bpm: a change from business as usual · 2007-05-03 · bpm: a change from "business as...

VI Annual Enterprise Integration Summit Janelle B. Hill

10-11 April 2007 WTC Hotel São Paulo, Brazil

BPM: A Change From "Business as Usual"

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Today's Business Dynamics Require a New Management Approach: BPM

• Globalization requires agility- Corporate culture, organization and

existing systems must change

• Information transparency accelerates product and service commoditization - Innovate your processes

• Rising importance of the consumer- Mass-customize products/services for a

unique customer experience

- Reinsert people at high-value touchpoints

• Information overload- Provide information (beyond business

documents) in the process context

BPM is the new, technology-enabled

management approach.

SPA:

Enterprises that aggressively begin their

organizational and cultural transformation for BPM in 2007 will double

their chances of becoming industry leaders by 2010.

Key Issue: What is really new in BPM and BPM technologies?Business market dynamics have changed with the rise of the Internet and the forces of globalization. These trends echo the arguments presented in "The World Is Flat," by Thomas Friedman. He describes how business has become frictionless as boundaries that existed for years between countries, geographies, people and businesses have fallen, with many "flatteners" being technological innovation. Today's businesses compete on a global and electronically connected scale. With these fundamental changes comes a renewed interest in process management theories. Historically, whenever the economy turns downward, companies explore process thinking and look internally for opportunities to optimize what they do, either reducing waste (cutting costs) or increasing productivity. Yet, nearly seven years after the dot-com bubble burst, the focus on operational excellence (or at least operational accountability) continues and is accelerating. These fundamental changes in business markets will make process-orientation durable and are not just a passing fad. "Process," as an organizing principle for how work is organized, has always had value in aligning strategy with execution and outcomes by facilitating work handoffs across functions. For these reasons, process management disciplines will persist, even as the economy continues to recover. Action Item: Cultural and organizational obstacles will inhibit the transformation of management practices to modern BPM disciplines, widening the gap between industry leaders and laggards by 2010.




Key Issues

1. What is really new in business process management (BPM) and BPM technologies?

2. How will business process management suites (BPMSs) change the way your company operates?

3. What are the most appropriate and proven use cases for investing further in BPM?




BPM: Not Your Father's BPRWhat's Really New?• Process orientation complements

(not replaces) functional orientation• Processes must be effective and

transparent, not just efficient• Continuous improvement is not

sufficient; incremental improvement must be harmonized with transformative change

• Business transactions must be more responsive to customer and market demands; thus, processes must be adjustable, not perfect

ImplicationsBPM transforms the organizationProcess must be explicit, not embedded in appsIterate; don't just re-engineerDesign for change, not to lastInternal & external process participants can change process

Key Issue: What is really new in BPM and BPM technologies? Business process management (BPM) is a management discipline that requires organizations to shift to process-centric thinking and to reduce their reliance on traditional territorial and functional structures. BPM has evolved from past management theories and practices, such as total quality management (TQM) and business process re-engineering (BPR). Gartner now uses BPM to reference the management practice that provides for governance of a business's process environment toward the goal of improving agility and operational performance. It is a structured approach employing methods, policies, metrics, management practices and software tools to manage and continually optimize an organization's activities and processes. BPM requires and enables organizations to manage the complete revision cycles of their processes, from process design to monitoring and optimization, and to change them more frequently to adjust to changing circumstances. Such rapid change is impractical while processes are embedded in conventional applications. The development of BPM technologies is enabling business managers to abstract process flows and rules from the underlying applications and infrastructure and to change them directly. Business process management suites (BPMSs) are an emerging technology category that facilitates BPM.Action Item: Business process improvement (BPI) role leaders must enlighten business and IT leaders; BPM represents a fundamental change in how businesses manage and run their operational processes.




The Scope of Automating ProcessHas Broadened From …

A set of activities performed by resources …– Computers replaced manual efforts

(calculations, repetitive tasks)using a variety of information …

– Digital documents, not paperinteracting in various ways …

– One "best practice," well-understood and predictable

guided by corporate policies and principles …– Hard-coded execution paths (aka, rules)

to produce an optimal work outcome.

