‘Templatize’ for Better Business Process Management (BPM)

If there’s a word I’d like to mainstream, It would certainly be templatize. It’s already
used in the computing world, but I think it has a broader application when it comes
to business processes too. It’s a wonderful synthesis of our digital world’s move toward customization and automation, and it simply makes sense for those of us who spend our
days Googling and WhatsApping. The business template allows us to create our own
processes once and then repeat them over and over again, tweaking and refining along
the way.

Templatizing is an essential part of any company’s business process management, or
BPM. What is BPM? It’s simply the optimizing of your business practices, looking for
ways where you can cut costs, increase revenue, increase efficiency and productivity,
and just make things easier and clearer for your team.

Better BPM is a constant struggle and reward situation for businesses of all shapes
and sizes, whether you’re just at a couple desks in your local coworking center or
in a multinational distributed team. It’s the part that doesn’t focus on what you’re
doing so much as how you do it all. Logically, BPM and workflow templates go
hand-in-hand.
 

What are the benefits of business templates?

A business template is a BPM tool that acts like a workflow diagram that lets you
map out a repeatable process.

1. Templatizing enables ‘hit-by-a-truck’ teamwork

If something unfortunate happened to the most essential member of your team
(or if they simply left your team), would your business fall apart? Business templates
clarify workflow processes and make it easier to run a “hit-by-a-truck” operation that
allows for people to move between teams and roles without disruption. They also let
you run an international business from anywhere and allow remote teams to
collaborate on clearly defined tasks.

2. Templatizing captures the efficiency of best practices

We’re all working toward constant cycles of innovation and improvement, but why
reinvent the wheel? It takes up time and energy that we could be putting into new
mission-critical initiatives. Once you know what’s working for you, allow business
templates to drive repeatable best practices, and then look to experiment in other
parts of your work.

3. Templatizing gets you started

Business templates are simple and elegant BPM and productivity tools. Once you create
them, you can reuse-recycle and dive in to get started right away on any new project.
An added benefit: starting faster also minimizes procrastination and increases your
chances of completing the task at hand.

4. Templatizing reduces errors

Let’s face it, nobody’s perfect. You need to work as a team to create tried-and-true
workflows. By having repeatable steps to follow, you make sure that everyone follows
the same crucial steps, limiting mistakes made and creating a transparent workflow that
teammates around the world can view and follow.

5. Templatizing improves consistency and accountability

Using a template as part of your business process management workflow means that
you and your team are focused on clarity, conciseness, and consistency. It means you
have your you-know-what together. Not only does it help onboard new team members,
it helps give current members assurance that they heading in the right direction. And
this form of workflow automation also helps shine light on the all-important question of whodid what, when.
 

Where can you use templates in your day-to-day
BPM?

There are a lot of places where templatizing is a no-brainer. First and foremost, creating
a repeatable workflow helps increase customer satisfaction. Try using it for tech support
and customer success to follow a common flow of how to help resolve customer issues,
or to help close a deal.

And you can make sure that no matter who answers the phone or accesses the lead that you
get the right information from the start with a systematized client intake
workflow template:

For me, being part of the small 100-percent remote team that runs the online remote
network Happy Melly, the first use case we saw for templates in our highly experimental
org was for onboarding.

When you go from from three to 15 teammates and from about 60 to 400 clients in just
a year, you have to change the way you do business — or you’re sure to miss important
steps in welcoming any new member of your extended work family.

For example, here’s a snapshot of a customizable Redbooth workflow template for
onboarding new team members:

Browse Our Free Workflow Templates

Use our free workflow templates to follow a typical workflow for any given task, or go ahead and customize them to make them your own:

• Design a website
• Set up a Scrum workflow
• Manage project status
• Plan a big event
• Run a weekly meeting

…and many more!

And while templates and defined BPM may seem corporate, they also help startups and up-and-comers too.

In fact, at Redbooth, they first got the idea for creating the workflow templates going through their own Series B funding round, creating a series of legal templates to get them through that arduous yet essential investor paperwork.

But then they couldn’t stop. Now, with just a click of a button, you can open up a new Redbooth workspace that has all the steps laid out for you in common workflow management. Open up a workflow template in your existing Redbooth account, or start a free trial and test-drive as many templates as you want.

There are dozens of workflow templates already, and Redbooth is always interested in ideas for creating more! Email workflow@redbooth.com to find out more about getting custom workflow templates
 created for your business processes.

