Borner's Corner

As a regular reader of Dennis Byron's excellent BPM in Action Blog, my interest was peaked by his latest entry (http://www.bpminaction.com/blog/2008/10/bpm_viewpoint_what_new_aiim_st.php)  where he discusses the new AIIM study on BPM (http://www.ebizq.net/news/10483.html).

As a centre of excellence for BPM our aim is to deliver value as early as possible in any engagement. Typically we look for processes to attack in the initial iteration that can start to deliver an ROI within 90 to 120 days. This is clearly in line with Dennis' advice in his blog post. My view is that, learning to walk before you run is a key success factor in all BPM projects. After all, a lean, agile, reliable approach that has early success will never be a job loss or balance sheet writedown issue!

If have published a number of solution briefs for those of you looking to introduce BPM into your business. You can find them here: http://www.axispoint.co.uk/dl-white-papers

 

 

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Organisations can derive these benefits from technological solutions, but can they meet these short term needs (downsizing for lean-ness and moving towards centralised control for agility) whilst also addressing long term strategic aims that prepare them to exit recession better equipped for the future than they were when they entered?

I believe that they can. This is having one's cake and eating it, and a solution to this dilemma is Business Process Management.

BPM is getting a lot of attention. Forrester Research estimates that BPM license, services and maintenance revenue will grow from the $1.2 billion we saw in 2005 to more than $2.7 billion by 2009 "an adoption trend vendors and practitioners alike can't ignore".

BPM has come a long way from the workflow systems of the 1990s; those old workflow systems managed document-based processes where people executed the workflow steps of the process.

Today's BPM systems manage processes that include person-to-person work steps, system-to-system communications or combinations of both. In addition, BPM systems include integrated features like enhanced (and portable) process modeling, simulation, code generation, process execution, process monitoring, customisable industry-specific templates and UI components, and out-of-the-box integration capabilities along with support for web-services-based integration.

All of these ingredients translate to increased interest today in BPM suites because they bring businesses a higher level of flexibility for business processes while reducing risks and cost. Think of BPM suites as offering a way to build, execute and monitor automated processes that may go across organisational boundaries.

But the key here is higher level of flexibility and reduced cost. Lean and agile. Just what we need now, in turbulent times, and to set ourselves up for the future.

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My premise is that firms achieve growth through the use of information technology to scale their business processes more effectively than their competitors. So how do we measure the strength of a firms IT capability?

I use an "IT Scorecard," based on an original framework developed at Microsoft, to measure and track IT capability in five key business functional areas: sales and marketing, finance, operations, empowered professionals, and IT infrastructure.

Typically a firm that does well on the IT Scorecard has a high capacity for business process scalability. That is, their processes tend to be able to scale to meet the needs of a rapidly changing business environment. For example, through good process knowledge and standardisation they can more easily manage the complexities involved in growth; they are able to streamline their operations and achieve grow without significant additions to headcount; they are flexible and able to respond quickly and take advantage of new opportunities and they have good visibility into their critical business processes.

Interestingly, firms that have a high capacity for business process scalability often do not realise that they have this capability. However, results can be off the scale for firms that understand their capabilities and embrace the business process scalability they have developed because they are able to identify the specific process changes needed to drive each business lever and then quickly and efficiently implement those changes in their BPM system.

 

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