Key Issue: What is really new in BPM and BPM technologies?Successful work outcomes depend on well-executed processes. Systems automation efforts have done a good job of reducing reliance on manual efforts by automating many routine, repetitive and calculation-intensive tasks that use structured data and occur in a predictable sequence with few business rules. Control over such activities and data has been embedded in the flow control logic of the application system. However, many other aspects of work are rarely automated or even coordinated using computers, such as manual exception handling, dealing with unstructured information, collaboration, decision making, negotiations, approvals and paper flows. There are many aspects of processes that must be coordinated to achieve excellence: people, systems, rules, policies, sequences (flows), documents, decisions and others. Today's view of "process" is much bigger than what has been automated as "applications"; today's view of process includes all these other aspects as equally important as logic and data. Some of the assets should remain outside the realm of automation. This is one of the primary reasons why control of certain processes must reside outside the application context. Process management is shifting to the explicit coordination of all of the resources, automated or not.Action Item: Clients must understand the differences between classic applications and business processes to identify opportunities for further automation.




Just as the dance is not the dancer,

the process should not be confused

with the "resources" performing

the process.

The Scope of Automating ProcessHas Broadened To …

A set of activities and decisions performed by resources …

– Software coordinates people and machines

using a variety of information …– Documents, images, expertise, evidence

interacting in various ways …– Sequential (predictable) and ad hoc

guided by corporate policies and principles …– Using business rules, goals,

objectives and scenarios appropriate for the circumstance

to produce an optimal work outcome.

Key Issue: What is really new in BPM and BPM technologies? With today's business pressures, process-oriented enterprises are looking to use software to better coordinate their entire processes. New integrated composition environments, particularly BPMSs, integrate a broad set of software technologies to coordinate more of the resources and interaction patterns found in operational processes. The result is that the automated solution more closely resembles how work is actually accomplished. Various technologies in a BPMS enable dynamic execution so that behavior does not have to be completely scripted; human expertise can be applied to the particulars of the situation. Action Item: Processes that need to be more flexible and adaptive to changing market forces and customer demand should be the top priorities for BPM initiatives.




INCOMING

New Disciplines for Business and IT

Customize Packaged

Applications

Build It Yourself

Compose Using Agile Methods

BPR

BPM

Six Sigma Lean

Value Stream

Key Issue: What is really new in BPM and BPM technologies? Business and IT professionals need to learn new disciplines and gain new skills for BPM. Making cultural and organizational changes and acquiring new skills will be more difficult and time-consuming than acquiring and implementing new technologies. Furthermore, business users may need to unlearn concepts espoused by earlier process management thought leaders (such as Michael Hammer and James Champy in "Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution") and consider newer, agility-oriented process methodologies. Most importantly, business managers must acquire real-time management skills, using graphical dashboards to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and business events in real time, and learning new operations research skills, such as simulation and optimization. On the IT side, the newest approach to deploying automated capabilities will be solution composition, in which solutions are created out of existing, often shared/reusable, software components. Not only is this a new approach, but most user organizations do not yet have a repository of shared, reusable software components. Traditional performance approaches for developers will have to change, too, moving from productivity-oriented measures (for example, lines of code) to effectiveness-oriented measures (number of reuse patterns). BPM best practice is to create a toolbox of methodologies that can be pieced together to meet the needs of the specific process style. IT professionals must also learn to collaborate more closely with business analysts and users, gradually transitioning skills and responsibilities to these users. Action Item: Enterprises should require each BPI project to contribute 2% per functional area participating (with a minimum of 10%) of its time, staffing/skills, process assets and funding toward the establishment of a center of excellence (COE). Contributions can be physical assets (such as policies, procedures and process models), consultant time allotments, rotational personnel and a percentage of benefits derived from their initiative.




BPMSs Support Iterative Process Improvement

The Process Revision CycleBPMSs enable business users to:• Model and simulate all the

interaction patterns between workers, systems and information to create a shared understanding about how business results can be optimized

• Consistently execute the optimal process

• Coordinate and manage the handoffs of work across boundaries

• Provide real-time feedback to line managers about WIP to support in-line process adjustments

• Monitor process outcomes to performance targets and continually refine and adjust process flows and rules

