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Whitepaper

Building the BPM business case


9 factors for minimizing the cost
of a successful BPM investment

BPM: Building the business case

Executive summary
Business Process Management (BPM) solutions have delivered significant benefits to
organizations demanding agility and efficiency in their business operations, but some
programs have fallen short. What factors determine success or failure in BPM
deployments? How can companies of all sizes enable themselves with the right BPM
investments to deliver rapid value at minimized cost?
One characteristic shared by successful BPM strategies across the globe has been a
clear-eyed analysis of those factors that drive the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of such
programs.
By making a detailed analysis of both quantifiable costs - shown on the diagram below plus other factors discussed later in this paper, your company can ensure it makes an
informed decision about the best BPM Suite (BPMS) purchase for your needs today, and
in the years ahead.
In this paper, well explore 9 key factors from deployments across the world that have
been used to deliver positive and compelling return-on-investment (ROI) as well as equip
you with probing questions to ask of potential vendors.
Figure 1. The seeds of success - or project failure - are sown early so a thorough Total
Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis is a useful exercise to understand the impact of your
purchasing decision. At Bizagi, we recommend that you evaluate the critical current and
future cost factors as summarized in the illustration below.
9 COST FACTORS TO OPTIMIZE THE BPMS BUSINESS CASE

Purchase
Speed
of delivery

Functionality

ere

nce

ards
Stand
ility

lab

Sca

Implementation

Infrastructure

Maintenance

Ref

Te

TCO

ROI

Training

Upgrades

Servers

BPM: Building the business case


Whitepaper

ch

e
us

no

Re

log

Licence costs

Figure 1

BPM: Building the business case

Calculating the true TCO: Key factors

What really drives the BPM Total Cost of Ownership?


In this section, we'll look at the challenges of establishing a system's TCO and
deep-dive into four of the nine key factors to consider when weighing up a
system's total cost.
Why, when weighing up rival BPM systems,
would you purchase the cheapest on offer
even if you knew that it would cost you more
in the long term? Common sense dictates that
we wouldnt do the same when spending our
own money.

children will demand a color version further


down the line.

For example, we can buy a functional printer


for less than $100 but we know very well that
the cost of maintaining that printer can easily
triple the initial purchase price within a year.

In effect, we make a conscious and sensible


decision to buy the more functional and
cheaper-to-maintain printer now, rather than
replacing the inferior model later and spending
more money in the process. We apply the
same long-term cost vs benefit ratio when
purchasing a car, house or any other
household expenditure.

We know our limited budget makes the cheap


black & white printer the more tempting
option, but we decide against it, knowing our

So why do some companies struggle to


consider the true TCO when making enterprise
software investments?

Two key reasons:


Lack of information
Without knowing all the factors that contribute to TCO, it can be impossible
to make effective value judgements for the next 5-10 years (average
lifetime of a BPMS).

Bizagi has been able to incorporate many outstanding


features characteristic of a state-of-the-art BPM
solution within a simple yet powerful business process
management suite. Bizagi is a solution that should be
given due consideration by organizations looking for a
fully-fledged BPM solution.
Jorge Garca, Analyst, Technology Evaluation Centers

BPM: Building the business case


Whitepaper

Lack of visibility
Some vendors cant, or wont, reveal vital facts that impact ownership costs
in areas such as functionality, upgrades and customization.

BPM: Building the business case

Functionality
Your business is changing daily, so ask yourself:
does the software you are purchasing
meet your needs not only today, but in the
future? Will it grow with your business or will
you have to pay extra for new features?
E.g. For some, analytics on the tablet might be
a nice to have now but how will you support
your mobile workforce in the future? What
about secure mobile or offline access? You
need to be confident that your vendor will
support your future business goals as part of
the deal. Your company is investing in a
system that will become a core component of

Ask the
vendor

your business and IT infrastructure for a long


time. Will the vendor be around through that
period to support you? Will they continue to
invest in order to innovate and expand the
functionality and be aligned with the latest
industry trends?

Am I entitled to take advantage of new functionality as part of my


existing contract?
What product enhancements are on your roadmap?
How often do you release new products, or upgrade your functionality?
What is your R&D budget & quality of developers?
Is your software standards-based or proprietary?

Ease of use

Managing change
Owning a BPMS is not only about helping the
business optimize their profits: it can help you
de-risk your processes. Lets say youve spent

Ask the
vendor

weeks or months perfecting your final process


application, only to learn that new legislation is
just around the corner. Your business needs to
comply or face heavy fines. Unless the BPMS
is designed to manage changes fast, you will
find yourself making manual entries for weeks
and months leading to costly mistakes and
hurting your financial performance. Can you
really afford to write off the loss of executive
jobs, or fines costing thousands of dollars?
BPM systems exist to enable rapid, continuous
process improvement, so making process
changes quickly and easily should be at the
heart of what they offer.

