The slow but steady shift to the cloud which characterized business process management (BPM) in 2016 is likely to accelerate next year as more companies join the ranks of “early adopters”; but biting off more than they can chew will remain a major risk for many.
That’s the view of Dawie de Lange, managing director of Centurion-based cloud solutions provider XContent, who says the move to cloud is being driven by two factors — aging on-premises infrastructure and a lack of skilled resources to support it.
In addition, particularly in the BPM space, there is growing recognition of the power of cloud to enable easy integration of disparate systems and processes which logically belong together.
“For example, in a traditional BPM environment, all HR processes from the recruitment and interview processes, the appointment of candidates, procurement of equipment for their jobs, managing their career paths including training and succession planning, right through to their resignation and exit interviews, were handled in silos. These processes were usually handled by different systems running on different platforms.
“Now, because cloud offers a single powerful platform from which all these processes can be handled, integration of the entire HR process — including its integration with a totally disparate system such as procurement – not only makes sense, but becomes far more simple to accomplish,” De Lange explains.
Breaking the process down However, he warns against attempting to automate and integrate processes with this level of complexity as an initial move-to-cloud exercise.
“In many instances, a process within an organization has become a routine workflow — something is done by one person who then hands it on to another person who does what needs to be done and hands it on to another and so on and on until finally the process ends. But no one really understands or tracks the…