As of February 1, BP3 is in new offices.  We’ve moved just a short distance from our old office on Balcones Drive in Austin, to our new office at Plaza 7000, at the intersection of Far West Blvd and MoPac Expressway.

We’re really happy to have the extra space, and our new co-working arrangement with Red Velvet Events.

Today, I unwrapped a little present for the new office that makes it feel like home to me, and that’s an espresso machine:

First latte at bp3 headquarters

Its a Nespresso Citiz, and yes, I’m expecting to be wide awake at the office from now on, and a little less cash will be going to Starbucks this year.

Gartner Group’s Michele Cantara just published its list of “Who’s Who” in BPM Consulting and System Integration on December 14th, 2009.  17 Companies are covered, and BP3 is on the list.  Michele gives an overview of the BPM Services landscape, and rightly points out:

While many consultants and system integrators offer some form of business consulting or process optimization services, they may not have the capabilities appropriate for business process management. This report profiles the BPM consulting capabilities of 17 external service providers.  – from the abstract

The price is $995 for the report by itself, but if you have a Gartner subscription you may have ready access to it.  BPM consulting is defined as a special case of Business Operations Improvement (BOI) consulting, which is process improvement tied to downstream technology change.  Gartner plots the vendors on the “Gartner Consulting Continuum”, and then provides a synopsis of each vendor, including BP3.

It’s an honor to be included in the list, and to be able to get the word out about what we’re up to – and to get heard above the noise is even more gratifying.  It’s a small world in this particular space – we know some of the other companies on and off of this list, and we’ve had opportunity to work together to deliver solutions for customers. We just don’t believe that this is a zero-sum game, because successful BPM projects are growing the pie faster than any one service provider can accommodate, and because it takes a variety of skills to make these projects successful.

While Gartner points out that our size might limit our ability to handle large scale BPM and transformation initiatives, it turns out we’re in the middle of just such an initiative right now – leading a joint team of BP3, Lombardi/IBM, TCS, and customer personnel, more than 150 people in all.  We like to think we have impact larger than our size would indicate: the point is not so much whether all arms and legs are provided by BP3 (which wouldn’t make sense in almost any case as you want to have a variety of specialists and disciplines) -the point is where the leadership and experience base is coming from.

That leadership and experience is where we can help, and it is more specific to our value proposition, whether you’re deploying Teamworks or doing an assessment of your processes and opportunities for the first time. We’re going to continue building the most experienced, highly skilled BPM team in the business, and stay focused on our core value proposition.  Stay tuned!

The first day (or two) of 2010.  While some say that this marks the beginning of the Second Decade of BPM, others are proclaiming the Death of BPM.  For those of us at BP3, we remain optimistic about this “second decade” of BPM, and we’re optimistic about what BPM can do for companies across a broad spectrum of sizes and industries, as you can see from our blog and our comments on other blogs and sites.

2009 was a tough year for the economy, and for many of our friends and colleagues across a number of industries.  We entered 2009 with a lot of uncertainty, but also with some very good customer relationships, and some very good opportunities in front of us. And finally, we can see real signs in the statistics that our economy is mending slowly.

I’m happy to say that despite these challenges 2009 was our best year yet – growing by 60% and adding a couple of skilled and dedicated members to our staff in the process. 2009 was full of interesting announcements in BPM – not least of which was IBM’s acquisition of Lombardi in December.

We had some great customer successes in 2009 and forged some new relationships that we’re really excited about continuing in 2010.  And we’ve assembled a team we’re very proud of, and grateful for.

We also placed in Gartner’s “Who’s Who in BPM Services” report,  which reinforces our hard work and thought leadership in the BPM space and puts us on a short list of services providers.  More to come on this announcement in another blog entry.

And we stayed so busy in 2009 we barely had time to come up for air.

As happy as we are with how 2009 turned out, we’re looking forward to 2010 even more:

• We have bpmCamp at Stanford to look forward to – a chance to reconnect with colleagues who implement BPM solutions for all kinds of different processes.
• We have some really interesting ideas to pursue this year in terms of running large BPM programs, and managing key concepts for BPM initiatives.
• We’re looking to grow our business again in 2010.  Although growth in and of itself is not necessarily the goal, we see opportunities to grow in a healthy, organic way based on the business opportunities for 2010 – and we can still see a real shortage of BPM skills and experience in the market place.  BP3 is going go to be a go-to vendor to get both – and we’re going to be a great place to work if you have both skills and experience.
• We’re moving our HQ to new offices in Austin in 2010.  It will be a better working environment and a place we’ll be proud to call home, while still respecting our lean cost structure.

Of course, mostly we’re hoping to do well by our customers in 2010, and in so doing, do well by our team.  Happy New Year to all of you!  May 2010 bring in the next decade with health, happiness, and success.

I will be working with a partner colleague to lead a workshop, as part of Gartner’s Workshop Series, this year in Washington DC. I didn’t get a chance to make last year’s session but heard anecdotally it was well represented. This year Dr. John Alden from Capability Measurement and I will be delivering a workshop on BPM Measurement: Principles and Practices. This workshop is all about starting or improving measurement in companies BPM initiatives. Something I can tell you is woefully lacking and as a result companies may not be getting all of the “bang for the buck” they really should on these projects and programs. The synopsis is as follows:

Participants will learn how to start or to improve existing measurement activities in a BPM initiative. The workshop will be divided into two parts:
1) a “measurement principles” presentation
2) a facilitated “practice oriented case study” discussion
In the first section, the content will cover:
- Current landscape for BPM measurement – trends and issues
- Measurement and its link to strategy
- Practical frameworks for guiding measurement programs and their lifecycle(s)
- How the maturity of business processes affects BPM measurement capability and analytics
- Where to start if you are new? How to improve if you are already involved?

In the second section, the participants will engage in group discussion designed to provide for tangible outcomes, e.g. something useful to take back home. Participants will evaluate their own preparedness for BPM measurement and develop a measurement roadmap tailored to the maturity of their business processes.

You can learn more about the Summit and Register here at Gartner BPM Summit

Hope to see you there!