As a CIO you are always looking to add value to the business. You want to deliver that competitive edge which will help your company overtake the competition.
In the current "credit crunch" climate, however, it is difficult to make significant new purchases. You are under great pressure to "stretch out your current resources and make do." Add to this the probability that anywhere from 50% to 80% of your budget is pre-allocated to maintenance and support and you find yourself between the proverbial rock and hard place.
My natural inclination is to suggest you consider introducing BPM technology as a way of adding value. That, of course, is difficult to justify when you consider the inventory of other projects your team is focused on delivering. Even if you do try to introduce a more process oriented approach as a way of adding value it is likely that you are either operating in a culture where process is not part of the DNA of the Enterprise or the Business is already fully engaged in a six sigma business process improvement programme of their own.
My experience demonstrates that if IT can act as a showcase to demonstrate the value and approach, the Business is more likely to buy in, as they will see a less risky and more immediate release of value from an iterative approach to BPM deployment. What better way to deliver and demonstrate tangible results and value than by addressing your own IT process improvement challenges?
Posted by: peter in Peter Borner, change, bpm on
Oct 1, 2008
Businesses want to improve their processes for a number of reasons ranging from increased efficiency and increased effectiveness through to increased visibility and improved collaboration.
Increased efficiency is about ensuring all the steps in a process are necessary. Can we drive down costs by streamlining the process?
Effectiveness is the process of driving Business value? Can we making more money for the company? Can we deliver better service?
It's a moving target, things change! Credit crunch, Globalization, Compliance, etc., all have an effect on business processes so it is important to build a platform for continuous improvement.
To achieve this we need to:
- Examine current processes (The Operational Walkthrough)
- Model current processes (the "As-Is")
- Model and Simulate proposed efficient/effective processes (the "To-Be")
- Implement the improvements
- Measure and adapt for continuous improvement.
Having the ability to measure performance and adapt for continuous improvement is key to stealing the march on your competitors. It's not about doing everything perfectly. It's about having the edge over the competition, delivering that extra level of customer service.
The big mistakes come when you try to boil the ocean and try to solve everybody's problems all at once. A better approach is to understand what people are trying to achieve right now and help them model their business processes, help them produce new, more effective and efficient, business processes so that they can move forward by aligning IT and the Business.
Posted by: peter in Peter Borner, change, bpm on
Sep 30, 2008
From long and bitter experience of both infrastructure and software projects I am firmly of the opinion that all failures of IT projects come down to two things, poor planning and a lack of business involvement and commitment.
My experience shows that successful projects create a mutual dependency between IT and the Business. I have seen that this requires an unprecedented amount of team work, at least 60% of this effort involves change management and getting organisations to think about process in the business. So if you fail to get the Business and IT working together from the outset, your project will most likely experience problems, cost overruns, etc.
I am eager to gather your input. What does your experience of IT project delivery tell you about why some projects succeed and others fail so dramatically?
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