• Collaborate with IT professionals throughout the process life cycle

Discover

Simulate

Optimize

Define

Model

Analyze

Monitor Deploy

Execute

BPM

Key Issue: What is really new in BPM and BPM technologies? The emerging business process management suite (BPMS) market is aimed at becoming a technology base for the care and feeding of dynamic business processes for business advantage. Although this advantage will take several forms in terms of short-term benefits (such as cost and time savings), it will also support managing end-to-end processes while staying compliant and liquid in terms of managed agility to meet changing market and constituent needs. Failures of sound management disciplines are often due to a lack of technology to support the underlying practices. One of the most valuable aspects of BPMS technology is the ability to directly support process management practices in a more fluid manner across the entire life cycle. A well-integrated suite enables more fluid progress through the improvement cycle because artifacts from one phase move to the next without any additional translation and no loss of data. Contributors in various roles can work together more collaboratively and seamlessly by sharing common tools and artifacts. The process revision cycle does not need to progress in a clockwise fashion. Organizational maturity with BPM will influence how users interact through the life cycle of a process. Other factors will be what iteration you are on (first, second, tenth, and so on) and how and where the process is automated. Action Item: Before selecting a BPMS, clients must consider the skills within the range of composers who will participate in process improvements.




Explicit Process Is the New Imperative

What's so great about explicit process management?

• Process can be changed independently of its resources

• Visibility enables participants to better collaborate and coordinate their efforts

• People use these models to drive and monitor business transaction progress

• Models synchronize design and execution • Managers can better manage things they can

see: Resources, activities and information flows

• Work status is tracked (audited) from start to finish

• Real-time status of work advances the process

Explicit processes are visible (models) and independent of their implementation.

Key Issue: How will BPMSs change the way your company operates? In 2007, seven years after the dot-com bubble burst, the focus on operational excellence and operational accountability continues and is accelerating. Managers need a better way to more closely manage operations on a real-time basis. Managing by using after-the-fact reports is no longer good enough. Pressures for informationtransparency, operational accountability and compliance now make it critical for managers to stay on top of daily transactions. Explicit processes address these requirements. In applications today, the process is implied to the user. A programmer controls the process flow via various programming techniques, such as screen flows, internal flow control logic and even data values. This is called implicit process management. BPMS tools (and other integrated composition environments) make processes explicit. Explicit processes are visible, usually via graphical models, and are independent of their implementation. For years, explicit process management tools have been used as design aids, end-user training tools and as part of operations manuals (BPA tools are a good example). However, integrated composition environments (ICEs) take explicit process to the next level; they make the model executable. The graphical model is actually metadata that is interpreted and turned into the executed process.Action item: Processes that need to be more adaptive must become explicit using some kind of ICE.




In a BPMS, Models (Metadata) Orchestrate Process Execution

A Model as MetadataOrchestrates the Process

Doc./Content Mgmt. Server

Integration Services

Collaboration Tools

User Interface Tools

Simulation/Optimization

Human Workflow Server

Registry/Repository

Rule Engine

Modeling Tool

BAM Tools

State Mgmt.State Mgmt.

Key Issue: How will BPMSs change the way our company operates? Explicit process management has become an imperative because of its ability to address three needs that arise out of the new market realities. In a BPMS, one form of ICE, its metadata-driven execution helps organizations to: 1) simplify, standardize and more easily re-engineer processes; 2) re-personalize the consumer experience and still scale the workload by better coordinating people along with other (system and machine) resources; and 3) progress work based on the real-time context, not simply based on data values and hard-coded flow control logic. In particular, the status of the work step (whether manual or automated), combined with the status of information (both structured, such as business documents, or unstructured information, such as evidence, physical parts and experience), determines the next action in the progression. In this way, transient information is used for work progression and sequencing. This provides more of the context in which work is accomplished, making the BPMS-driven solution a much closer approximation to reality.Action Item: Explicit process management tools must have rich business semantics to fully represent work realities.




Explicit Process via a BPMS Changes How We Interact — Internally and Externally • Participants (internal and external) are empowered

- Workers can change the process- Operational managers can alter the flow of work- Consumers are process participants, too!

• Products and services can be mass-customized- "Process of me": One process, multiple execution paths

• Separate but equal roles for IT and business

Bottom Line: Agility Doesn't Mean Chaos! • Adjustments are configurable• Human workflow is visible; thus, manageable• Changes are recorded within their context• IT decides on the software implementation• IT decides what to expose for business to change

Key Issue: How will BPMSs change the way your company operates?Additional value is derived from process orientation, which generally includes:

• Process models show how diverse parts of the organization are linked, showing each its part in creating value and, thus, encouraging alignment.

• Process models are useful for harmonizing incremental and transformational change.• Human aspects of work processes (for example, individual creativity, knowledge, expertise, insight and

empathy) make processes unique and differentiating.• Process orientation is useful to simplify, standardize or re-engineer the "siloed" application portfolio.• Some aspects of work are not easily digitized (evidence, physical parts or experience) and are critical to

work outcomes.Action Item: IT professionals set the pace of business process agility by deciding the order in which aspects of process control transition to business.




