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.

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.

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.

Here it is, New Year’s Eve, 2008.  Like most of us, my thoughts turn reflective on the past year:  where we started, what we’ve achieved, and what we hope to do in the new year.

In 2008, we grew our staffed headcount 350%.  We don’t expect to repeat that trajectory in 2009, but we do hope to grow our ability to staff our team by 50%.  We hired some of the best and brightest when it comes to implementing BPM software solutions, and we now have the core team of experienced veterans to build around.

We rolled out a lot of processes for our customers in 2009. In all, we had significant impact on 15 processes.  We had 10 production roll-outs of major processes and major revisions to processes.  We had 3 processes go to production in which we assisted as mentors to the project team.  We had 2 processes complete development with production deployment scheduled for 2009.  Several of these projects were with insurance and financial services companies that are weathering the difficult economic climate quite well.  I think we’ve shown that BP3 is a fantastic partner when customers really want to get projects and processes into production, and off of the whiteboard.

We defined our services framework, which shapes how we think BPM offerings should work in general.

We developed and delivered our Lean 6 / BPM for IT Training class, in partnership with SixSigmaUS (If you’re interested in the class, please click on the Six Sigma link to request a spot in the next open enrollment class or to request a private class for your organization).  This is the beginning of converting the knowledge in our collective heads into teachable content for a larger audience.

BP3 had the honor of contributing to the OMG Certification of Expertise in BPM (OCEB) Examinations as well, which help set the standard for BPM knowledge and expertise in the industry, and really help define what exactly “BPM” is in the first place.

BP3 also participated in several conferences this year, that definitely enlightened us:  the Lombardi User Conference in Austin (Driven 2008), the Appian conference in DC, followed by the Gartner BPM Summit, and finally the OMG Think Tank meeting in Chicago. We had speaking or moderating roles in all of these, with the exception of Appian’s conference.

Most of all, we had the pleasure of working with some very forward-thinking customers who are striving to help their companies succeed through more efficient processes with better customer service.

We had a very full plate in 2008.  And with cautious optimism, we look to a bright 2009.  What do we have planned?

Expanding our implementation team. We’ll be growing our team opportunistically this year, as we continue to find great professionals and great customers to work with.

More education opportunities. We’re going to continue to offer our Lean-Six for IT training offering.

More process consulting. We’re going to leverage our expertise applying Lean-Six to white-collar processes and grow this part of our business in 2009.

More software. We have some ideas in mind on the software front, to augment our consulting practice with useful tools of the trade.

More evangelism for BPM. Expect to see us at a few of the conferences again this year.  We believe in the power of BPM to improve your business, and we’re going to be on the road talking about it.  And we’ll be right here, on the blog.

Happy New Year, and all the best to our customers, partners, and friends in 2009!