Explore the Redbooth Workflow Template library >>

BEST PRACTICESPRODUCTIVITYWORKFLOW TEMPLATES

SOURCE: Redbooth

THE POTENTIAL OF DIGITAL DISRUPTION

Digital disruption across many industries

Digital disruption is the change that occurs when new digital technologies and business models affect the value proposition of existing goods and services.

The rapid increase in the use of of mobile devices for personal use and work has increased the potential for digital disruption across many industries. A powerful example is the way Amazon, Netflix, HBO, Spotify and Tidal have disrupted the media and entertainment industries by changing how content is accessed by customers.

Don’t underestimate the potential of digital disruption

In the strange new world of better and cheaper innovation, every industry could experience similar transformations. Yet many companies, underestimate the potential of digital disruption. In doing so, they systematically undervalue their own intangible assets.

Digital disruption can be seen as both a threat and an opportunity.

Infographic: Don’t underestimate the potential of digital disruption

Digital disruption requires rethinking the entire business – it requires first thinking and then behaving like a digital disruptor.

SOURCE: Torben Rick

business model innovation

The digital age has become an impetus for business model innovation, as technology has dramatically changed how companies operate and deliver services to customers. This digital disruption has shortened business model lifecycles and made innovation key to financial success. The global marketplace has further driven the need for business model innovations, as companies must react to stiffer international competition and the increased potential for systemic risk. These factors are forcing companies to turn to business model innovation to stay competitive and foster growth in the competitive global marketplace.

One example of successful business model innovation is changes made by Apple beginning in the early 2000s. Apple's introduction of products and services such as the iPod, iPhone and iTunes expanded the company's offerings beyond the desktop computer market. For example, the iPod and iTunes created ways to profit from downloadable music, while theiPhone was a breakthrough in the smartphone market. Netflix is another example of this type of business innovation: After upending the traditional video rental market, in recent years the company has leveraged new digital technology to gain a competitive advantage in the streaming media business.

Successful business model innovation in the digital age requires an alignment of IT and business objectives, with the ultimate goal being to improve processes throughout the organization. As a result, CIOs other top IT executives play a big role in identifying ways to use new and existing technology to maximize business model innovation success.

SOURCE: SearchCIO

What Is the Future for Processes?

To understand the future of processes, you must dig a little deeper than many people do.

Process thinking goes back well over a century, to the origin of modern iron and automobile production.  The raw materials and finished goods of such manufacturing and production processes are literally spatial — 3-dimensional.  What can you do to significantly improve productivity in a 3-dimensional world?  The answer these days is simple:  You build robots.  Robotization has literally changed the world during the past 30–40 years.

Rather than manufacturing and production processes, however, the world is now increasingly focused on white-collar and digital processes.  What 3-dimensional presence do the raw materials and finished goods of these processes have?

Well, exactly none.  The raw materials and finished goods of these processes aren't physical and simply have no spatial presence whatsoever (except maybe for paper artifacts).  Robots (at least physical ones) aren't an option.  That fact of life makes a huge difference in how you have to think about automation for such processes.

Instead, the raw materials and finished goods of such processes are all about your operational business knowledge — your intellectual capital — and your capacity to express and apply it.  That capability, in turn, depends directly on your business terminology and business language.  For white-collar processes you have no choice — the world is semantic.  So you must deal with the subject matter semantically.

That takes us in a very different direction than most professionals currently foresee.  For one thing it takes us toward natural language and away from diagrams.  That's a huge shift in mindset.  Imagine having a business conversation with your smart phone about gaps and ambiguities in business policies and in the meanings of the vocabulary you use to talk about subject matter knowledge.  Don't think that's possible?  Have you watched your kids talking to their smart phones lately?

Sooner or later businesses will realize that operational business knowledge differentiates their product/services and enables their ever-more-automated processes to function.  Capturing, managing, and re-using that intellectual capital puts a premium on structured business vocabulary (concept models^[1]) and on business rules expressed in structured natural language.^[2]  Those business rules are the only way you have to ensure quality from white-collar and digital processes.

What about Case Management?

Many 'processes' people are looking to implement these days are clearly best viewed as case-oriented — e.g., patient care, mortgage applications, etc.  Individual cases must be orchestrated through various states, often with undesirable or wayward transitions.  There is significant variation in the paths that various cases take.  Things just don't always move along as predictably as on a production line.

