I wonder how many features come about because of an internal need rather than directed by a customer? Rajiv (comment #8) discusses how Fujitsu was doing some internal process analysis manually, and that led to their recent process discovery product/service.

Re your comment #14 – I see that registration is required again. Perhaps you can tsk, tsk again.

This post was much needed! I think this is probably the first time that all of this information has been collected together in one place for the market to see. Very valuable!

At Software AG, we have been using our BPM solution and methodology internally for some time now. Our biggest project has involved a restructuring of our procurement organization, creating a world-class global purchasing group supported by standardized, flexible and transparent processes. This has been (and will continue to be) a multi-year project and we estimate that it has had a 17mln EURO impact on our bottom line.

Other projects here include a deal approval system, an HR onboarding solution and a comprehensive system to manage the creation and utilization of our internal solution assets (demos, PoC’s, Process Frameworks etc). The latter is creating efficiencies in the way we build solutions for our customers internally, but it also extends to our external partners and allows us to work effectively and consistently on an outsourced basis with them to create content and solutions for our customers.

Over the years we have learned a lot about what it takes to implement BPM solutions, but no matter how close you are to a customer you never get the same feel for what it really takes to do BPM unless you have done it yourself. This is especially true of the political, cultural and organizational aspects. So, we will be using our ‘BPM@SoftwareAG’ experience not just in our marketing but also in our internal and external education programs.

Michael Lees
Senior Director Product Marketing
Software AG

- Worldwide customer support / call center management
- Customer license management
- Ultimus product management
- Global product development
- Ultimus product release management

By developing and utilizing internal business processes, Ultimus has essentially become its own customer. As such, we have challenged ourselves to continually improve in efficient process design, features and functionality to best support the users involved in process design, and optimal client and form usability. Because of
the constant change in business needs, Ultimus has leveraged our own Adaptive Discovery technology
to ensure Ultimus’ business unit champions have the information and ability to mature Ultimus’ internal business processes.

Because of the incredible value we have reaped from using Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite internally, business process development has now extended to non-critical business needs. In this light, Ultimus has now developed internal business process solutions to be utilized in conjunction with application as SalesForce, SharePoint, and Great Plains. Ultimus will continue to invest in the usage of Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite going forward.

Chris Adams, Vice President of Product Marketing and Management-Ultimus

Yes we do use our own BPM software – in some of the most mission critical areas for us. We use Teamworks as the core of our Customer Support site – and have since the founding of the company. This site not only allows customers and partners to submit trouble tickets and track their progress, it also provides access to our knowledge base and community forums. Of course, we save the costs of packaged software, but we are also constantly analyzing our support processes for incremental improvement. Last year, our internal Six Sigma team completed a project that generated a savings of $150,000 by improving how we identify and manage abandoned trouble tickets. That is a nice little savings on a single process for a group that is already winning awards for customer service (http://www.lombardisoftware.com/press-release_9-05-07.php).

Beyond our Customer Support site, we also use Teamworks to manage our build process. Not sure you could get more mission critical for a software company.

Our Product Management and Engineering teams also use Teamworks to plan and track their time investments in different product areas.

On more of the process documentation side, every department in Lombardi uses Blueprint to map and analyze their important processes. You will find everything from Marketing Demand Generation processes, to Finance processes for POs and Invoices, to Services processes for project initiation and hand-off.

This BPM stuff is great. Everyone should have it

Jim Rudden
VP Marketing
Lombardi Software

CIO Magazine wrote an article on this a year ago: http://www.cio.com/article/122351/Pegasystems_CIO_Tells_Colleagues_Drink_Your_Own_Champagne/1

We’ve been “drinking our own champagne” for a long time, and we like this term much better than your dog food analogy. We at Pega use our SmartBPM® suite for a broad variety of tasks, both internal and customer-facing:
1.) The whole company uses BPM for a ton of HR and IT tasks: time sheets, expense reports, procurement, help desk, benefits, reviews, skills assessment, etc.
2.) IT and the corporation use BPM for many aspects of governance, risk, and compliance, including change controls, risk assessment, and internal audits.
3.) Our external support desk (and those of several of our partners) uses BPM for call management/response and customer satisfaction.
4.) Sales fulfillment uses BPM for release dependencies and shipping.
5.) Development/Product Management uses BPM for all aspects of product and change management, including requirements, development, project tracking, testing, scope management, and evaluation/audit. This is also part of our core BPM methodology.

All of these SmartBPM frameworks are also available as add-on frameworks for our customers, and we are developing new ones all the time. We often start with a local “bright idea” in a department that gets expanded and made more generic and robust to create a salable framework.