Document Management News

Half of organisations using business process management (BPM) tools, including ones designed to manage documents, achieve a payback on their investment in 18 months or less, shows research from information management industry body AIIM

The research among over 450 AIIM members showed, in all, that 72% of firms recoup their BPM tools spend within two years.

In addition to cost savings users report faster process throughput and improved compliance from more consistent processes. A majority of respondents feel they have only addressed one-fifth of the potentially profitable BPM projects in their organisation, and consider BPM to be “significant” or “imperative” to their business.

Doug Miles, director of market intelligence at AIIM, said the survey showed a wide range of processes to which BPM has been successfully applied. Accounts payable was a popular application, which saw the scanning of incoming invoices before matching them to the finance system. The survey also showed good results in customer support, proposal generation and a number of HR processes.

"The biggest technical issue restricting growth is integration with other enterprise systems, although the increasing use of service oriented architectures (SOA) can make this much easier," said Miles.

Organisations are most likely to source business process management modules from their document management or enterprise content management provider, the survey found.

Based on over 450 responses, the AIIM research report, “Business Process Management – are we making the most of content-driven processes?”, was sponsored by EMC and IBM. The report is available for free here