For such problems you'll want a more case-oriented style of modeling.  (For business practitioners that technique may or may not prove to be CMMN.^[3])  You might not use traditional process modeling at all.  Whatever your approach you'll definitely want to be very clear about what milestones are relevant, and which business rules apply for each.  That puts a premium on business rules.

What about Cognitive Computing?

People are also starting to ask why current processes are so dumb.  For example, why can't they:

• learn from experience? 
• be more goal-driven?
• dynamically balance between conflicting goals? 
• self-adapt? 

Some people suggest use of cognitive computing to help make processes smarter.  I doubt anybody today really knows how far this idea can be taken.  I can, however, say two things with certainty:

• If you don't know what your business rules are (i.e., what rules guided previous executions), can you really expect a machine to figure them out?  A machine can undoubtedly identify patterns, but that's a far cry from demonstrating compliance, guaranteeing consistent results, or customizing appropriately case-by-case.
  
• Suppose self-adapting processes do become reality.  The question I have is what will keep such processes from going out of bounds?  How do you avoid them doing things that are undesirable, self-defeating, or even illegal?  These are critical questions that will always bring you right back to business rules.

For further information, please visit BRSolutions.com      

References

[1]  Refer to "What Is a Concept Model?" by Ronald G. Ross,  Business Rules Journal, Vol. 15, No. 10 (Oct. 2014), URL:  http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2014/b779.html  

[2]  E.g., in RuleSpeak®.  Refer to http://www.rulespeak.com/en/  

[3]  Case Management Model and Notation  

SOURCE: BRCommunity

Positive Business Outcomes with IBM Case Manager

Businesses struggling to transition to digital era

Most businesses are failing to grasp the opportunities of digital business models, according to Christoph Kilger, partner at Ernst & Young, Germany.

“Concerns around IT security are holding them back and many are still locked in a traditional, conservative way of thinking,” he told journalists in Stuttgart.

Kilger said another key challenge to making the transformation to the digital era is that businesses are struggling to understand new technologies such as machine-to-machine communication and machine learning, and the exponential process improvements they can enable.

Ernst & Young believes that smart, connected products are core to enabling new services and business models that will drive a market Cisco estimates will be worth $14.4tn a year by 2022.

“The value will come from being able to do entirely new things with new technologies. We are entering an era in which many technologies will combine to bring about something new,” said Kilger.

However, he pointed out that in some cases value will be created in one place and taken away in another, as has already happened with WhatsApp.

“WhatsApp was able to amass more than 400 million users in four years and will soon reach a billion, but an estimated £350bn has been lost in text message revenue as a result,” said Kilger.

Similarly Blockbuster has been replaced by Netflix, which is able to capitalise on its unparalleled understanding of viewing patterns.

“The replacement of businesses is being driven mainly by new technologies, and the result is a dramatic change in the composition of businesses,” said Kilger.

Ernst & Young predicts that new technologies will enable greater horizontal and vertical integration in businesses and business functions.

However, this is difficult for established businesses to adopt, which has led some to start working with startups to enable digital transformation.

“Startups and established corporations can leverage individual strengths and explore acceleration opportunities through collaboration. In the past, IT has been an enabler of business, but in the future IT will be part of business” said Kilger.

Ernst & Young predicts that all businesses will soon need chief digital officers to explain what it means to become a truly digital enterprise.

“IT will have to manage the whole technology stack, including software, connectivity layer, cloud, apps in the cloud and technologies enabling the internet of things [IoT],” said Kilger.

This, in turn, will create the need for companies to have access to data scientists to enable them to understand and benefit from all the data they are generating and collecting.

Bill Gates once said: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”

“The next 10 years will be important in terms of digital transformation. We will see a completely different world by then,” said Kilger.

SOURCE: Computer Weekly

1-2-3 Tips for Maximising Case Management

Technology and data executives are constantly keeping their eyes on the big picture, overall business process management, broad technical structures, digital content and workflows. But there’s a hole in that oversight–the crucial issue of case management. Jeroen Jansen, General Director of Netherlands-based Informed Consulting, came to that realization in college. He started thinking less about computers and more about how people (read: customers, employees) use them.

“The human brain does things that computers will never do,” Jansen thought at the time. “Computers were great for structured data. But people work with documents (and images, graphics, sound, video and more) and that’s a whole other ballgame.”

Shifting his focus from broad technical structure to users’ needs, gave Jansen better insight into where IT is working well, where things could improve and what should happen next.

