Operational excellence is a philosophy of leadership focused on the sustainable improvement of key performance metrics APQC = American Productivity and Quality Center, the World’s largest database of operational excellence benchmarks and best practices We looked at specific industry KPIs and their associated benchmarks to identify the areas where and BPM could drive productivity improvement Many IBM customers have realized benefits that exceed the industry benchmarks
BPM is a discipline, which supports long term change in organizational culture, behaviour and performance Let’s use a definition from Gartner as to what BPM is and what is expected from it Visibility, Accountability and Adaptability
As you can see, Process Management has evolved over time but the principle of sustainable improvement has been a constant. Where have we come from over the course of ~100 years of effort to become more efficient? What are some of the challenge we face as we go forward?
In my experience, most companies at the beginning of their BPM journey have challenges that look like this. How do we get these groups to work more effectively together? The business wants to go faster but may lack an end-to-end view of their processes. IT wants to go faster, but a greater % of the work needed to transform and improve business processes is their to do while at the same time they are resource constrained
How do we make people more productive, when for processes where humans are involved will become less orchestrated, less repeatable / able to automate? This seems like a step backward but not when visibility and SLA-based measurement is the principal actor, driving operational excellence, and with BPM as an enabling tool. The processes, then, where humans exist in a few years will be those where the rules that define the entirety of the flow cannot be defined in advance. But milestones can still be defined, even for the crude case-type processes today. Participants will be able to measure their work against these milestones based on the built-in visibility of processes, and their decisions and judgments will guide the flows.
BPM can make both groups, business and IT work more productively. BPM shifts some of the responsibility and workload from IT to the business. In return, IT resources are freed up for other valuable work (integration, services, data) and the business manages processes, the delivery cycle and prioritization of process improvements based on their understanding of the needs of its customers
To be successful with BPM as an enabler of operational excellence, everyone in the organization needs to be on board, from the CEO on down BPM should be the center piece of an organization’s strategy to: manage and execute change in an increasingly hypercompetitive environment – to adapt, thrive and survive efficiently align the organization with the customers’ wants and needs continuously improve processes – seeking process optimization by defining, measuring and improving your process Benefits of a BPM-led effort toward operational excellence include: Improve operational efficiency Reduce operational Risk Improve Service Quality - KPIs/ SLAs to the internal and external clients Improve Agility Holistic approach to the process Extend value from business solutions
POINTS: 1. ‘To win the lottery, you must first buy a ticket’ 2. It ’s important not to lose sight of the vision, while ensuring small successes to build on. It is not difficult to succeed in BPM but very easy to fail . 3. Projects must realize benefits to be sustainable
