Latest reviews ...

"A book this rich in big ideas defies adequate reviewing. In addition to the aspects mentioned here, the authors also explain how to measure the return on process investment, ten capabilities embodied in a business process management system, the three competencies required to build BPM competence, and how to apply Page-Jones’ 7-stage model of expertise to BPM implementation, along with four informative appendices. No doubt BPM enterprises will experience difficulties not well anticipated in this book. Yet the skeptical eye of this reviewer cannot help count off the large number of nuggets of wisdom, and the seeming inevitability of this vision."
Editors Choice in Business Strategy rated at Manyworlds.com
[link to full review]

"If you think Ford’s most important product is the automobile, think again, say the authors. Instead, the process of making automobiles, business process management, is what really counts at the automaker. “Do not mistake BPM for some new ‘killer app’ or some fashionable new business theory. It is a foundation upon which companies can depend as surely as they depend on database management today.” This book details a practical approach to BPM while at the same time treating it as a tool you should use for the next fifty years—not just the next five. The book includes looks backward and forward, the nitty-gritty of “reengineering reengineering,” application of BPM to Six Sigma, and many other issues that add up to improving business process management. Despite its heady and technical nature, Business Process Management: The Third Wave is quite readable."
Featured Book Recommendation: Harvard Business School [link to image of review]

Corporate re-engineering was a hot trend in the early 1990s, when businesses started streamlining to save money and "downsizing" came into vogue. Now it's economic uncertainty all over again, and managers are looking to shave costs while still dominating their sectors--and Smith and Fingar want to give them the management tools to achieve that. The authors, both IT experts, insist their management theory and practice will guide business leaders through the next 50 years. While many companies are savaging their tech budgets to survive, for instance, Smith and Fingar hold up General Electric as a current ideal; the company has actually boosted its information technology dollars, as it sees the next wave of business automation as full of promise.... this book does break down how companies can boost productivity, discover savings and thrive in a harsh business environment.
Publishers Weekly
[link to review]

Reengineering reengineering: Companies need technology. They also need flexibility. Trouble is that computer systems have a kind of Medusa effect: they turn business processes into stone. The challenge ... is to create systems and software built not to last but rather to adapt. Instead of reengineering processes in one fell swoop and then cementing the new models in code, companies should design processes that can be changed on the fly and software that's flexible enough to support those changes. In the "third wave of business-process management," the authors write, implementing a new process is as easy as querying a database. By following the authors' recommendations, mature companies can recapture the advantage of newcomers that have "the freedom to tailor process changes precisely to the current market conditions." Start-ups, meanwhile, can build from scratch systems that will keep them forever young. "While the article occasionally strays onto technical turf," says InfoPosse member Christine Klein, "it should be read by anyone who is designing or redesigning their organization."
INC Magazine

"Business Process Management: The Third Wave is a serious, well researched and ultimately convincing book by two authors who are working at the heart, and at the top, of the software and services business... there is no doubting that this is a genuinely important book."
Andy Lawrence, Editorial Director, Infoconomy
[link to review]

"The third wave of BPM is definitely a contender for the next big thing. This is BPM that is so simple that it doesn't need a manual and provides instant gratification and ROI."
Moses Ma, Senior Editor, The-Pitch.com

"As a point on the evolutionary scale of [process] development it is both a significant and authoritative evaluation of where we are now, the reasons why BPR never lived up to our expectations, and then without demeaning or undermining the pioneering work of Hammer/Champy and Harrington it sets the scene for how to achieve complete process management success... Without resorting to apple pie and motherhood sentiments it links the people, with the process and the enabling technology... the biggest thing to hit the process scene since 1993. If you have a vested interest in your organisations success you need to read and understand this work. I promise you that you will never look at processes in the same way again... Does the book live up to the promise offered by the publishers "Ten years on, Computer Sciences Corporation's Howard Smith, has co-authored the book that reinvents reengineering and sets the business agenda for the decade ahead? Read on and discover the reasons why this may just be true."
Steve Towers, Chair, Business Process Management Group [link to review]