“It’s the clash between business process management and case management,” he says. “Companies that spent the last 15-20 years converting to ‘digital-everything’ focused on creating an optimum workflow to manage all that information. It’s a good start, but one size does not fit all.”

Jansen cites a favorite example: airlines. Reservations have become so completely digitized and automated, that a harried traveler stuck at the airport is directed by an agent at the counter to “log into the carrier’s website” for help. That, Jansen says, is business process management taken to the extreme.

“The original thought in the IT world was to build generic, database-centric user interfaces that highlighted and maximized the powerful capabilities of the ECM,” says Jansen. “But over time such an interface becomes increasingly complex to use and workers may turn away.”

Case management, on the other hand, focuses on helping users complete their specific, unique tasks. It empowers workers, unleashing decision-making and creativity, benefiting the overall enterprise. It’s like an IT version of the Harley-Davidson story, where a nearly-bankrupt company shook off its antiquated assembly line in favor of small teams with greater responsibility and decision-making power. Now the company is firing on all cylinders.

The key, Jansen says, is enabling workers to access data on their own terms. It’s the thinking behind Informed Consulting’s SPA4D solution, which leverages the power of both EMC Documentum and Microsoft SharePoint.

Building multiple, custom-configured interfaces may seem daunting, even excessive to some organizations. Until they see the results. Jansen cites as an example, Abbott Pharmaceuticals, with 30,000 Documentum users.

“We gave the tech-types the complex tools they needed,” Jansen says. “Others got a simpler, more intuitive experience with the look and feel of solutions already familiar to them. Usage doubled!”

Jansen and his team applied similar techniques in their work with the Municipal Government of Amsterdam, replacing a decade-old system with one that created a much friendlier relationship between employee and enterprise. “The moment they saw it,” he says, “they got excited!”

Jansen offers these tips to maximize case management:

1. Let the users do the talking, especially younger employees. Far from being reluctant to change, a generation that’s grown up with touch screens, text messages, Twitter and Instagram knows exactly what it wants.
2. Push your team to customize an interface for each distinct group of users, based on tools they’re already familiar with.
3. A custom-tailored experience means a better relationship with data.

That way, a highly-skilled engineer in the back office can delight in an interface’s power and complexities, while a salesperson, researcher, customer service representative, airline mechanic or compliance officer can get a simpler, custom-tailored experience and better use of the data, Jansen says.

SOURCE: EMC SPARK

Three extended enterprises embracing the collaborative economy

Businesses are being reshaped by an exponential growth in connected activity and information flow. There are few stand-alone entities these days. Instead, companies are often an inter-connected web of companies, contractors, suppliers, partners and employees. And the challenge for IT is only going to increase as companies begin to take advantage of new economic models such as the Collaborative Economy.

The Collaborative or Sharing Economy involves using technology to connect people to make better use of products, services and resources – reinventing the way we consume and disrupting all aspects of the value chain. According to Jeremiah Owyang, for every car that is rented through a car-sharing service such as Zipcar, the manufacturer loses on average $270,000 as this reduces car ownership by 9-13 vehicles. This then has a knock-on effect on the rest of the value chain (insurance, fuel, parts etc).

Some companies have already recognized these shifts and are exploring how their business models could change forever.

GE has partnered with product crowdsourcing service Quirky investing over $30m to create Wink, a ‘microfactory’ for connected home products which is currently generating over 4,000 new ideas per week. Wink selects a small number of these to take to production and are then sold by retailers such as The Home Depot.

Barclaycard Ring, from Barclays PLC is a credit card service designed and run by its community members. Members propose and vote on new ideas to make the service better. Barclays shares the financial impact that these ideas might have and the Giveback program gives members a share in the profits.

US Government agency NASA launched a contest asking data scientists on crowdsourcing site Kaggle to create new uses for the agency’s wealth of earth sciences informational material and data. The competition uses the NASA Open Earth Exchange platform. NASA has some of the smartest people on the planet, but competitions on Kaggle are often won by people with little subject-matter expertise but who are great at building predictive data models.

Managing the digital content and workflow associated with such a dramatically different extended enterprise requires some careful thought.

Firstly, you will need to design business processes that can extend beyond your organization and that can be adapted on the fly. Secondly, it is vital to use collaboration tools that work as well with your partners as they do inside your organization. Finally, content needs to flow easily between the different parties involved in the process. But in some cases, there could be significant security concerns so think about how to safeguard your critical content, whilst still delivering the content that partners need in the cloud.

