Aiming for Efficiency

Aiming for Efficiency

What It Is:
Business process management software includes automating manual processes and managing workflows, as well as consolidating and standardizing existing automated systems. Some vendors offer components to handle targeted functions like establishing rules for how a process should proceed. Some vendors are grouping these components into software suites.

Key Players:
BEA Systems' Fuego, Global 360, Fujitsu, IBM's FileNet, Lombardi Software, Metastorm, Savvion, Pegasystems.

Market Size:
$1.69 billion in 2006 (Gartner Dataquest)

Implementation Cost:
BPTrends says 58% of the respondents to its 2006 survey spent less than $500,000 on BPM, 34% spent between $500,000 and $5 million, and 5% spent more than $10 million.

What's Happening:
Some 170 vendors offer BPM software, but consultancy Gartner anticipates a shakeout. It expects major software vendors in other categories to enter the market—following the lead of BEA, which purchased Fuego in 2006.

*Companies in italicized type are featured in dossiers this month.