Shifting Roles and Responsibilities: Business Versus IT

Business-sideresponsibilities:• Strategy and business case • Business performance metrics• Design new incentives• Process discovery• Process conceptual design• Human workflow definition• Simulation and optimization• Process analysis• BAM configuration • Business event analysis• Organizational change

management • Business rule discovery

In the short term, business andIT will share responsibility with:• Process logical design• UI/form layout• Methodology• Process deployment• Tool selection• Process execution monitoring• Rule implementation• Operational procedures • Populating the repository with

process components• Reporting• Training and education

IT-side responsibilities:

• Process physical design• Business service component

development• Standards definition/selection• Scalability requirements• Process-level and systems-level

security• Tool evaluation, testing and

integration• Operational reliability, availability,

serviceability

Key Issue: How will BPMSs change the way your company operates?The growing focus on improving business processes has led IT leadership to rethink organizational structures and craft more-proactive process-enabling roles. Becoming process-driven has far-reaching effects on organizational staffing, governance, skills, methods and disciplines. As your business seeks more-agile operations, how far you push BPI initiatives toward continual improvement and iterative methods will define the expanded roles and responsibilities of your IT organization and business staff. Because no two organizations approach process improvement the same way, we describe four key BPI roles:

• Business process director• Business process consultant• Business process architect• Business process analyst

Action Item: Roles should not be confused with jobs. Just as actors in a play may perform multiple roles, so, too, can workers.




ProcessArchitect

Business Experts

Process Analyst

BPM Disciplines Require New Skills

Source: Screen shots courtesy of Global 360

Process Owner

Key Issue: How will BPMSs change the way our company operates? Process participants must acquire new skills for BPM disciplines. Process owners must learn to use business activity monitoring (BAM) dashboards (newer BI tools) to analyze process performance. The BI skills acquired for analyzing data provide a strong foundation. Determining what data and events are actionable vs. just interesting is difficult. Identifying cause-and-effect relationships, performing multivariate analysis, creating hypothesis, and altering parameters within KPI algorithms to reflect changing circumstances require more quantitative skills and scientific methods. Business experts must learn to "code" business rules (using spreadsheet and other model metaphors, rather than programming languages) and adjust them. Comfort with spreadsheets and macro languages will provide a goodfoundation, but formal training in abstract concept representation is required as process complexity increases. Architects must reconsider the technological design and implementation choices to support the growing skills and business agility required by process owners and business experts. Process analysts must acquire skills in simulation and optimization, scenario-planning skills, hypothesis formation and quantitative skills to use newer modeling and analysis tools. Action Item: Organizations that aggressively adopt BPM disciplines in 2007-2008 and establish formal programs to advance their process maturity will widen the distance between themselves and their competitors.Imagine the following banking situation. Process owner: Demand for mortgages, home equity and construction loans seems to be going up. How much we can loosen our credit guidelines and still maintain our tolerance for risk in the overall mortgage portfolio? Business experts: If a credit score is low, then make no offer. If a credit score is good and a customer has an existing mortgage with us, then approve jumbo request anyway. Second approval needed for customers with credit score of 500. Process architect: If business experts want to adjust these business rules and risk tolerances so often, then we should investigate new BPMS to replace our decision tables. Process analyst: Assumptions for Scenario 1 will reflect new distribution of load types and ranges. Scenario 2 should reflect the new business rules for risk assessment.




A BPMS Must Be Evaluated Differently

1. Blurring of design and runtime

2. Range of composition skills to be supported

3. Process maps span old application styles

4. Reuse of external components

5. Process templates and pre-built components

Traditional Feature/Functionality EvaluationBPMS BBPMS A

Targeted Toward Business AnalystsTargeted Toward System Analysts, DevelopersHuman-to-Human InteractionsHuman-to-System InteractionsSystem-to-System InteractionsBusiness Rule EngineProcess Orchestration EngineBusiness Process Modeling EnvironmentOffline Process SimulationIn-line Simulation, Optimization, Predictive AnalysisPortals, UIsHuman ProfilingSearch and ContentCollaboration Technology SupportMultichannel Support and Mobile AccessEvent Support BAMRound-Trip BehaviorPackaged Business Process Content (Templates)Registry/Repository (Design Metadata and Runtime)

Why?