SOURCE: Alfresco

TechnoVision 2016 - Process Is The New App

The next-generation of Business Process Management and Business Rules Management Tools is so powerful that it actually can be seen as the successor to custom-built applications. Being able to define detailed process flows and decision trees enables both business and IT to create powerful, differentiating solutions that would have required extensive custom coding in the past. Now, much of the definition can be done on the fly, using visual models and (semi) natural language in the nearest proximity to the business.

Process On The Fly #2 – Process Is The New App

inside-out of the enterprise (i.e improving the agility for their knowledge users), and from theoutside-in for improving the customers experience across multiples channels.  

Inside-out Over the years, ERP systems have been extensively customized to address organization-specific requirements. This arguably leads to tailored support for the business in a siloed manner, but at the same time, involves mounting costs for maintenance, high dependency on the personnel involved in the customization, long timelines to deliver change, and increased risks in upgrading the ERP system. The situation is certainly not better with bespoke software — often based on complex or aged programming languages — which makes it all the more difficult to maintain or extend the code. So the way the enterprise address their customers/partner demands is costly and not efficient.  

Outside-in In the current situation most communication with customers and business partners is done in the old-fashioned way of phone, email, externalised websites and sometimes still even with fax. Externalised websites deliver the closest to what is required for digital interaction, but acts more on an atomic one-way communication channel, a customer orders a product, raises a complaint or requests a quote. On a more sophisticated Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) level, such as approval flows, quote discussions, product complaints interactions a more direct interaction with the business partner or customer is required. In the digital space – customers and business partners want to engage seamlessly thru any channels and expected a personalized response.  

The process application in the cloud  The best of both worlds can be created by bringing back the business functionality to out-of-the-box usage of the ERP system (or simply leave the custom code alone, in the case of bespoke software) and at the same time introducing a high level of agility, by means of externalized ‘process apps’. All without customization or coding. The ERP system is used as originally intended and designed, resulting in more predictable behavior of the system related to usage and performance, maintained in a more standardized and cost-effective way. The process app externalizes the needed functionality into highly customizable solutions outside the core applications. They’re supported by rules engines and task inboxes and can be delivered to different channels, including — notably — mobile devices.  

Platform as a Service (PaaS) cloud applications enable flexibility on top of the application landscape while minimizing the effort required by IT. PaaS application support business functionality such as process execution, integration, mobility and business data/intelligence. With PaaS we are now able to weave business partner communications into the company internal application landscape. Proces Cloud apps, such as the Oracle Process Cloud, are part of a PaaS solution that interact on the one end as an interaction channel with customers and business partners and on the other end as a proxy to all internal applications. The communication between the PaaS solution and the internal systems is based upon a fixed integration channel that is both well secured and ensures that on the one end the required performance is provided for the interaction and on the other end is not disrupting the internal application landscape.  

Expert: Leon Smiers 

SOURCE: content-loop

BPO/ITO expert: Robotic process automation offers 'tremendous value proposition'

Robotic process automation is sometimes described as the automation of automation. How is RPA different from the sort of business process automation that companies and CIOs have been doing for years?

Andy Wasser: We're only talking software here. What I think is distinguishing this from traditional automation is going the next step with the ability to integrate multiple systems and [enable them] to adapt to changing circumstances. So, it could be that you're taking your ERP system and your CRM system and there was somebody who was going in between those two, or you were going to one of your systems that was reporting potential breaches into your network, and then you were going to another system to do further examination. I've heard robotic process automation being used as sort of the replacement for the swivel chair. Going from one system to another is what RPA does.

What do you mean?

Andy Wasser

Wasser: Let me give you an example. Let's say there was an accounting system, and the accounting system would kick out exceptions. And then you'd have Maria, the wonderful person who would deal with all the exceptions. Well, someone would sit down with Maria and say, 'What do you do?' And she'd say, 'Oh, when it comes in and it's missing a bank identification number, I do this, this and this. And when it comes in and these three numbers don't add up, I do this, and so on.' When you list it all out, it turns out that Maria is dealing with maybe 14 types of common exceptions. Those 14 exceptions can be turned into a process, just like the original accounting system was turned into an automated process. She was doing things that were exceptions, but there was a routine to her exception handling. That routine may have required her to look something up in an ancillary system or make a phone call or do a calculation, so with RPA you're starting to go that next level, in terms of complication.

