new and enhanced
products, several of which related to Business Process Management in
one way or another.
"IBM Business Process Manager integrates the simplicity of Lombardi
with the power, integration and scalability of WebSphere Process
Server," said Marie Wieck, general manager of application and
integration middleware in IBM Software Group.
IBM officials said the new software builds on the company's
leadership in the BPM space. According to the Gartner market research
firm, BPM spending jumped 9.2 percent in 2010, and Gartner ranked IBM
as the top vendor with more than double the market share of any other
company.
In addition to the IBM Business Process Manager, IBM also introduced
a range of new and enhanced products and services designed to help
businesses transform their processes to increase efficiencies. These
offerings included IBM Blueworks Live, a Software as a Service
(SaaS) cloud-based offering that accelerates business processes by
allowing better visibility and communication across an organization.
The IBM Business Monitor increases an organization's real-time
operational visibility through integrated Cognos Business Intelligence
analysis and reporting. And the IBM BPM Industry Packs are
designed to accelerate and enhance the delivery of standards-based
industry solutions for banking, healthcare and telecommunications.
Moreover, with this announcement, IBM officials said the
company is focusing on three of the key areas that clients and
business leaders worldwide have identified as key to their success:
Gaining effective insight into their markets; tuning their business
processes to take advantage of these insights; and enhancing their
infrastructures to execute these new business processes.
IBM said Nationwide Insurance, one of the largest diversified
insurance and financial services organizations in the U.S., is just one
example of how companies are transforming their business processes to
boost efficiency.
"Using IBM business process management technology, we have been able
to boost the efficiency and accuracy of our financial reporting system,
which pulls information from more than 300 independent subsidiaries,"
said Tammy Craig, Nationwide's vice president of Information
Technology, in a statement. "With all data going through one central
business rules management system, we have streamlined complex
processes, allowing us to focus even greater attention on serving the
needs of our customers."
"We look to partner with market leaders and IBM Business Process
Manager will help enable process excellence across our organization and
for our customers," said Jurgen Rudolph, an IT specialist at
Versicherungskammer Bayern Insurance (VKB), a leading German insurer,
in a statement.
Lincoln Trust Company, a leading independent U.S. provider of
self-directed IRA accounts, uses IBM's BPM software and services and
has seen cost savings of between $3 million and $4 million,
ongoing annual savings of $325,000, a reduction in document processing
times -- in some cases from hours to minutes, increased revenue
resulting from better customer service, and reductions in financial
risk posed by mistakes
"Our business process transformation has differentiated Lincoln
Trust in the marketplace," said Helen Cousins, executive vice president
and CIO of Lincoln Trust, in a statement. "Through automation and
process simplification, we've leapfrogged larger competitors in terms
of our superior ability to on-board and service customers."
Meanwhile, as part its BPM announcement, IBM also announced the
creation of a global consulting and services delivery organization that
will enable customers to improve the performance of core business
processes such as marketing, human resources and finance, as well as
industry specific processes such as insurance claims, campaign
management and compliance.
Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.
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