CEE: The Future: Building the Compliance-Enabled Enterprise
September 2006

This groundbreaking study underscores the gap between management focus on compliance-related issues and IT’s lack of ability to implement critical policies and procedures—while revealing the state of corporate governance and legal discovery readiness, identifying potential vulnerabilities and offering recommendations for improvement…

Market Vigilance Product Diligence: Powering Product Marketing Effectiveness
June 2006

In an environment where one false forecast can mean a loss of billions of dollars, product marketers are under pressure to make fast, informed decisions in critical areas such as competitive analysis, product forecasting and pricing. For that they need accurate, real-time intelligence. This report details the challenges – and opportunities – in this key process…

Accelerate How You Differentiate: The Alert Enterprise Audit
June 2006

Driven by increasing competitive, regulatory and market pressures, the pace of business today is accelerating rapidly. As a result, enterprises are confronted by the need to strengthen and hone their capacity to both anticipate and respond to change. While executives have long suggested that this is a top priority, the evidence suggests that signifi cant roadblocks continue to exist within this journey. As a result, important questions are being asked today of all businesses: Where are companies in this evolutionary process of becoming more nimble, responsive and perceptive creatures of their competitive environments? Which areas of their business are most critically in need of change? What is the role of IT in enabling this transformation, and how satisfied are executives with their progress?…

Remote Revolution: Uptime Issues, Implications and Imperatives in the Mobile Workforce
December 2005

As the world’s mobile and remote workforce expands rapidly, to an anticipated 878 million by the end of this decade, companies are increasingly grappling with tough questions about how to best support, secure and empower their workers. Employee expectations are rising for ubiquitous real-time access to messaging and data, and 24/7 support for the devices and applications that can help deliver it. Each new mobile worker represents not an incremental impact on security and support requirements, but a multiplier effect, since the average worker uses multiple devices, each carrying multiple new applications accessing the corporate network. The demands of IT support and security for mobile workers is on a growth curve that threatens to rapidly overwhelm businesses, becoming a serious business performance issue for companies of all sizes…

(additional registration required)

Crunch Time: Global Competitiveness Audit Full Report
April 2005

If you’re an executive in the North American high technology or telecommunications industries, there is a high probability you are feeling the heat of increasing global competition. In general, your competition is bigger, tougher, and decidedly more global than ever before, and it is often coming from companies that heretofore did not sell into your market spaceUnfortunately, there is also a strong likelihood you have not taken all the steps necessary to prepare for this tougher and fiercer business environment. If your company is like most North American technology businesses, you are not conducting formal company-wide assessments of your competitiveness. There’s no executive who is formally assigned to that task. What’s more, your efforts and investments in product innovation, customer intimacy and operational improvements may be insufficient to keep pace with your tougher competition…

Crunch Time Executive Summary Report
February 2005

If you’re in the technology or telecommunications industries, how do you rate your company’s competitive preparedness? If you think you’re in a “very good” position, consider yourself very lucky because the odds overwhelmingly suggest you shouldn’t be that confident. In fact, more than 70 percent of executive in these industries say their preparation is good or fair, with another 15 percent sinking even lower. As the competition heats up, if you lack a competitive strategy, there’s enough room for your rivals to take a lead. Knowing your industry is changing and understanding the essential drivers of future competitiveness are the first steps in closing this gap…

Crunch Time Presentation
February 2005

Highlights: Three mega trends are cutting across the Tech industry increasing opportunity but also competitive intensity. Based on survey of 300 US Tech executives, companies need to be better prepared to respond to this trends and tougher competition. Raising the level of competitive strategy to the company level is needed to address the broader market dislocations that are occurring. US Tech is not standing still and taking key actions, however, it may not be enough considering the market changes underway; Need to Innovate beyond the core.a few big bets, engage Customer/Channel in CRM improvement efforts, and develop company level China and India strategies. In addition, global players and potentially tightening capital markets will keep pressure on price and margins, requiring continued focused on operations improvements and strong capital management…

Case Study : freightquote.com
January 2005

Problem: Web site traffic and fast growth brought an unusually high percentage of bad debt customers. Management found itself limiting customer credit to avoid large write offs. Consequently we were losing business because of the self-imposed credit ceiling. Hot prospects turned cold when asked to pay in advance. Or, they simply turned elsewhere because freightquote would no longer assume the risk. As the company registers thousands of accounts each month, purchasing a credit report for every account did not seem prudent. In 2002 freightquote required 30 credit checks per day. With business only growing faster, freightquote.com needed a scalable way to manage credit without time-consuming, business-delaying procedures…

Software Drain or Business Gain:
Assessing Application Value, Relevance and Cost to Your Company
December 2004

This report is a new BPM Forum Thought Leadership Initiative that looks at the state of software deployment and return on investment in today’s enterprise. The study measures executive satisfaction with the value of software in their organizations and examines what companies are doing to ensure that applications are satisfactorily aligned with business strategies and relevant to current needs. Study results indicate that companies are highly challenged to keep their software infrastructures aligned with current business strategies and needs. However, this isn’t only a problem of companies finding it difficult to build the right software when they need it; it’s also a problem of not being able to get rid of it when the time comes…..

Gauging the Cost of What’s Lost:
Improve the Return on the Resource Burn
November 2004

Improve the Return on Resource Burn is a new thought leadership initiative that studies business performance in one of the most critical areas of endeavor for the modern commercial enterprise, business demand acquisition. Creating and managing the new business pipeline – the process of generating, capturing, qualifying and converting
business opportunities – is essential to the growth and profitability of companies across every industry and geographic market. As this study shows, business demand acquisition is a mission-critical process in which companies invest heavily, but generally are dissatisfied with the results. Put positively, it is a business process ripe for performance improvement…..

Business Process Management:
Taking ERP Beyond Departmental & Data-Centric Boundaries
A White Paper by Exact Software (2004)

The ERP technology boom in the 1990’s gave organizations a means to start obtaining much needed operational visibility but was limited to product and order processing with other related functions and thus did not provide a complete, consolidated view of their entire business. In today’s global enterprise, numerous business processes occur each day that are outside the scope of ERP-from filling out a purchase request, to interacting with business partners, to assigning documents for review and approval: the effectiveness of each one, and the overall efficiency of your organization, is dependant on integrating these different tasks throughout your entire business and with ERP systems….

The Key Chapter In “Open-Book Management”
BPM Technology Spells Success of New Organizational Initiative
By Mark N. Clemente (2004)

Technology helped a western state utility curb water usage during a severe draught that affected the region two years ago. Today, that same IT system helps the utility better manage the “data deluge” that keeps many firms from gaining maximum financial returns. Companies succeed based on the quality and timeliness of the information they rely on for management decision-making. For one leading utility and other companies today, the challenge is successfully managing voluminous data and intelligence. The utility acted upon the challenge. By instituting open-book management as a means of better harnessing organizational knowledge — and, most importantly, bolstering employees’ communication, commitment and sense of ownership — the utility has heightened productivity and lessened costs….

BPM Is Just-In-Time Solution For Applying Real-Time Performance Management Data
By Dean Trachtenberg and Dan Hurley (2004)

Just-in-time (J-I-T) is a management discipline that relates directly to manufacturing. The underlying principles of J-I-T, however, also pertain to the “raw material” of today’s knowledge-based enterprises: business performance information…

White Paper: BPM Technology Delivers Tools For “Working Capital Management”
By Harnish Kanani. July 2004

It has been said that, in business, “cash is king.” If so, working capital is the power behind the throne in any commercial enterprise. Working capital refers to the money that companies use to fund their operations. The flow of working capital is a cyclical phenomenon. Cash comes into the business via accounts receivables. Cash goes out via accounts payables. The companies that effectively manage this “working capital cycle” are best able to attain profitability and effect sustainable corporate growth.