How does your system support business/IT collaboration? For example, can
business users easily take part in requirements capture and process modeling?
Can business users initiate process change without heavy IT involvement?
How easily is it to make changes on the fly?
How will you ensure process model changes are seamlessly propagated through
the whole system (across your omni-channel applications)?
How quickly will the change become operational?
Do you encourage your customers to make regular process releases? How often?

BPM: Building the business case


Whitepaper

Ease of use cant be easily quantified and yet it


will have a huge impact on development speed
and overall team productivity - especially if you
need programming skills to make simple
changes. Unless business and IT can clearly
articulate what is required and easily
collaborate at every stage then the end result
will be misaligned with the business strategy
costing valuable time and money.

BPM: Building the business case

Scalability
If you are making an enterprise BPMS
purchase, how well is the product suited for
scalability and enterprise-wide deployments?
You may decide to implement BPM on a
smaller scale right now, but surely you are
hoping for success and rapid rollout across
other parts of the business?
This is the nature of BPM. Unless the BPMS is
built for reuse allowing similar processes to
be quickly customized and rewrapped for
other parts of the business your plans for
enterprise-wide transformation will be brought
swiftly to a stop.

INABILITY TO REUSE PROCESS ELEMENTS


STIFLES AUTOMATION SPEED
Plan
Automated
process

Reality

Time

Figure 2
Sub-processes, business rules, forms and many more
Bizagi enables you to reuse any of these process elements,
making it quick, easy and cost effective to automate many
processes over time.

Ask the
vendor

Can you potentially reuse various business objects such as: forms, processes,
data, user interface components, and rules?
What % of the system you are building is reusable?
How much will it cost to deploy an enterprise-wide solution?
How long will you take to deliver the above?
Can you provide customer reference sites where you have automated
hundreds of core and supporting processes?

Integration & speed of delivery

This is where data and its role in the overall


system architecture plays a key role in lowering
the total cost of system ownership ('The data

Ask the
vendor

question' on page 6 explains more). Without


this flexibility, you can easily find yourself
changing your behavior to adapt to your ERP hardly the notion of continuous improvement or catering for extra costs and time to deliver
the desired outcome.
Finally there is a speed of delivery. Will it take
weeks, months or years to deliver the first
process and start seeing value being added to
your bottom line? Will you ever get there?

Does the system support fast and clean connectivity with any data of my choice?
How do you integrate with data sources? Do you replicate or virtualize the data?
How long will it take to deliver the first business process?

BPM: Building the business case


Whitepaper

This is a key cost in any initial system


implementation and becomes even more
critical in todays customer-centric world.
Connecting with enterprise systems SharePoint and SAP for example - can make
you more efficient but only if the connection
points are quick to create and changes easy
to make.

BPM: Building the business case

The data question


Why a flexible architecture is critical in lowering TCO
The way your proposed system treats data for example, how it is accessed, modeled and
visualized plays an important role when weighing up a systems TCO.
In traditional BPM systems, the data layer is
treated alongside the process layer, coupling
them tightly together. So when you want to
make a change connecting to a new CRM
system for example you create a link. This
happens each time you want to change or
adapt the process flow, eventually creating
thousands of brittle spaghetti strands.

This can make the system costly to own as


each process change involves complex and
time-consuming work that becomes the
burden of the IT department.
Taking a different approach to the BPM
architecture can go a long way to ease short
and long-term spending.

For example:
Cost-effective collaboration

By separating the process layer from the underlying data, business users are shielded
from technicalities and can work far more effectively with IT.

Greater adaptability

All process elements can now be shared and reused among several processes.
Without the need to start from scratch, adapting to business change becomes far
easier and more cost-effective.

BIZAGI SUITES 3-LAYER STACK ARCHITECTURE


Bizagi BPM Suite
Form

Widget

Rule

Process Layer

Led by
Business

Reusable
Business Objects

Entity Virtualization
or Replication

Component
Library

Enterprise
Mapping Layer

Databases

ERP, CRM, etc.

Figure 2
Bizagis unique flexible architecture ensures cost-effective
reuse of process elements, essential for scalability in
enterprise-wide deployments.

Legacy

Owned
by IT

BPM: Building the business case


Whitepaper

Data Layer

A stack architecture separates complex


problems into logical layers, making
business process management simple
and collaborative. This is an indispensable
approach to support enterprise-wide
BPM initiatives.

BPM: Building the business case

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) checklist

Software acquisition

Discovery

Limited free software trials in terms of


timescales and functionality.

Transparent price list publicly available from


bizagi.com. Licence fees are charged per
user. Connectors, ready-made processes, UI
blocks and all other functionality are included
at no additional cost.

Additional functionality often comes at extra


expense above the initial licence fee. Many
vendors offer several products to support the
BPM lifecycle, leading to multiple UIs, costly
integration and multiple support points.

Aimed at being lower than the annual


maintenance fee seen across the market.
Minor upgrades are easily achieved by the
customer.

Over 20% of the licence fees, while Bizagi


maintenance costs are at 18%.