"Managers who talk of the divide between IT and business may be describing reality in their organizations today. It doesn't have to be this way. And it certainly won't be this way tomorrow. With the greater reliance on IT for the successful execution of business processes, from accounting to the supply chain, the only divide in the future will be between those companies that survived and those that didn't exploit business process management (BPM). This book explains the what, how, and why of BPM. It is therefore essential reading for any manager who wishes to work in the future."
Tony M. Brown, Editor In Chief, eAI Journal

"The technology industry is on a never-ending quest to discover The Next Big Thing, and for many, the third wave of BPM just might be it. This time business appears to be in agreement, but there is still a raging debate over how best to make the switch to the "process-managed enterprise." The new book is intended to help business executives at all levels understand what is genuinely new in BPM, to cut through the confusion as everyone clusters around the term and so that companies can make informed decisions."
-- csc.com
[link to article]

"Despite the surrounding confusion and hype, BPM is now recognized as the pragmatic path to agility as companies adapt to the current business landscape ... This book provides the accurate and in-depth information that business leaders require to successfully implement BPM projects today." BPMI.org and WfMC endorse BPM3W
-- Ismael Ghalimi, Chair BPMI.org and CSO Intalio Inc
[link to press release]

About the book

Ten years ago, Computer Sciences Corporation's James Champy co-authored the New York Times best seller, Reengineering the Corporation, that set the world alight with 2,300,000 copies in print. But that was last decade. Ten years on, Computer Sciences Corporation's Howard Smith, has co-authored the book that reinvents reengineering and sets the business agenda for the decade ahead.

Don't bridge the business-IT divide: Obliterate it! This book provides the first authoritative analysis of how Business Process Management (BPM) changes everything in business and what it portends. While the vision of process management is not new, existing reengineering theories and systems have not been able to cope with the reality of business processes—until now. In this book, Smith and internationally acclaimed co-author, Peter Fingar, herald a breakthrough in process thinking and technologies that utterly transforms today's information systems and reduces the lag between management intent and execution. How important is this to business? Here's a line from GE's current annual report: "[process] Digitization represents a revolution that may be the greatest opportunity for growth that our company has ever seen."

By placing business processes on center stage, corporations can gain the capabilities they need to innovate, reenergize performance and deliver the value today’s markets demand. A process-managed enterprise makes agile course corrections, embeds six sigma quality and reduces cumulative costs across the value chain. It pursues strategic initiatives with confidence, including mergers, consolidation, alliances, acquisitions, outsourcing and global expansion. Process management is the only way to achieve these objectives with transparency, management control and accountability.

During the reengineering wave of the 1990s, management prophets' books full of stories about other companies were all you had to guide the transformation of your business. Although their underlying theories were based on age-old common sense and general systems theory proposed fifty years earlier, they offered no path to execution. By contrast, the process-managed enterprise grasps control of internal processes and communicates with a universal process language that enables partners to execute on shared vision – to understand each other’s operations in detail, jointly design processes and manage the entire lifecycle of their business improvement initiatives.

Process management is not another form of automation, a new killer-app or a fashionable new management theory. Process management discovers what you do and then manages the lifecycle of improvement and optimization, in a way that translates directly to operation. Whether you wish to adopt industry best practices for efficiency or pursue competitive differentiation, you will need process management. Based on a solid mathematical foundation, the BPM breakthrough is for business people. Designed top down in accordance with a company’s strategy, business processes can now be unhindered by the constraints of existing IT systems.

You will find this brave new world inside the pages of Business Process Management: The Third Wave. Short on stories and long on insight and practical information, this book will help you write your own story of success. The book provides the first authoritative analysis of how BPM changes everything in business - and what it portends. Welcome to the company of the future, the fully digitized corporation, the process-managed enterprise. Welcome to the next fifty years of IT.

Excerpts from Business Process Management: The Third Wave, Howard Smith and Peter Fingar, ISBN 0-929652-33-9 Off-press November 2002, Meghan-Kiffer Press