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 Back to 2006 Press Releases
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Gartner Says Business Application Vendors Face Challenge to Move to ' The Process of Me' |
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| ** Person to Process Interaction is the Next Innovation Step in Business Software ** |
Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, Barcelona, Spain 23 May 2006 - One of the most significant challenges facing major vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP is to evolve their business applications to meet the needs of individuals carrying out their work, instead of the traditional focus on enterprise process automation, according to Gartner.
Speaking at its Spring Symposium/ITxpo in Barcelona today, Gartner said that while business applications have enabled enterprises to manage their business processes, they are also the reason that enterprises can?t be as innovative or agile as they would like since the human factor has largely been ignored.
As organisations seek to leverage their skilled people, reduce training time and support end-to-end workflow across all aspects of the business, applications software now needs to be designed for the individual. Gartner has coined this people-process intersection the 'process of me'.
"Business agility and process efficiency have been enemies," said Yvonne Genovese, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "Successful process automation has been tightly tied to efficiency - maximum production with minimum input. This has resulted in software applications that embrace functional detail and methodologies aimed at capturing enterprise requirements and translating them into code. The 'process of me' redefines how we think of process by putting the individual at the centre. It considers 'what are the processes I'm involved in and how do these contribute to the business'."
Gartner predicts that companies who focus on the process of the individual and the activities that are required to make a business process successful will outperform their competition by 40 percent through 2010.
The 'process of me' will include integration of tools such as instant messaging, threaded discussions and management of real-time events, with the transactional processes supported by traditional business applications. It will allow process activities via many devices such as mobile phones and PDAs, and will also leverage other Internet technologies based on Web 2.0.
According to Simon Hayward, vice president and Gartner fellow, "Further advances in using IT to support individuals will require seamless integration between the worlds of ad-hoc personal and collaboration tools and processes supported by traditional business applications. The fundamentally chaotic nature of the individual work process has to be embedded within the enterprise process view."
The Battle for Dominance in Enterprise Process and 'The Process of Me'
Major vendors in application software markets, including those focused on collaboration and business process management, will begin to combine application development, business process management, business applications and collaboration capabilities to take advantage of the new market opportunity presented by the 'process of me'.
The 'process of me' impacts on many dimensions of IT support to business and individuals and the early impact is particularly noticeable on vendors who participate in all these markets.
Gartner expects that the vendors with development platforms, for example SAP and Oracle, will begin to use their platforms to build pre-defined 'process of me' capabilities and offer them as packaged offerings.
Ms Genovese warned, "The biggest mistake that the vendors will make will be trying to take the enterprise processes they know well and adjust these to individual processes. This will not be good enough. With the chaotic nature of the 'process of me', the individual user needs the ability to manipulate the process and the tools that enable the process. This will require a combination of packaged content and user focused tools."
Microsoft is well placed with all of the necessary elements to execute against the 'process of me'. This includes Office with its dominance in the industry and business process definitions through Dynamics. In addition, an application development platform, workflow and collaboration services via Sharepoint. However, the ingredients do not automatically make the meal. Microsoft faces challenges in creating a delivery model for products to enable the 'process of me' and in integrating the diverse and historically high independent business units that must collaborate to deliver against the opportunity.
Oracle has a mix of applications, collaboration support tools and development platforms, but the weakness of its market position in support of the personal tools is a major hurdle to cross. However, while Oracle's collaboration suite is not broadly used in the market, it understands how collaboration suites, development platforms and business applications will come together to underpin the 'process of me'.
IBM has some of the elements and strategies needed to support the 'process of me'; Workplace, WebSphere, Activity Explorer and Activity Centric Computing. The lack of its own business applications may limit its ability to create an off the shelf solution to support the process of me and will likely result in IBM taking a more developer centric approach. The packaged processes that it already delivers via Workplace Solutions may take on a much larger role in its product portfolio, but will require a combination of development efforts and consulting investments.
SAP recognises that this is where the market is going and is looking for alliances. It made a bold move in support of the individual process perspective with its Mendocino project with Microsoft, which is now renamed as Duet. However, the result is primarily causing Microsoft to wake from its slumber and address the issue from its own position of strength. SAP has a challenge ahead to better understand the processes around individual activity as it has traditionally only focused on the enterprise.
Gartner expects many alliances, even between the competing vendors, to serve the emerging need for the 'process of me'. The recently announced Duet partnership between SAP and Microsoft is a striking illustration of this. However, while the partnerships will deliver useful capabilities, they are essentially tactical and will result in the companies delivering both their own 'process of me' capabilities in addition to the partnership. The competitive dynamics at play will not allow the vendors to cede control of one half of the user experience over the long-term.
Mr Hayward advised users to carefully evaluate vision and definitive product plans before investing in a particular vendor based on their marketed 'process of me' capabilities. To be successful in the 'process of me' category, vendors need to redefine processes to begin with the individual and combine process definition and tools to enable the individual to be flexible with their specific process.
He concluded that users must also understand that the technology itself will not change the organisational design supporting those processes - that has to be done as part of a 'process of me' paradigm.
About Gartner Symposium/ITxpo
Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the IT industry's largest and most strategic conference, providing business leaders with a look at the future of IT. For more than 10,000 IT professionals from the world's leading enterprises, Gartner's annual Symposium/ITxpo events are key components of their annual planning efforts. Attendees rely on Gartner Symposium/ITxpo to gain insight into how their organizations can use technology to address business challenges and improve operational efficiency. For more information, please visit www.gartner.com/symposium/us.
CONTACT:
Laurence Goasduff
Gartner
+44 1784 267 195
laurence.goasduff@gartner.com
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About Gartner:
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. Gartner serves 10,000 organizations, including chief information officers and other senior IT executives in corporations and government agencies, as well as technology companies and the investment community. The Company consists of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 3,700 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants in 75 countries worldwide. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.
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