What's the asset number for that process?

Last week I was at the inaugural meeting of the Sydney chapter of BPMG. We had an interesting little get-together with an assortment of players in town. Thank you Bryan for an excellent venue and breakfast. During the general discussion Bridget B from Telstra asked a probing question - why don't processes get treated like assets?

I am two-finger-typing this out on a very uninspiring notebook PC - a modest machine and one of hundreds in the business of course. Flipping it over I spy a little yellow sticker with a barcode and 10 digit number. That's comforting - somebody knows about it and will care for it and come and replace it for me when it dies. But let's face it - it's a commodity that brings little or no value to the business other than what I grind through it each day. Indeed if I drove a stake through its little electronic heart tomorrow I would only have to walk 100 metres in any direction to be able to replace it with a swipe of my credit card. Not much of an asset really.

This afternoon a few of us were workshopping a case study of a fantastic FlowCentric BPMS implementation. Not something I was personally involved with but a great story. An insurance company that automated its stolen vehicle assessment and recovery processes with integration and involvement with complex backend systems and external stakeholders in customs, law enforcement, crash repairers etc etc. The return on investment of this project was only three weeks and the ongoing benefits to the business will I am sure be measured in hundreds of thousands if not millions for years to come.

Does that process have an asset number? I bet not.

What's the big deal - why make it an asset? Because assets get budget allocation and processes need the same level of respect. An effective business process has an intrinsic value to the business but to maintain that value it needs budget. Things change, things that were not possible before are possible in the future, new opportunities arise and legislation interferes in the daily drone with a monotonous regularity. So a process needs to have a budget allocation that ensures it will be improved, rejuvenated, redirected or replaced during its lifetime.

No budget - no love. Give your processes a little yellow asset sticker.