Ultimus has been steadily growing its customer base and evolving its original BPM product to meet the needs of a growing market. With more than 1,600 customers worldwide today, and claims that it has the largest global presence of any BPM vendor, Ultimus continues to be one of the leading Microsoft-based BPM platforms on the market. The company has been very focused on delivering its “adaptive BPM??? message to the market and has created a number of key strategic partnerships to fulfill the message and deliver solutions to its customers. Still privately held, Ultimus continues to find success in helping enterprises solve their people-centric process issues with an adaptive technology approach that can be easily modified as the business needs change. The company has also worked hard to ensure that its open architecture works well with existing enterprise applications and supports web services.
COMPANY STRATEGY
• Educate customers about the importance of having “adaptive??? BPM that enables them to handle exceptions, manage changes, and collaborate more effectively.
• Adopt a BPM-based approach to solutions that includes “functional blueprints,??? proven delivery approach, and more than 2,400 “process prototypes.???
• Support industry standards, including RDBMS, UDDI, XML, and J2EE.
• Provide customers with a robust, enterprise-strength BPM Platform that includes an open architecture, scalability and reliability, and offers unique visibility into critical processes through iBAM tools.
IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY
Ultimus has continued to focus on the human-based components of BPM, which weigh heavily on successful implementations. The company has long been a supporter of empowering business users as much as possible to speed implementation and make changes to the processes that they must use on a daily basis. Therefore, the most recent release of Ultimus BPM Suite includes a number of tools that are designed to help business users take the reins of a BPM project and speed implementation. For each customer, Ultimus helps create a functional blueprint that addresses the process integration points and overall goals of the first project.
In addition, the Process Prototypes that Ultimus has developed are based on best practices that the company has accrued over the years and are designed to help customers get up and running more quickly. Ultimus has grown its consulting organization to more than 125 process experts worldwide to assist companies in their goal of implementing their first process more quickly. The majority of Ultimus customers have a specific, critical process they want to enable first, and then once they achieve success, they will drive it into other areas of the enterprise.
CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
• Continue to educate market about benefits of adaptive technology and success of business-user tools to differentiate from competitors.
• Successfully bridge IT and business gap with message that empowers business users while reassuring IT.
• Drive customer success with functional blueprints and process prototypes to speed project completion and ROI.
• Continue to sell into global market to follow-up on recent successes, and publicize marquis customer success stories.
UPSIDE ANALYSIS
Over the past several years, Ultimus has continued to build its presence in the BPM market. Historically not as publicity focused as some of its more well known competitors, the company has recently made some efforts to expand Ultimus brand awareness. Upside Research believes this is a positive move that will prove beneficial because of the continued fragmentation of the BPM market and the significant opportunities that still exist.
Ultimus BPM Suite is still focused on making deploying and modifying business processes as easy as possible, especially for business users. The new tools that are part of the solution, including its adaptive technology and iBAM interactive tool, continue to reflect the company’s commitment to put the business users in the driver’s seat when it comes to creating, managing, and adapting business processes. Upside Research was impressed with the GUI tools that business analysts can use to model and then manage and modify their business processes. Ultimus has done a good job of listening to its installed base and providing them with the tools they need to maximize the benefits of BPM.
Ultimus has increased its global network for sales and support, and its claims that it has the largest global BPM footprint are indicative of its strategy to expand its solution offering worldwide. Support for more than 20 languages and partners in 80 countries bolster the company’s global position. Upside Research believes that Ultimus should continue to deliver a business-focused BPM message to the domestic market to further build its brand in North America. Given the confusion in the domestic market, Ultimus has an opportunity to capture mindshare and bring its BPM solution into the spotlight.
