What does BPM stand for? In computing it stands for all of the above which are all inter-related but not the same thing (But for fun Google BPM and see how many other variants you can find).

What is clear is that is important to ask the question when looking at a BPM tool, as they do not all cover the same areas and they do not always mean the same thing when using the same words.

Most of the tools I have looked at do not really start at the beginning and model the business process independent of the computing systems that support the process. Neither do they produce documentation that can be reviewed independently of the development environment. The business user will want to review the processes that have been defined, in the quiet of their office or even better away from the office altogether. They will not want, or be able, to install the development tool on to their own machine, so they need to be able to review and modify it off-line. This means that the model must be translated into something they have on their machine such as Word or HTML so that the user can view it at their convenience.

Another oddity of this market is that in the SME space, and that includes departments of larger organisations, business processes often involve small numbers of people and relatively little data. As I have gone around these types of organisations I have come to the conclusion that the most popular business process management (work-flow) tool appears to be Excel. With a column for each step in the process, and a row for every process instance, Excel provides a very easy to set, easy to use and flexible BPM. However it obviously lacks the controls, audits and management that is really required.

New Zealand is remote and that seems to have made businesses and IT independent and willing to think things out from first principals. This is the genesis of XSol a BPM tool that has been built on the assumptions that modelling:

• Is a task that should be done first
• Should be based on the managements understanding of how the process should work
• Should not be based on assumptions about the underlying packages

It also recognises the fact that when the processes are implemented the underlying technology may be anything from a spreadsheet right up to a fully blow CRM application.

XSol have recently moved into the UK, in particular in partnership with Hedra, a leading public sector transformation consultancy. In 2005 I would expect them to make significant inroads as they attract more business process management consultants.

Many consultant use Visio at present to do the modelling but are then frustrated by the manual conversion to a business process execution environment. XSol does really bridge this divide. The initial model is stored in an Enterprise System Logic repository (ESL), and this can then be fleshed out to include the implementation details (is it stored in Excel or is it in SAP?). Roles and users are then defined, and the process can then be deployed.

Having seen this demonstrated the real attraction for me was that the discussion could start with the user without any consideration of IT and could just concentrate on the process. This should overcome any initial reticence and get the processes agreed. Then with a little bit of IT magic, operational prototypes can be rapidly developed, with the certainty that they will implement the processes as defined by the business.

I think this is a very exciting product for the SME market. The large enterprises will need to test rigorously to ensure its robustness and scalability, but I believe they will be pleasantly surprised.