Part 1 of this blog series provided a lengthy discussion about business process management’s (BPM’s) necessary parts-and-parcels, and the software category’s value proposition.  At the end of that post, I mentioned my recent attendance of a witty presentation that attempted to explain the essence of BPM via a bit of humor and the metaphor of the classic “Wizard of Oz” movie.

Namely, on March 23, 2009, Alan Trefler, Pegasystems’ founder and chief executive officer (CEO), gave his luncheon keynote presentation at the Gartner BPM Summit in San Diego. His theme was “Don’t just Survive…Capitalize.” Trefler began by reminding the audience that in today’s turbulent economy we are all “not in Kansas anymore,” and may just need some ruby slippers to find our way back home to profitability. If you have 14 minutes to spare, you can recapture the spirit of the event here. Read the rest of this entry »

While setting down the thoughts for my recent “SaaSy discussion” blog series To SaaS or Not: Is that a Question?, something else related to software as a service (SaaS) and on-demand applications crossed my mind. Namely, it is a fact that SaaS and business process outsourcing (BPO) providers have largely liberated human resource (HR) and payroll managers from the drudgery of performing menial and tactical administrative tasks time and again?

With these non-differentiating and non-value-adding routine tasks being offloaded to third-party specialists, HR managers can now work smarter and focus more on the strategic and more important tasks of managing the talent and human capital of the company. How about the liberation of chief financial officers (CFOs) and controllers from their daily grind of mindless chores? Read the rest of this entry »