Light footprint platform requiring only single


servers for both web application and
database. Supports increasing processes and
user numbers with only small memory
increments. E.g. Initial consumption of
650Mbs leading to an average 1.2 Gb. Largest
implementations require a maximum of 2.5Gb.

Will vary significantly depending on the size


of the BPM deployments. As an illustrative
example, in one competitive scenario, whilst
some BPM vendors required 24 servers
Bizagi was able to deliver the same
capability with just two.

Infrastructure

Bizagi users are able to try full enterprise


software before purchasing. In addition to
free modeling and automation, Bizagi allows
up to 20 users to test the working system in a
development or test environment, without
time constraints and with zero financial
commitment.

Licences

Market

Maintenance

Bizagi

For example, many free versions offered are a


cut-down version of the full product offering
limited functionality that your business will
outgrow very fast - you will then be asked to
pay a hefty price for an upgrade to access full
product capability.

Software implementation
Bizagis QuickStart program allows the first
process to be delivered in less than 7 weeks
and in some deployments it required just
two people: a Business Analyst and a
Technical Analyst.

Varies significantly; on average most BPM


vendors deploy their systems with over 10
consultants; 7 digit sums and projects that
take years to deliver are commonplace.

Bizagi offers free, online role-based training


personalized to your needs. Advanced
instructor-led training - both office or online is also available.

No other vendor offers free training.

BPM: Building the business case


Whitepaper

Deployment

Market

Learning

Bizagi

BPM: Building the business case

10 ways Bizagi delivers lowest BPM TCO

Future proofing

Bizagi delivers all the functionality you need to cater for your future growth,
from mobile reporting & analytics to a flexible and reusable data model.

Standards-based

From Object Management Group (OMG) modeling notation standards to Java:


Bizagi BPM Suite gives you the freedom to connect by supporting common
industry standards for process modeling & integration.

Deep commitment to R&D

We invest >25% of our revenues into Research and Development. Our products
are customer-focused (90% of Bizagi v10.6 was based on user feedback).

Fastest delivery

Utilizing our proven Spark delivery framework, we will guide you towards a
process automation project that will deliver your first enterprise process in less
than 7 weeks.

Scalability

The Bizagi platform easily powers some of the largest BPM programs in the
world including one for the global leader for sustainable technology, Abengoa,
with 15,000 users and 400 processes.

Ease of reuse

Bizagi's marketplaces: Process Xchange and Widget Xchange, provide


ready-made process apps and UI building blocks respectively, enabling
customers to fast track their development.

Responsiveness & adaptability

Our customers work on tight process change schedules, releasing on average


bi-weekly cycles to get critical business model and operational changes to
market fast just like Bizagi customer Generali.

Our community

Active references

We have customer sites across all corners of the globe reaching the mature
stages of process excellence and with the delivered ROI to prove it like
Colpensiones in South America enabling 41,000 cases through their BPM
system daily.

10

A maniacal focus on ROI

No metric, no project thats our mantra. Our consultants work with our
customers to derive the data points for success and review them regularly.
Discover ROI with Bizagi.

BPM: Building the business case


Whitepaper

Join Bizagi and reach out to 500,000+ like-minded BPM experts through our
community forums and social media groups.

The way people can build a process


application in Bizagi is very impressive. It is
much easier than with most other platforms.
Dr Sebastian Adam, Leader of Requirement Engineering & Head
of Business Process Management Study, Fraunhofer IESE

BPM: Building the business case

In conclusion
When considering the purchase of a BPM
system, it is critical to take into account
not just the most obvious costs but those
that will impact ownership over the long
term. The core pillars of low TCO functionality, ease of use, scalability and
speed lead us towards an efficient
system that has all the power & features

of an enterprise platform, yet can be


implemented in a far shorter timescale and with a fraction of the resources
required by competitor systems. That
platform is Bizagi.

Get in touch today to learn more.

Bizagi offers a unique approach to


marrying business processes and
structured data.
Positioned as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave :
BPM Platforms For Digital Business, Q4 2015

Learn more
LEARN HOW BIZAGIS FLEXIBLE ARCHITECTURE LOWERS TCO
UNTANGLING SPAGHETTI BPM WHITEPAPER
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ABENGOA CASE STUDY

DISCOVER BIZAGIS SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE FOR SCALABILITY


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BPM: Building the business case


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About Bizagi
Bizagi offers a risk-free BPM platform that powers $10bn
transactions for 500+ enterprise customers worldwide including
GE Capital, adidas, and Old Mutual. With Bizagi, you can try, test
and automate complete processes without financial
commitment and only pay once youre ready to deploy. Thats
why we have zero project failures and can deliver quantifiable
ROIs fast.
Bizagi is headquartered in the UK with offices in Europe, Latin
America and the US, supported by a worldwide partner network.
For more information, please visit the Bizagi
corporate website at www.bizagi.com
Follow Bizagi on Twitter: @bizagi
Bizagi London Office
T: +44 (0) 1753 379270
E: marketing@bizagi.com
Copyright 2002-2016 Bizagi. All rights reserved

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