Starting the BPM journey (2)

So you have chosen the correct path for your business vis-a-vis drive down admin costs or attack high value/risk operations and for good or for bad you now need to "do something".

Common and worthwhile advice is to map out the process "as is" - this means draw out the logical steps and decision points of the process as it currently exists and you understand it today. Invariably this means setting up workshops with the various stakeholders, recording their comments and then extrapolating your notes into a pictorial representation of actions, responsibilities and directional flows (perhaps prepared in Microsoft Visio or - shudder - PowerPoint. There are some very powerful tools to help here - more on this later).

So now you think you know what the process looks like and you may be able to identify some of the problems/challenges/breakdowns/fractures/bottle necks etc.

Next step for most if not all protagonists is to map out the process as you would like it "to be". Look to iron out the wrinkles, reduce the number of handovers, drive down human errors and remove the areas that cause iterative queries, rework and indecision. Especially look for where things get stuck in the lifecycle and concentrate on driving down time wasted whilst nothing happens (time lag).

Now what? Workshop it - take it into the boardroom and expose it to the rigour of team thought. Allow the stakeholders an opportunity to assess and critique your thoughts and plans and give you guidance on improvements and problems. Take them seriously - you will get a better outcome. This is a good change management tactic too - people involved in the design of new ways, and educated early on why and what any changes will be, are invariably more willing and supportive of the change when it comes.

Rework the "to be" and re-workshop it. When all done start asking the stakeholders to commit to some service levels around the handover points from one org-chart responsibility to the next (or be more radical). If you go on the premise that "the customer deserves a quality experience" at each point (starting with the real end-customer and working back through the supply chain) then at each handover point you will be able to identify a factor that directly impacts on the quality experience of the customer-end of each handover. A sales manager may say "my team will commit to placing correct orders on service delivery 100% of the time". That's a good start, now work back from there. (You will need to measure these commitments so keep them tangible and objective).

Looking good - you now have a documented, commonly understood, consultatively honed and improved process ready to be implemented with service level agreements for quality at each responsibility point in the process lifecycle.

Whew, take a break, you deserve it!

Starting the BPM journey (1)

A noisy and opinionated little group of us were "workshopping" (shooting the breeze) the perennial problem for most companies which is where to start the BPM journey. Peeling away the layers of enthusiasm and passion and looking at the hard cold facts we have seen around the traps there seems to be two schools of thought:

(1) under the radar, low cost-low value, administration/HR style processes
(2) pick a strategic process involved in delivering high cost services to an important client

The first option takes a path of least resistance approach and builds an inoffensive, but perhaps undervalued, reputation for the project which may cause it to stumble when the real meaty challenges are faced.

The second option takes a braver stance in the business and needs a visionary to see it through however the final outcome has much greater potential.

Comparing two professional services firms we know - one desired the benefits around automating their HR and admin processes vis-a-vis employee benefits and the like - the other was dismissive of that and was far more driven towards a commoditised process to build a new line of revenue by packaging existing practices. Horses for courses.

Based on our watercooler conversation it all came down to the business imperative and the project champion - are you looking to drive down basic costs and increase consistency, predictability and visibility or looking for strategic opportunities for revenue generation and high value transaction commoditisation?

Does your company listen to you?

It is a rare beast indeed that empowers people throughout an organisation to truly initiate changes to "business as usual" in the pursuit of efficiency and productivity. Many talk the talk but how many really walk the walk?

The impetus for significant change struggles to bubble up from within. It depends on senior management for the oxygen and nutrients necessary to survive. This is the reality of the business world we live in and good sales people cut to the chase in their qualification very quickly - am I dealing with a decision maker and is there a budget for this project - if the answer is not "yes" to both of these questions then they know there is a challenge to success lying ahead.

This pragmatism relates directly to the issue of process change and change management within an organisation. No matter how well intentioned and passionate a middle manager may be about their visions for efficiency gains and improvement - if there isn't a senior manager sponsor on board (and at least a little bit of budget) it is going to go nowhere. The passion and vigour will be beaten out of the provocateur and over time they will fade to beige.

So how do you get a senior manager sponsor? You need to ensure that you are focusing on what keeps them up at night - and remember, what keeps you awake at night may not be the same thing so you may need to extrapolate your tactical worry up to their strategic worry. You will most likely need to put a business case in place. You might need to build a return on investment model.

If these are new concepts to you then you probably need a coach or mentor to help you through the journey. Beware however of the coach dogmatically telling you what to actually change, only you have the intimate exposure to what the problem is, however a coach can provide great thought processes, strategies, comparisons and ideas to look for innovative ways of attacking things.

New Account Opening (NAO)

It appears that Phil Ayres and I stumbled across each other from two different sides of the world at pretty much the same time. While I was reading his excellent blog on New Account Opening last night he appears to have been responding to one of my posts on risk removal - gotta love that Internet.

Phil's background and experience are perhaps in a strata of business that we don't have much of a footprint in and the challenges of efficiently and effectively managing NAO in a mid tier organisations are admittedly less complex and far less volume driven than the banking industry - but just as important and challenging for the mid tier enterprise. In the pursuit of bringing process improvements into the SunSystems arena we have perhaps developed what has been coined by Gartner a Composite Process Solution (CPS)

WARNING - unashamedly commercial plug from this point on:

Workflow for SunSystems from Professional Advantage is a "boxed set" of predefined, non-transactional process templates within a BPMS that allows SunSystems installations to automate the control of their master data management (MDM) or customer data integration (CDI). Boy there's a lot of three letter acronyms (TLA) in that - and they're all for real - I don't make this stuff up!

