BPM: 'The Final Great Boom of the Software Industry'.

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 7, 2003

Delphi Group, a global business advisor on business and IT, has published a Market Milestone Report on Business Process Management (BPM) which evaluates Staffware, a global leader in BPM software, and provides an overview of the market. The report, suggesting that BPM is one of the fastest growing categories in the software world, indicates a $550 million market for BPM in 2003, with growth rates of between 15 and 30 percent over the next three years.

Delphi's report states, "the real value of BPM is the ability to define and execute business processes independent of applications and infrastructure." BPM is also described as the final great boom of the software industry, and the last frontier for generating value from IT infrastructure.

The report was drafted following interviews with 500 organisations. Enterprise-wide process redesign was seen as the number one driver for BPM deployments. 46 percent of respondents viewed BPM in this way, more than four times as many as viewed it as an application integration project.

Nathaniel Palmer, Delphi Group's Chief Analyst and the author of the report, concluded: "Adoption of BPM has more than doubled since we researched the market in 2001 and is now in use or under serious consideration by 75% of all firms interviewed." Palmer adds, "Another notable finding is the clear shift in priority among BPM evaluators from data-level integration to orchestration of enterprise-wide processes. Although access to integration capabilities remains a leading driver for BPM deployments, this research repeatedly validates the market's clear understanding that BPM is not a subset of EAI. As illustrated in the report, BPM offers a much broader value proposition than simply integration and holds the potential to be one of the most exciting software markets we have seen in decades."

Other key findings in the report include:

-- A clear division between BPM and EAI.

-- 59 percent of respondents saw BPM as 'An emerging layer of

software for building new process based applications.'

-- In the majority of cases (46 percent) BPM project sponsors

were senior business executives. CIOs played this role in 30

percent of cases. Staffware believes that this reflects both

the importance and the accessibility of BPM to business

management.

-- Twenty percent of respondents are already using BPM with 48

percent in early stages of evaluation. Delphi also predicts

that the majority of companies will make BPM buying decisions

in the next three years. The percentage of those with no plans

for any BPM projects has fallen from 29 percent in 2001 to 23

percent in 2003.

-- However, 62 percent of companies have digitised less than 25

percent of their processes.

To date, BPM has been discussed within the context of integration technologies. However, the report indicates that the market does seem increasingly aware of the distinction between 'process management' and 'data integration'. Delphi Group estimates that about 2,000 BPM software deals will be done this year; Staffware's current win rate would imply that about 10 percent of these would be Staffware projects.

John O'Connell, CEO and Chairman of Staffware, commented: "Delphi's research has confirmed our own intelligence that not only is this a significant and quickly expanding market, but one that is increasingly seen as critical to the future success of businesses. As the Delphi report notes, BPM links existing applications into well-defined business processes - thus linking the IT department more closely to business operations."

The complete Delphi report is available for download from the Staffware website, www.staffware.com. Visitors can also access a webinar which took place on 2nd October 2003 during which Delphi analysts and BPM specialists from Staffware discussed the issues raised by the report and presented an outlook on the market.

About Staffware Plc

Staffware is the leading Business Process Management specialist and has over 2 million licensed users in 5,000 customer organisations within the Banking, Insurance, Telecommunications, Utilities, General Commercial, Manufacturing, and Government sectors. Staffware is headquartered in the UK, has offices in 16 countries and employs approximately 350 people. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is the leading profitable, debt-free, global vendor focused exclusively on providing BPM solutions.

Staffware's BPM expertise has evolved from 15 years of automating and managing processes, so the interaction of people and processes has remained central to its philosophy. Unlike the majority of its competitors, it has a deep understanding and unique insight of the complex people-to-people, people-to-application and application-to-application interactions that make up business processes.

The Staffware Process Suite provides a complete set of tools to create, transform and streamline the internal and external processes and tasks of an organisation. Staffware enables the creation of an Independent Process Layer that separates process from the underlying IT/data environment, facilitating the rapid development and change to an organisation's process. The Staffware Process Suite is an open and standards-based solution that ensures seamless integration and full interoperability with existing IT infrastructures and applications.