As human beings when making decisions we are prone to consider key and major themes in our lives. It is crucial to pick out the key themes in devising any form of strategy and setting a BPM Strategy is no different. All too often we have a strong belief that we need to change, and we can easily be pressured into attempting change without properly looking at the key aspects of our business that we aim to look at. By considering key aspects we then come up with standards to which we aim to work towards. These standards make become our goals helping us determine the success of the measures enact, and direct the progress by relatively well thought out ideas. This brings about clarity and we are clear on what steps to take.
In this article we consider most common goals for BPM initiatives, and examine the likely benefits of each. Use this as an idea generation for you to consider to come up with your own goals.
Improvement
This is a catch-all description and is rarely useful. The common goal presented by vendors of both products and services is ‘Process Improvement’. While this is obviously something we should be striving for, we must define the type of improvements we expect to gain in much more detail. It is best to get more specific by defining the sort of improvements that we are thinking of.
Efficiency
Once again, efficiency is too vague a term for our needs. Obviously we need to be more efficient, but we firstly need to qualify what efficiency really is, and secondly what type of efficiency we are really after. We may, for example, wish to reduce the time spent on tasks, but we need to consider the impact on aspects such as quality and customer interaction. If these suffer, the efficiency is likely not to be beneficial.
Cost Savings
Now we are talking about specifics at last. We can consider many different paths to a goal of Cost Savings, however. There could be a reduction in labour force or raw materials, for example. While raw materials are fair game, it may be prudent not to reduce your work force unless there is other work for them to do, since layoffs can be very bad for morale and productivity.
In many ways, as far as the labour force is concerned, it may be best to increase capacity, and therefore productivity. If a reduction is required, the best and least damaging route is through natural wastage through retirement and other reductions.
Increased Productivity
Increased productivity is the most common goal. This can allow you to grow your capacity without increasing the labour costs. This can make a very healthy improvement to profitability.
In many ways it is possible to reduce time spent on task through a well designed and implemented Process Automation project. The long-term benefits can be compounded by channeling the savings from one project into the next, making the entire initiative self-funding over time.
Agility
Agility is a competitive advantage that typically smaller companies have over their larger competitors. Assuming that market trends are noticed at comparable times, the smaller organization often has a greater chance of reacting to take advantage of these trends.
One approach to making this work in large organizations is to break the structure into departments, or possibly even smaller units. This can generate an increase in agility, but can also reduce the overall economy of scale that a large organization typically has over smaller ones. The best of all possible options would allow both.
With a well designed and executed Business Process Management initiative, it is possible to retain both economy of scale and agility. The ability to manage and even control or change core processes with very little time delay (typically weeks rather than months), can give an organization of any size great agility. This advantage usually has a greater effect the greater the organization is, in fact.
Other aspects of agility pertain to specific departments as well. One of the areas requiring agility in modern times is that of Marketing. Gone are the days when changes in public perception and desires changed on an annual basis. They can now change on a monthly or even weekly basis with all-pervasive mass media and the Internet to drive public perception and advertising campaigns. The ability to change product lines and advertising messages and even media can be essential for survival.
Compliance
In a great many areas of business activity there are compliance constraints imposed by government and other external regulations. The most important of these affecting a great many of us in recent times is the increase in regulations concerning the lending of money, for example. This is only one example, however, of the many government regulations that are imposed on organisations regularly and often. There are also regulations imposed by large organisations that are requirements for continued contracts. A typical example of this is the conditions imposed by Visa and MasterCard, for example.
In most of these situations the penalties for failing to comply with these conditions can be financial, or even a loss of the contract. Compliance with these constantly changing regulations can be burdensome as there are typically many changes in procedures, processes and calculations that are required.
Because of this, compliance with government and contractual obligation can be made a great deal easier and cheaper, as well as more effective. Rather than taking a long time training staff, introducing new processes and reference material, all of this can potentially be managed by changing the automated processes.
The ease with which an automated process may include configurable alerts and automated reporting makes them particularly effective in managing processes that require compliance of almost any kind. A great deal of the manually checking, verifying and validating that would typically be performed by supervisors and experts can be automated. The added advantage of the ability to quickly and safely change these processes to comply with changing regulations makes such automation extremely effective.
Accountability
It is often very important to have checks and rules around processes. In many cases, however, having excessive restrictions can be detrimental, and it may be more effective overall to allow changes to be made, but to hold the user fully accountable for such changes. This gives us the ability to have these changes reviewed as well, to ensure their validity. In some processes, we may need to have full histories of all changes made, as well, for example to allow users to assess the impact of proposed changes.
In both of these cases we can solve most of the issues by increasing accountability rather than imposing restrictions, in this way, you can allow changes to be made without rules or supervision, but still leave all changes open to later inspection. This will have the combined effects of encouraging users to be careful and correct about the changes they make, as well as providing exact and full information regarding changes that were made.
