Press Release

Lombardi Expands BPM Solutions to Help Drive Process Improvement Success

Enhanced Products and New Services from Lombardi Help Companies Move from Individual Projects to Corporate Process Improvement Initiatives

Austin, TX – May 12, 2009 – Lombardi®, a leader in business process management (BPM) software, today announced a comprehensive enablement strategy that helps companies to achieve greater business returns by moving from simple business process automation efforts to large-scale business transformation programs based on BPM.

“Thriving companies don't stop with a one-time BPM project,” said Michele Cantara, a research VP at Gartner. “They focus on continuous process improvement, and they establish a business process competency center and business process centers of excellence to expand their BPM efforts in other areas.”*

To support continuous process improvement, Lombardi is introducing innovations in three key areas: management and delivery of process applications, increasing participation in process discovery and identification of process improvement opportunities, and talent development required to sustain the effort and make it a core corporate competency. Lombardi unveiled the latest releases of its Blueprint and Teamworks platforms, and announced the formation of Lombardi University, an innovative BPM education platform that delivers comprehensive role-based education through an extended faculty network of industry luminaries and BPM practitioners.

“In today’s economy, investing in BPM technology and skill-sets is probably the most important thing that a company can do to impact their bottom line,” said Rod Favaron, CEO of Lombardi. “As one CIO told me 'we eliminated 16 of our proposed projects for 2009. Of the three we decided to fund, one was BPM because it is critical to helping us meet our cost reduction targets.’ This is a sentiment I have heard from every industry and geography where we do business.”

While IT organizations are increasingly under pressure to deliver process applications faster and make more frequent process changes to support evolving business needs, few companies in the BPM market have focused on removing the barriers that prevent companies from establishing a sustainable process improvement capability. Lombardi’s latest announcement helps in three key areas:

Managing and Delivering Process Applications

Teamworks 7, the next release of Lombardi’s award-winning BPM Suite, focuses on the challenges of managing thousands of process assets, hundreds of process authors and dozens of process applications across diverse development, testing and deployment environments. In particular, entirely new approaches to versioning, governance and deployment reduce the complexity and costs associated with enterprise deployment of BPM. For more details about Teamworks 7, please visit www.lombardi.com/teamworks. 

 “We needed a way to lower our costs by modernizing and replacing our systems with processes that better support our changing business needs,” said Erik Keller, CIO at SIRVA, Inc. “Teamworks is helping us automate our processes across the company and keep them flexible.”

Increasing Participation in Process Discovery

Companies are also searching for low cost ways to get more of their employees participating in the process improvement effort. The latest update to Lombardi Blueprint, the Spring 09 release, expands on current on-demand mapping and modelling functionality to include new capabilities borrowed from the social networking world – including RSS Feeds, notifications, and the ability to add comments and set access rights. These new capabilities make it simpler than ever to involve a broad set of participants – from employees in the lines of business to business partners – in on-going process improvement discussions. For more information about the Lombardi Blueprint Spring ’09 release, please visit www.lombardi.com/blueprint.

“Continually accelerating IT’s time to solution and improving business processes is crucial for IT at Aviva,” said Toby Redshaw, CIO at Aviva plc. “Lombardi gives us the tools and expertise to help make this happen. It’s critical to our bottom line and competitive approach.”

Developing the BPM Talent Pool

Lombardi also announced Lombardi University, a skills development program that goes beyond technology-focused training to help customers develop and scale BPM capability throughout their organization. Lombardi University is aimed at filling the “BPM talent gaps” that can prevent BPM programs from achieving mainstream adoption.  Driving adoption of BPM is the only way companies can maximize the value from their process improvement initiatives.  Lombardi University offers education tracks tailored for each team role (including BPM Executive Training), certification of skills at multiple levels, an expert Faculty Network, virtual classroom delivery, and an on-line education management system. To learn about Lombardi University, please visit www.lombardi.com/university.

"Tata Consultancy Services is committed to strategic and measurable talent development. Lombardi University's role-based approach toward education and certification fits our needs very well, and we will be participating in this program globally. Our first group of people are already in the process of gaining their developer and program manager certifications," said Dr. Santosh Mohanty, Global Head - Technology Excellence at Tata Consultancy Services.

"Lombardi has helped our customers develop into some of the most mature BPM practitioners around the world.  As a result of this, we've learned what it takes to move from simply automating processes toward the greater business returns that result from larger scale BPM programs,”  said Phil Gilbert , president of Lombardi. “The announcements today highlight our commitment to helping companies transform their businesses with purposeful tools that people want to use, and helping them build the talent required to make BPM a core corporate competency.”

About Lombardi

Lombardi is a leader in business process management (BPM). We offer award-winning BPM technology and services to help our customers, partners and government agencies around the world succeed with their process improvement initiatives.

Lombardi is behind some of the largest, most successful BPM implementations in the world. Our customers include AARP, Aflac, Allianz Group, Applied Materials, Banco Espirito Santo, Barclays Global Investors, Chiquita Brands, Dell, Financial Services Authority, Ford Motor Company, Hasbro, ING Direct, Intel, Jaguar Land Rover, Mirant, National Bank of Canada, National Institutes of Health, OAD Groep, Pfizer, PHH Arval, SIRVA, Symantec, UCLH, Wells Fargo, Yale University and numerous governmental agencies. For more information, visit www.lombardi.com.

* Gartner Research "Intent on Cost Cutting, Attendees Flock to San Diego for Gartner BPM Summit,” by M. Cantara, E. Olding. April 13, 2009. ID Number: G00167111, page 6.

For more information:
Wayne Snell
Sr. Director of Marketing
+1.512.382.8200 ext. 377
Wayne.Snell@lombardi.com