It is tempting to go on and on about the relationship between business and IT. Here at Lombardi we like to instead talk about effective cross-functional teams that can build the end-to-end process together. And we practice what we preach - this is why we have BPM Analysts, Consultants and Developers on our delivery teams. Note this does not mean companies have to fundamentally re-organize, but they do need to be able to create dedicated cross-functional teams if they are going to be successful.

That being said, I think that user interfaces are key to how these cross-functional teams can work together effectively. This is something that I touched on briefly in my previous post about Web2.0 and “making BPM cool again.”

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The selection process for choosing a BPM vendor can be pretty daunting. BPM is a rapidly evolving space, and there seems to be a different philosophy on process at the core of each vendor’s solution set. Usually the first step an organization takes is to read some of the research that’s out there. While Gartner and Forrester do provide world-class research on our corner of the software world, I think it’s also worth mentioning another place to look for an in-depth look at the major players in business process management.

Bruce Silver’s recently published BPMS report provides one of the most thoughtfully composed product rankings in BPM. I would also like to quote and commend him on his methodology for the research, which I think is an admirable approach:

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