Examples of these in our experience are in payment processing, where overrides to system generated calculations may be required in order to generate accurate payments. While it can negatively impact productivity to prevent such overrides, you will need to allow these overrides to be checked, In this case, each override is allowed, but the payment itself is rerouted to a supervisor for checking.
In another example, changes are made to outages on a rail network. As these changes will necessarily impact the train running timetable, these changes requested, as opposed to the full outage itself, need to be specifically highlighted for approval and implementation. In this instance we ensure that the changes can be reported on in full in addition to the outage details.
In general, automated processes allow a much greater degree of flexibility while allowing additional checks to be applied if specific changes are made. They also allow us to record all changes made in detail over and above the standard audit data recorded by the system.
Audit Ability
Although the ability to carry out an effective audit is a logical extension of accountability, it is often ignored as a major goal for new systems. The fact that all activity is recorded and time stamped makes auditing very easy. In our experience, auditors are very impressed with the level of detail recorded in our systems, especially when we use the full change history describing the change to each variable (see our Change History library).
We always show the deployed version of the solution as a part of the audit trail as well. This is more effective than the standard approach as we can download the exact deployed version in force when an action was performed to show auditors if required.
Transparency
There can be many interpretations of the term transparency, but we generally refer to the ability to see how a process works and what is occurring at any time. This can be in terms of real time monitoring, supervisory overviews and of individual feedback.
The first two are typically a result of correct reporting and role allocation allowing data to be viewed at any time, For individuals, it is a question of being able to ‘track’ what happens to a submission, for example, or to understand what is involved in a process.
Manageability
The word ‘Management’ is one of the key concepts of any BPM system. In order to manage effectively, any manager needs the ability to see how a process works, and to adjust as required. There are many ways this can be achieved. The most obvious approach is to allow easy and fast development changes. While this can allow managers to change how processes work, it can be a cumbersome process with many steps and resources involved.
If true manageability is required, the best approach is to make as many aspects of the system as configurable as possible. We typically put all business rules that we possibly can into configurable parameters that can be adjusted at run-time by users with appropriate rights. This gives managers the ability to fine tune their processes with as little effort and risk, and indeed cost, as possible.
Co-ordinate Systems
In almost every single situation we are involved in professionally, we see isolated business ‘silos’ of information. These have existed for a great many years, and often cause bottlenecks in an extensive array of activities. They usually have specific data that is not shared, and business rules that are both inflexible and opaque to outsiders. Sometimes they make no sense at all and are based on redundant situations. This is typified by the anecdote where an insurance company had a ‘wait time’ in the process of issuing a policy. It transpired after investigation that this wait time was based on the need for ink to dry on parchment, and had been carried forward with no understanding.
It can be extremely beneficial in terms of performance and accuracy to both share the data in such silos, and to either expose or reproduce the hidden business rules. Both of these goals are very important to allow data and activities to be shared as they should be.
The breaking down of the silos, and the building of process that reach through and between these isolated systems and activities is generally one of the major goals of any wider (and wiser) BPM initiative. Looking at the activity from a process perspective can very liberating for designers, and the existing barriers often do seem insurmountable, but mere transitory challenges.
Plan for this in advance, and be aware that they bridges that need to be built may create a great deal of resistance. The time spent doing this is almost inevitably beneficial however, but do not ignore the effort cost of doing so or the plan may be set back considerable by delays. Foreseeing these delays will help plan for then more effectively.
Timely Reporting
It is all very well to ensure that we store all required information, and that this information is as accurate as possible. What we also need to ensure is that this information, in detail or summary form, is available as soon as it is required.
What is often missed, however, is the need for proactive reporting rather than reactive reporting. This means sending information to interested parties at times intervals, or when specific events occur. It is nice to send a link to allow users to log on to the system and view the required data, but we like to go a step further.
We set up a report generation process that can be triggered on a timed basis, or by a specific event. This process will generate an simple HTML report of the specific data the recipients require, and email it to them, either in the email itself or as an attachment. Users should be given full information with the ability to delve in for more specific information if required.
Accuracy of Information
In some situations, accuracy is more important than speed. This is especially true when large sums of money are involved.
BPM solutions can drastically reduce errors in data entry capture. Improvements can easily be gained when correct and valid feedback of errors is given to the users involved, as they will then improve. There is twice as much effort required, but if accuracy is valuable, this can be effort well spent.
Again looking at BPM strategy you will the IT and the Business to discuss what is in this article and more to develop a strategy and that takes your organisation to the next level. It may be a good idea to bring a trusted partner with BPM Expertise. My recommended BPM Specialists would be: