Posted by: peter in Savvion, SAP, Peter Borner, PegaSystems, Lombardi, K2.net, iterative approach, Global 360, Credit Crunch, change, bpm, Appian on
Oct 8, 2008
I read yesterday's article in Silicon's online magazine entitled "SAP sales drop as credit crunch looms large" with interest. It is clear from the article that the current economic climate is hitting the 600lb Gorillas hard. SAP shares are down 16% (the biggest drop for 12 years) and Oracle are down 7.6%. Shares in Microsoft, Cisco and EMC are also reportedly down.
The article reports that Henning Kagermann, SAP co-chief executive, said of the third quarter: "The market developments of the past several weeks have been dramatic and worrying to many businesses. These concerns triggered a very sudden and unexpected drop in business activity at the end of the quarter."
My experience is that there is a tendency to increase spending on IT during times of economic downturn. This is because smart business leaders see it as an opportunity to streamline and position for the future. The Businesses that "get it right" are those businesses that ride the recession and come through it stronger and better placed to handle the up-turn.
So, if the major Hi-Tech firms are seeing a downturn, where is this investment going?
I would hope that firms are looking towards pure play Business Process Management technologies like Lombardi, PegaSystems, K2.net, Global360, Appian and Savvion because coupled with a strong iterative approach they can provide quick wins and give business visibility and ownership to make a difference in the current fiscal year. If a major SAP deployment goes wrong it can very easily become a job loss/annual report write down issue. Through fast, agile BPM projects, the lessons learnt in the initial deployments can lay the foundations for larger "Building the Future" projects that deliver significant longer term benefits.
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?
