A Case for BPM
Recently, Dan Morris wrote…
Every company must deal with the chaos of frequent operational and IT changes as they vie for competitive advantage and market differentiation. This shifting environment of market opportunities, customer demands, and new technology introduces operational turmoil and significant confusion into business operations and their IT support. Because the need to support operational evolution must be dealt with daily, the ability to control this growing tide of change will separate the winners from the losers.
The question operational and IT executive management must now ask is “how can we leverage this environment of change to provide a competitive advantage?”
My Thoughts…
As I have said before - In this economy, some companies will fail and some companies will become winners.
So, what does change have to do with BPM?
I am convinced that once you implement your new business process, you will find something that should be changed to make it better. And, if you are going to manage change, you will need to constantly review your processes to make them better.
Examples of changes that can impact your ability to manage processes:
o Adding new personnel to the process
o Metrics – you measure your process and discover that it now takes longer than before
o New software is imposed on the process
o New machines are inserted in the process
o The costs go up for a part of the process
The manager of the process must be made aware of changes that may impact their process. They will need to act on those changes to minimize any negative impact.
I see managing ‘change’ as a key ingredient to success. And, I think that the companies that can best ‘leverage their environment of change’ will be better positioned to be one of the winners.
Your Thoughts…
What steps is your company taking to manage change?
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Adaptivity is the key
Hi Scott
Couldn't agree more. Being able to change your processes and having processes that can adapt to changing conditions are two essential capabilities.
Ideally, it should be quick and cheap to make immediate changes to your processes, be it to avoid a negative impact as you said or to take advantage of an opportunity. Unfortunately, in our experience working with large engineering organizations, the reality is often a bit different with rather rigid procedures that are costly and slow to adapt (due to organizational and technical reasons).
Organizations that want such dynamically configurable processes will thus require methods and tools that support continuous, on-the-fly process change and optimization natively and not as an after-thought. As the wealth of possible paths in their process design grows, they will also need smart software that will automate many of the situational decisions that make up such dynamic processes.
Best
Michael