Where do you start the BPM adventure?

I have had a number of conversations recently with an array of different people - colleagues, partners and clients - all on the topic of "where do you start?". How do you choose what activities and operations in the business are the best candidates for review and improvement? The answer of course is "it depends" (spare me the classic MBA speak please!).

We have a little team of experts that have all sorts of clever tools to help work that out through impact, risk and benefit matrices and I will cover some of that another time. But I think there is a very fundamental issue that rapidly focuses down on the BPM ground zero. "It depends"..... on who the project sponsor is.

It appears to me that there are typically two ends of the business that foster process awareness - cost and customer service. And when I say "cost" I bundle into that the areas of risk, governance and compliance as well. Invariably the project sponsor will be either someone focused on tightening the way things are done to drive down the cost or they will be focused on improving the customer experience.

Neither is the right or wrong place to start - each is the appropriate arena of influence for the sponsor, for the person who cares. And that is actually what it comes down to, someone in the business must care enough about what their responsibilities and goals are to look outside of "what is" and consider "what could be".