Happy New Year to our readers!

2011 was a very good year for BP3 – again, thanks to our customers, and our team.  Our customers continued to invest in BP3 and in BPM, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to help customers achieve success with BPM.  We had some great moments this year – we spoke at IBM Impact with one of our customers, rolled out more production deployments than ever, and had our first all-hands meeting.

Our team is the other major factor in our success.  It is a really good feeling to see teammates pulling together to help each other.  The maturity and experience of our team is the best, bar none.  And yet, our team is humble enough to keep trying to get better, to be well-aware of our weaknesses and strengths.  Every day we go to work thinking about how to improve.

We also made the 2011 “Fast 50” list in Austin for the first time in 2011 (covering years 2008, 2009, and 2010).   We followed up with another banner year – we doubled revenue in 2011, above our expectations.  Without releasing the exact number, you can do the math based on previous publications.   One can argue that a rising tide lifts all boats, but it isn’t so much the big, general, service providers that I see getting traction in the market, it still appears to be the focused “pure play BPM” consultancies that are getting the most traction (and creating the most successes).  This isn’t just true in one vendor ecosystem – it appears to be true across several different OEM software vendor ecosystems.

2011 exposed several memes that were circulating among pundits and bloggers.  My summary of our learnings follows each:

• BPM is Dead.  In fact, 2011 has seen BPM achieve more mainstream success (and press coverage) than ever before.  Far from dying, it is still fostering innovation, consolidation, and customer adoption.
• BPM won’t do well as the economy improves.  I think we could all agree that the economy in 2011 was better, but not good enough to really test this theory.  I still contend that you can’t predict the next economic cycle based on the results of the last cycle – each one is just enough different to surprise you.  This one might be the one where companies continue to invest in process improvement even as growth resumes.
• BPM innovation is over.  I still see interesting innovations happening across a number of vendors-  IBM BPM’s chief innovation has been leveraging IBM’s software in an environment that still feels like Lombardi’s user-friendly BPM environment- versioning and all.  Appian continues to innovate in cloud deployments and mobile BPM.  Isus continues to blaze its own path.  Tibco has picked up Nimbus to add to its own ActiveMatrix BPM.  Activiti and Bonitasoft continue to improve open source options – and Activiti in particular is taking a few different turns as they build out their feature set.  And that really doesn’t do justice to the other folks who are testing out innovative ways to build processes – from data mining for processes to using natural language to express them.
• Austin and Texas will fare better than the US in general in 2011.  Based on Novembers statistics of a 6.6% unemployment rate in Austin, I’d say that’s true.  It appears likely to drop again for December.
• The Process Body of Knowledge effort kicked off with the aim of being the wikipedia for BPM.  These kinds of efforts take a long time to get momentum and really take on an inertia and life of their own.  But if they can get it going, it should be really interesting for the BPM community.
• We started to hear concerns from within the ACM community itself about its risk of  failure.  In fact, in February, ACM was declared dead by one of its own.
• Simplicity and Experience.  These themes just seem to be driving value in the software and consumer markets right now.  And yet many enterprise software companies still aren’t paying attention to these key value propositions.
• There is a lot to learn from startups, which can be applied to our BPM efforts. As startups examine the process of starting, and the process of product development and customer discovery, they’re exposing a lot of nuggets of wisdom about BPM, though the terminology and perspective is different.  Moreover, researchers and entrepreneurs are starting to coalesce around a set of processes for starting up companies and developing products.  It is really fascinating to both observe and participate in.
• SXSW-interactive is a monster.  The conference continues to have an impact on tech and social media.  And despite being “too big” every year, it just keeps getting more interesting and evolving in unexpected ways.  The latest transformation seems to be more startup orientation.
• BPM conferences’ attendance was up.  Both Impact and Gartner had much higher attendance in conferences closely aligned with BPM in 2011.
• We had our first all-hands meeting.  We should have done it sooner.  Leadership and people are the heart of any business, and the heart of any BPM initiative.
• There were several more acquisitions. Consolidation continues, even as new seeds are planted in new startups.

The future for BPM never looked brighter. And by implication, the future for BP3 has never looked brighter.  We see some really important opportunities in front of us, and we are, right now, making the investments that we think will position us to better help our customers going forward.

