ICL Sorbus Espana and the Spanish affiliate of accountancy firm KPMG Peat Marwick LLP recently signed a collaborative agreement, as a result of which they will jointly promote and execute projects in the field of business process re-engineering. ICL will offer its ProcessWise Workbench tool for business process modeling and analysis, as well as its TeamWare Flow workflow system, while KPMG Peat Marwick will chip in with consultancy services for companies interested in projects of this kind. Co nsultancy director at Peat Marwick in Spain Ant-onio Paramo told Computerworld Espana that the new partnership would offer a wealth of experience to clients seeking advanced systems. Business process re-engineering is vitally important in improving the competitiveness of a company, while there are many reasons why such programs are adopted – to cut costs, to cope with a merger or acquisition, to change the competitive focus, or simply to introduce new products, Paramo declared. Having obser ved BPR programmes over a number of years now, we would conclude that it is just not possible to get ahead by making small or partial changes – radical changes are the key to success in this area, Paramo added. He observed that Spain is still some way from recognizing the need for business process re-engineering, particularly compared with some of its European neighbors who are already committing themselves to making sweeping changes. Nevertheless, in the Spanish market, the financial sector, public administration, large publicly-owned companies and service companies are all dipping their feet in the water, Paramo claimed. For his part, director of ICL Financial Services Juan Munoz commented: ICL is strongly committed to emerging businesses such as workflow, which will be shifting in the region of $2,000m in the year 1998. Through this alliance with Peat Marwick, we can now offer a joint system superior to what either of us is able to offer individually.
