Figure 1: Business Process Management – Process improvement cycle
Tips for making a successful start in BPM initiatives
- Start with an important but contained process where the improvements would matter to the business. However, avoid the temptation to take on highly complex processes. Focus BPM objective to be working smarter and improving customer experience in a consistent manner, rather than head-count reduction.
- Start with an understanding of your current state. Take a “measure first” approach and determine the metrics important to your business.
- Unlike other IT projects, BPM directly affects how business users perform their daily tasks. Get a project sponsor who is strongly engaged in the initiative and the change management aspects. Business users should play a significant role in dynamically changing a process.
- Use experienced process analysts who live and breath process, for the process discovery stage. This stage sets the tone for the entire project and using wrong skills/people here will prove to be an expensive mistake.
- BPM projects are ideally suited for iterative or agile development methods. Don’t model to get perfection. Building consensus across silos is a challenge. Start implementing and use iterations to get the business rules and process flows right. Focus on delivering value and not just the requirements. Iterations don’t mean scope creep. Try to get a process operational within a 60-90 day window.
- Don’t get bogged down in too much internal detail or the technology. What matters is the benefit the end customer will get as a result of the process (e.g. faster loan approval, correct order fulfilment etc) and not the technology used.
- Service oriented architecture is desirable. Well-defined services will speed up integration, reuse and expansion.
- Manage expectations. Continuous improvement approach means features that are not there on day-1 can be added progressively. Demonstrations and simulations improve understanding and help get the user experience right. Communicate successes regularly to improve stakeholder engagement.
- BPM methodology is different than the typical IT project methodology. Avoid mistakes like “stove pipe” BPM or an “agile waterfall” practice. Engage the vendor full time during the architecture and design stages. Gartner now predicts that half of BPM projects will fail; follow best practices to make sure you don’t.
- For a successful BPM implementation, designing reusable processes is key. Rather than planning a silo by silo implementation; experience suggests that identifying and designing common processes and progressively reusing these across each business area will ultimately result in a faster and lower cost implementation. When processes change, cost of change also would be lower.
- Plan for change. Not only the rules and process models would change but also work patterns. Processes cross silos thus functional fiefdoms and roles of people would be affected. Address the organisational change implications such as roles, responsibilities and rewards early.
- Establish a rigorous structured testing, measurement and governance regime to ensure that the process performs as expected and is well controlled. Identify a few important process and ROI metrics to monitor the process effectiveness. Monitor the process to detect any problems before the customers do.
Have a common team (2-3 members) that will focus on building common and re-usable artefacts and frameworks. Establish governance to reward re-use and discourage rework.
For a further discussion on how you can start BPM implementation in your organisation please contact the author.
Hemant Kogekar is the principal of Kogekar Consulting. He has previously held CIO/ IT director positions with Suncorp, Citigroup and Franklins. He can be reached at hemant[at]kogekar.com
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