We’ll have some interesting announcements to make in 2012 as we get deeper into the year.  We have a few opportunities to really improve our value proposition to the BPM market and intend to follow through on a couple of those this year, and we’re looking forward to sharing our thoughts about the future soon.

We’re pleased to announce that BP3 placed #11 in the “Under $10M” category of the Austin Business Journal’s 2011 Austin Fast 50 listing:

The Austin Business Journal honored the 50 fastest growing companies on Thursday at its annual Fast 50 awards ceremony at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center. The awards rank Austin-area companies based on compounded annual average sales growth over three years.

Numbers reflected calendar 2008, 2009, and 2010 performance – so the data is already a bit out of date!  Perhaps surprisingly, we’re growing faster in 2011 than we have in previous years, due to the great environment for BPM consulting services, and hope to be back on the list next year as a result.  Quite an array of companies and industries are represented in the Fast 50 list – congrats to all the other small firms who made it – it is these fast-growing companies that are driving employment in Austin (all the little #’s add up).  Every year the ABJ honors the “Fast 50″ – 25 fastest growing companies over $10M in revenue, and the 25 fastest growing companies under $10M in revenue.  There are restaurants,  consultancies, medical firms, financial firms, and real estate.  You name it.  For those of us in Tech, it is a good reminder that the main-street economy is alive and kicking.

The other interesting thing from our perspective: growing quickly just isn’t part of our goal-set.  We’re just trying to build the best team and capabilities in the BPM space, and provide great value for our customers.  If we can do that, then growth will likely follow as a side-effect.  I don’t think there’s a better way to do it a consulting business without taking outside capital.

Additional text in the print version of the article:

WHAT IT DOES: BP3 is a boutique business process management software consulting business.

HOW IT’S DIFFERENT:  Primarily, we differentiate ourselves with the quality of our expertise in the BPM space.  We’re the most experienced IBM BPM consulting vendor, as a result of our deep ties to its predecessor, the Lombardi BPM product line, dating back to 2003.

KEYS TO GROWTH: The key to our growth is finding more great people to join our team.  Our business is a people business.  Beyond that, the foundation of our growth is that the BPM software market in general is growing.  And, specifically, IBM BPM is growing nicely.

BIGGEST CHALLENGES: Already in 2011, we’ve added six employees to our firm.  Our big challenge will be to support our great people.  When you’re smaller, you can simply be a collection of amazing individual talent.  As we get bigger, to get the most out of this band of talent, we need to optimize our teamwork and organization.

It is that time again – New Year’s Eve, and time for another quick review of the year just past.

2010 Started with declarations of the Second Decade of BPM, as well as proclaimations of the Death of BPM.  We saw the buzz around ACM reach a crescendo as BPM vendors left out of the consolidations of 2009 tried to reposition their spin on BPM.  We even saw a flurry of discussions claiming “so many BPM Projects Fail” – though they don’t.  Some postulated that while BPM grew during 2008 and 2009, when times were tough, that as the economy improved BPM would suffer – while we argued that the past simply doesn’t predict the future: each economic cycle has its own surprises.  And our best evidence pointed toward BPM vendors and services providers continuing to do well in 2010.  Through it all, we at BP3 maintained that BPM was doing just fine, thank you, and growing nicely.

2010 was a good year for BP3, thanks to gracious customers who offered us a great opportunity to assist with their BPM efforts.  We understand that our customers are making an investment in BP3 when they contract our services, just as we’re investing our time and energy in their BPM initiatives.  We’re very grateful for their trust and faith in our ability to grow and run our business to their benefit.

Secondly, I have to thank our team – a team we’re really proud of.  They worked really hard in 2010 to make it a great year for us and our clients.

Our new offices (and coffee machine!) worked out great for our productivity and melding as a team in Austin.  We were able to participate at IBM’s Impact this year, sharing what we learned at bpmCamp, which was held in January 2010 at Stanford.

Most of all, we were able to assemble a top-notch team – we’ve more than doubled our staff in 2010, and we still have the most experienced IBM Lombardi BPM team on the market, bar none.  This sets us up to grow again in 2011, as BPM continues to be a cornerstone of the IBM value pitch, while at the same time being a key target for corporations’ investments in business improvement.

Here’s to another great year in BPM, and hopefully a great year for the larger economy as well!  Happy New Year!

entering 2011 prepared to have a great year.

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!