It is a no brainer that the cloud has significantly changed the way IT services are delivered around the world. The benefits of cost effectiveness, speed of deployment and scalability, as well as superior support from cloud providers far outweigh the risks of security and loss of control. Digital transformation has seen organizations choosing to migrate their workloads to the cloud.
Business process management hasn’t been left behind, and the cloud has led to a new BPM domain i.e. BPM as a Service (BPMaaS). Technavio estimates that the BPMaaS sector will grow more than $24 billion USD over the next five years, progressing at a CAGR over 31%.
It’s safe to say that the combination of cloud and BPM looks a sure bet in the future. Let’s look at BPMaaS.
What is BPMaaS?
BPMaaS draws on business process management, the method organizations use to manage and improve their processes. (Processes are different from practices.) BPM is all about fine-tuning processes to squeeze out every possible drop of optimization. BPMaaS builds on this. CloudSocket says:
BPMaaS is an internet-based service that offers a dedicated business process in a cloud-based manner.
Residing somewhere between SaaS and PaaS, it essentially provides a fixed software service, but also offers hooks for introducing your own logic.
BPMaaS packages process design, implementation, and optimization capabilities in a subscription-based cloud service. In the book Enterprise Cloud Computing: A Strategy Guide for Business and Technology Leaders, authors Andy Mulholland, Jon Pyke, and Peter Fingar describe how BPMaaS covers the full lifecycle of business processes, from conception, design implementation, and optimization, all coupled with a robust workflow engine.
BPMaaS will cost effectively and quickly map and deploy your processes through a cloud service that provides a scalable price based on:
- Metrics such as number of users, processes, and interfaces
- Support services
Other terms used to describe this domain include:
- Business Process as a Service (BPaaS). Defined by Gartner as the delivery of business process outsourcing (BPO) services that are sourced from the cloud and constructed for multitenancy. Pricing models are consumption-based or subscription-based commercial terms, with services often automated.
- Cloud-enabled BPM. According to IOPscience, this consists of business processes, business information, and IT resources, which help build real-time intelligence systems based on business management and cloud technology.
Who uses BPMaaS?
Any organization wanting to establish its business processes can take advantage of BPMaaS.
BPMaaS also facilitates digital transformation for organizations who want to manage their business processes through the cloud. Integration with AI, robotic process automation (RPA), and Big Data solutions allow companies to take their processes to the next level by:
- Facilitating intelligent decision making through predictive analytics.
- Driving efficiency through automation.
For industry sectors like financial services and manufacturing involved in global distributed operations, BPMaaS provides valuable capabilities such as:
- Real time process optimization
- Scaling self-service capabilities through mobile and web apps
