Business Process Management (BPM) platforms have delivered large gains in efficiency across a wide variety of business processes. For example, UPS has reported a savings of $28 million per year through the implementation of a BPM platform for IT Service Management across Shared Services. Nokia Siemens Networks has benchmarked $16 million in annual savings from a comprehensive BPM program. BPM unites systems and organizations into a single, manageable process with detailed tracking and efficiency analysis at every point. But a natural barrier exists that no amount of process modeling and analysis can overcome: mobile access to the process by participants across (and outside of) the organization.

BPM's dependence on PC access by every participant has created a physical barrier to process efficiency. The benefits of mobile enabling access to key business processes has been known for quite sometime. A 2005 BlackBerry white paper noted common benefits of a mobile enabled enterprise, including better decisions, faster decisions, and shortened cycle times.3 But for the past 10 years, these communications have been embedded in email chains, disconnected from a measurable and repeatable processes managed in a BPM platform.

Companies are now using BPM as an application development platform for creating fast access to critical processes and information for new mobile BPM applications. Mobile BPM applications bridge the technology gap created by PCs that restricts both access to important information and process decision making while mobile.