What all that actually means is ...... when you want to open a new account in SunSystems you initiate, direct, manage and complete the process through a browser based set of workflow rules and screens that control things like:

- who is allowed to request a new account be opened (in our business just sales department and management people)

- what initial information about the account is required before the request can be submitted (like division/business unit engaging with the client, client name, address, company registration (needs to be unique in our customer database and gets auto validated against the online government portal), primary contacts etc etc)

- what is the first step of review and approval (in our business the Sales Manager confirms we are willing to sell this product and service combination at this price point etc).

- what is the next step of data gathering, verification and approval - classically at the B2B trading level we want to check trading references (force a minimum of three perhaps?), credit agency reports (rating must be greater than "orange" perhaps?) etc

- then what information do we need to issue the client in terms of bank details for electronic payment, contact details for query resolution etc for their financial systems (afterall if we are setting them up as a client they are setting us up as a supplier). This can be sent as an email or as a link to a web page for them to review and complete as required.

- penultimately a senior fincancial manager reviews all the steps to date and approves the work to date

- then a client, chart of account and contact record are automatically created in the target SunSystems database (optionally supported by the creation of equivalent records in other line of business applications - CRM, sales invoicing, distribution etc etc) - nobody logs into SunSystems to do all that, it just happens automatically with all the data collated during the approval process, and hey, no keyboard errors either.

- and finally an email to the original sales executive confirming creation of the new account with the relevant reference code if required and the whole lot gets archived away

Throughout the timeline there are activity and bottleneck reports available and extensive reporting options for auditing and compliance management (hello SOX, Clerp 9, Basel 2 et al)

In the real world it's not just new clients of course, so we have the same for suppliers, assets, account and transaction analysis codes (A codes and T codes in Sun-speak). In the background we have stacked up a few HR processes as well including leave management, employee onboarding, travel request and advances management, employee expenses and the like.

These templates come out of the box in Workflow for SunSystems and seamlessly integrate to SunSystems 4 and 5 installations on the MS SQL and Oracle database platforms. They can be implemented "as is" or modified slightly or substantially to better fit the company policies and procedures. I would be the first to acknowledge that this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to risky processes in a business. However the added benefit of Workflow for SunSystems being contained in a BPMS is that other processes identified in the organisation can be mapped and automated over time within the one common framework (even if they have nothing whatsoever to do with SunSystems itself).

Phil Ayres challenged me to be able to "show it in action" with "an implementation of less than 30 days" - we can install in an afternoon! I can "show and tell" by Webex - gotta love that Internet.

UPDATE - 16 June 2006: Access to Workflow for SunSystems doesn't have to be restricted to within the corporate firewall - being browser based it can easily be published to customers, suppliers, the supply chain in general - to enable people to initiate and be involved in processes specific to them. For example, we can allow suppliers to enter their own invoice online (forcing a valid PO number to be entered if required), attach a document image as support and submit for processing by accounts payable. How's that for a way to drive down those administration costs? Just one of many that can be addressed with Workflow for SunSystems.

Entering the SOA and BPM debate

Plenty of blogs and mainstream press these days are focussing on SOA (service orientated architecture) and in the business process management world there is lots of debate about are SOA and BPM the same thing? Is one a subset of the other? How do they interplay?

I'm a simple old soul really and perhaps not sufficiently learned about the various, and assuredly complex, layers in all of this however as I see it:

SOA serves the IT community and BPM serves the business community.

My thoughts are guided more along the lines of where the budget holder and project sponsor is than affinity to any church on this.

If the dollars and sense are in the IT division then there is a reasonable likelyhood that SOA will get the nod - it comes with lots of techno-speak that sufficiently disguises it as a complex and IT-driven dark art.

If the champions are from the business then BPM may be more involved in the outcome as the push comes from the outside in and the business will most likely be focussed on costly customer-driven interactions and processes and looking for tangible ways to salve those pains.

If there are drivers at both ends then I think there is a comfortable place in the middle where they intersect with a common goal of driving efficiencies and improvements in service delivery for all parties.

Do you manage risks or remove them?

Lots of meetings and conversations I am having at the moment seem to have a "risk management" component to them - everyone is looking for ways of managing the risks they have in their business. But hang on - if you are into risk management then you go looking for risks to manage - why not be into risk removal? Go looking for the risks and then identify how to remove the scale or nature of the risk rather than "manage" it through continuity/crisis planning.

Yet again Business Process Management comes to the fore in this - so many risks described to us invariably boil down to people or process problems - and rarely anything to do with the individual person - more often it is how the processes or procedures are allowing the person to fail in some way.

Plenty of risk always revolves around where people interact with eachother or a business management system - particularly those grey fuzzy areas of inter-departmental responsibility transfer. Opportunities for delay, ambiguity, misunderstanding, keyboard error etc abound. The classic time and cost driven risks. A Business Process Management Suite gives you a great framework for building rule sets and process steps around the people-to-people/system activity flow thereby removing a huge percentage of those potential risks.

Risk management struggles to add tangible value to the business process - risk removal catapults you into a new place entirely.