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Software's Sublimation by Alex Goldman (bio )

Data's diffusion throughout business and into the cloud

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IDS Scheer: U.S. lags in BPM implementations

By Alex Goldman on September 3, 2009 4:12 PM

The long term view of business process management (BPM) starts in many minds with Michael Hammer who wrote an influential book on the subject called "Reengineering the Corporation" in 1996.

For IDS Scheer, the concept dates back farther to the company's founding in 1984 by August Wilhelm Scheer in Saarbrücken, Germany. "The first ten years was like university research ... at first it was like a startup," Joerg Heistermann, IDS Scheer CEO of the Americas, told InternetNews.com.

"Once BPM became the buzz in the boardrooms around the world, because of the Hammer book, the business changed and in the 1990s SAP began to roll. Many of our implementations complemented SAP," said Heistermann.

Business process management started at large companies, which in Germany meant chemical companies, financial institutions, and automobile makers, according to Heistermann.

"BPM is more widely adopted in Europe than in the U.S.," Heistermann said.

"Culture might have an impact. In the U.S., the focus is on sales and marketing. In Europe, we are more technicians. We optimize the organization for what's coming," he added.

Heistermann oversees IDS Scheer's business on the American continent, where the biggest markets are Canada, the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil. "The difference between the U.S. and Brazil is smaller than you think. Sao Paolo is the center for businesses in South America, and almost every company has its headquarters or a distribution center there."

He added that business people are much the same everywhere.

Today, the BPM market is evolving and IDS Scheer is developing software to handle a variety of issues, including compliance, enterprise architecture (EA), and other topics that mesh reasonably with BPM, all under the name of its flagship software, ARIS, Heistermann said.

In addition to new features, the company is developing solutions targeted at specific verticals, he added.

The company has a community site with posts both serious and lighthearted. One of the lighter posts contains a process diagram for making coffee. The author talks about "prepare-to-consume," which is reminiscent of SAP reps talking about managing processes from "sheep-to-shirt" or "cow-to-milk carton."

Also coming soon, in a move that many software makers are embracing, is free software, called ARIS Express, which goes out of beta and into general availability on the symmetric and beautiful date 9/9/09.

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