Key Issue: How will BPMSs change the way your company operates? IT and business users are trying to find the right toolset for delivering and managing agile processes, yet are struggling to agree on a common set of evaluation criteria. As they try to collaborate more closely on designing, deploying and sustaining agile processes, their roles and responsibilities are shifting. In this transition period, combined with the ongoing convergence of software infrastructure technologies, and the emergence of the BPP model, the distinction between "tools" and "applications" is blurring. New integrated composition environments, such as a BPMS, need to be evaluated differently than the past feature/functionality basis. Older development tools were selected by developers, whereas in the new composition paradigm, composers will exhibit a much broader range of skills. In addition, today's process designs span traditional application architectural styles, and composition platforms must support the entire process improvement life cycle, not just the "build" phase. Composition enables the reuse of pieces (components) that are created by others, thus the environment must be able to detect such external resources via metadata in a registry/repository for the ecosystem/community. Also, these external resources have to be assessed for "fitness" for the process, considering their quality of service (QOS) features. Lastly, inclusion of packaged business services to be composed into the solution is blurring the distinction between tools and applications as we've known them. These reflect business domain IP and have to be evaluated by business users for its value and fitness to new process model (semantic consistency).Action Item: Process deployment use cases span traditional application architectures, creating mixed styles. Look at the scope of your process definition to identify its style/use case.




Understand Your Process's Characteristics (Use Case) and Architectural Implications, Part 1

• Event/data capture and recording

• Hard-coded • Rule-driven• Flow control logic

• Systems integration• Human workflow• Document mgmt. features

• Reliability• Rollback features• Audit logs

• System-to-system interface requirements

• Archiving needs • Audit trail needs

How is worksequenced?

What is the resource concentration?

Why is it done?

When doeswork end?

• Transaction recorded• Customer request satisfied • Decision made, filed

• Sequential• Ad hoc• Parallel

• People• Systems• Content

• Document decisions• Record transactions• Build consensus• Training

• File arrival• Customer phone call• Bus. documents created

What event triggerswork to

start/progress?

Characteristics Examples Architectural Implications

Key Issue: What are the most appropriate and proven use cases for investing further in BPM? The most-frequently-seen use cases for BMPS deployments are for process definition models that span multiple physical and logical boundaries — information handoffs, across reporting structures, across application system boundaries and across authority boundaries. As a result, the work style reflects a combination of traditional application styles. For example, "order-to-cash" may include the upfront order capture, product configuration, negotiation of terms and conditions, approvals of discounts, placement of the order transaction, fulfillment, shipping, billing, and invoice reconciliation. This process includes manual activities, decision support activities, negotiations between parties, and transaction processing with database updates. Here, we highlight the characteristics of popular process definitions. Action Item: Match BPMS products to your process use case.




Understand Your Process's Characteristics (Use Case) and Architectural Implications, Part 2

• Event capture• Correlation engine• Event history logs

• Business events• Key data elementsProcess milestones

• Scalability

• Skills needed for maintenance

• Ease of useand UI requirements

• State mgmt. needs

• Persistencemechanisms

• One to manyNumber of participantsacting on a work item?

• Highly institutionalized to highly adaptive

Degree of processstandardization

• Admin. to expertSkillconcentration

• Milliseconds to daysProcess duration

• Document • Case• Question• Idea

Unit of work

Characteristics Examples Architectural Implications

Key Issue: What are the most appropriate and proven use cases for investing further in BPM? Composition is a new, alternative approach for automating work activities. For years, the alternatives were only build or buy. When you chose to build a solution, you looked at development tools. But the evaluation method for development tools (which was feature/functionality evaluations) doesn't apply as well to new composition environments. Although many different kinds of model-oriented ICEs exist, they are all still being evaluated as if they are just new tools. When the old "tool" evaluation approach is used, clearly there is a lack of clear distinctions between these product categories. We propose a new evaluation approach: to use the attributes of the future-state executable process to identify architectural requirements for an ICE. Action Item: Users should evaluate and prioritize the architectural layers of an ICE, in addition to evaluating its specific features.




Top Process Use Cases as Evidenced by Early-Adopter Industries

• Financial Services/Retail and Commercial Banking, Investments- Mortgage/loan origination, new account opening streamlining (STP)*- Integrate front and back office into one process, one process/multiple channels*

• Federal, State, Local, Foreign Governments — "eGov"- Case management: Improves the efficiency of case tracking, problem solving

and records management, including call center (such as 800, 311) operations*- License and permit administration: From initial application through to approvals,

ongoing administration and inspection- Grants and benefits application management: For construction of dwellings,

extensions, financial support, refunds and contributions, and benefits• Healthcare Payers — Insurance Claims Processing

- Medical encounter management/eligibility-to-settlement: From claim to financial transactions and services to help the patient make better-informed medical decisions*

• Insurance — P&C — Quote-to-Policy Underwrite and FNOL-to-Payment*• Telecom/Water and Electric Utilities — Order Management/Provisioning CRM• Transportation —Track and Trace• Airlines — Loyalty Programs*

* Indicates transformative areas

Key Issue: What are the most appropriate and proven use cases for investing further in BPM? Service-based industries are the early adopters of BPMS products (though not necessarily pursuing BPM disciplines yet!) Here, we highlight the top process areas by industry. How the process is defined — in other words, the scope of the workflow to be improved — is key to the value derived. Although more-narrowly-defined processes can be quick wins (because optimization decisions are made by one business function leader), they typically do not exploit the full functionality of the BPMS and have minimal impact on the culture and organization. Broader-scoped process definitions tend to be more transformational (see the starred areas). For example, the push for BPM in government is centered around specific program-centric needs where business units within agencies are attempting to demonstrate cost efficiencies and higher degree of effectiveness — attributable to the performance improvement punch in governments and its growing linkage to budget/resource allocation decisions. There is also a big push for line-of-business initiatives in U.S. federal space; finding process plus technology solutions that work within specific business lines (grants, financial, case management and so on) across multiple agencies. This push is an outgrowth of the Federal Enterprise Architecture work. In the insurance industry, newer products strive to shift financial risk to the patient through employee-controlled spending accounts, thus reducing the need for traditional claims transactions. This new approach might be called "medical encounter management" (not a term in common use yet) to encompass the traditional claims processes, with the addition of financial transactions and services to help the patient make better-informed medical decisions. Action Item: Apply BPM and BPMS products to innovative processes (sometimes referred to as "edge" processes) for the highest value.




Gartner's BPMS Magic Quadrant Analysischallengers leaders

niche players visionaries

completeness of vision

abili

ty to

exe

cute

As of 28 June 2006

Fuego SavvionPegasystems

Lombardi

Global 360

MetastormFileNet Fujitsu

Ultimus

Graham Technology

Axway SingularityCA

AppianTibco SoftwareIBM

Adobe

Key Issue: What are the most appropriate and proven use cases for investing further in BPM? Many software infrastructure technologies have already converged into products Gartner now identifies as BPMSs. BPMSs facilitate collaborative, iterative, model-oriented design, development and deployment of processes. Today, we've identified 10 feature/functionality areas (see "Selection Criteria Details for Business Process Management Suites, 2006" G00134657); this level of functionality requires a high level of investment. We expect more software infrastructure technologies (such as database, registry/repositories, and programming tools) to converge into these new composition platforms. The ability to deliver on all 10 feature areas will naturally narrow the number of players that can compete as a general-purpose BPMS. This challenge will reduce the number of successful, long-term contenders from 170-plus today to about 25 players in 2008. However, we believe specialized BPMS vendors will complement these horizontal BPMSs. It is on top of the BPMS that many business process solutions can be built to last for decades, while evolving to a changing world.Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2009, 20% of business processes in the Global 2000 will be supported on BPMS. These processes will predominantly involve a lot of human work that differentiates the company from its competitors and are poorly supported by existing IT systems (0.7 probability).




Recommendations

• Prepare business leaders for the transformational changes of BPM by gradually introducing them to process modeling, analysis, and simulation techniques and tools.

• Now is the time to get aggressive about hiring business process analysts and architects with formal process skills and experience.

• Evaluate a BPMS on its features/functionality and its internal architecture to better match products to your process use case.

BPM success requires organizations to take a formal approach to BPI role definition, staffing, reporting relationships, training and career development. Organizations that continue to treat BPM education and training as grass-roots efforts, taking a more haphazard approach by learning as they go, may experience some early success. However, they will not be able to sustain continuous improvement, nor scale up their efforts to broader, more impactful processes. Organizations that aggressively adopt BPM disciplines in 2007 and 2008 and establish formal programs to advance their process maturity (including finding skilled BPI leaders; aligning roles and responsibilities appropriately across business, IT, architecture teams and COEs; formalizing process governance; and driving cultural and organization change) will widen the distance between themselves and their competitors and will double their chances of becoming industry leaders by 2010.