Has technology changed suddenly in order for this to happen?

Nothing that these devices are doing today puts human IT outsourcing at risk. But I wonder if it is just a matter of time.

Andy Wasserassociate dean, Carnegie Mellon

Wasser: I think it is incremental. Things are getting more and more automated with time, and so you're seeing the results. Think of an ATM. It used to just dispense cash. Now, you can take a picture of your check with your cell phone and deposit it. So, I think it's not a big-bang type of issue. It's more that things are just happening faster and faster, and as things are definable and repeatable and rules-based, they're great candidates for this type of technology. I don't think there is any incredible silver bullet that's happening, except the fast pace of expert systems and artificial intelligence.

You make a good point. Technology is much more pervasive now, and as everything we do becomes more digitalized, there is more opportunity to automate jobs.

Wasser: That's right where we are. As things get more and more digitized, there is just more opportunity for RPA.

RPA is presumably expensive to implement?

Wasser: While it's fairly costly right now to consider this level of technology, one thing we know about technology is that those costs keep going down over time. And the one thing we know about people is that our people costs tend to keep going up. And so the value proposition here is just enormous. The place where it is most likely to start out is with those repeatable, definable practices, and that is pretty much what we call BPO, business process outsourcing. And there is a function of what we call IT process outsourcing that very much falls under this same banner today. That is the glass house -- the data center, the help desk, the network support. Today, we may be thinking software engineering is pretty damn complicated and requires so much judgment, and nothing that these devices are doing today puts human IT outsourcing at risk. But I wonder if it is just a matter of time.

When you really think of this, this has happened time and time again. A couple of hundred years ago, 75% of the world's population was involved with farming and agriculture. In the 1950s, it got down to about 30%; now in the U.S., it is 2%. People say, 'Oh yeah, but you still need somebody to operate that combine.' Yes, but that somebody is doing the work of what 50 pickers used to do. If you've recently seen a mining operation, it's incredible -- there's just one guy behind a console driving all this equipment.

What should CIOs be thinking about in terms of their BPO/ITO contracts?

Wasser: When you're looking at your options now, you should be saying, 'I want to keep this in-house, and I want to onshore or nearshore this to Syracuse, N.Y., or North Carolina, or Bogota, Columbia, and I want to offshore this to Chennai and, hey, this is ripe for making that phone call to [RPA software vendor] Blue Prism to see what they can do for me.' RPA should be part of the set of options open to you.

SOURCE: SearchCIO

Deloitte's Craig White: BPM tool tech paves way for digitization

Business process management (BPM) tool suites, along with BPM best practices and techniques, promise to boost efficiency, improve performance and make organizations more responsive to change. Sustainable business process improvement is the objective. Craig White, National Strategy & Operations Quality and Risk Management Leader at Deloitte, has spent more than 25 years optimizing business processes for some of the nation's largest organizations, including the U.S. Air Force. He recently shared his views on BPM as a tool for CIOs grappling with customer-facing processes and rapid digitization.

The first wave of business process management focused primarily on internal, back-office operations. But more recently, enterprises seem increasingly interested in applying a BPM tool to improve customer-facing processes. Have you seen this trend among your clients?

Craig White: I think we have, and part of it is defining processes in a different way. The way our customers look at things today, all processes can be considered what we are calling "customer-facing." Because of the power of BPM tools, we have the power to connect from one end of the enterprise -- the customer end -- all the way back to the very origination of products or services. We see our customers having a stronger understanding of what's impacting cost, schedule and quality and how they are directly impacting internal or external customers. We see a lot of our clients thinking about customers in two dimensions: the external customer setting and internal customers, or stakeholders.

Who are the internal customers from a CIO's perspective?

White: When thinking about CIOs, they need to work with lines of business, product lines and operating divisions.

How does the customer-facing application of BPM tools/techniques change how CIOs approach this technology? For example, do they define success differently and use different metrics?

White: I don't know that I would say different metrics. BPM tools can offer CIOs and the broader organization … more insight into how they are actually performing, including managing the workflow across the organization. It's not defining success at the enterprise [level]. It is really understanding and having the ability to measure data. One could argue that in the not-too-distant past, the data just wasn't there to feed the enterprise-level key performance indicators with the level of granularity where you could really drill down and say, "We have operating location x that is struggling in a certain dimension." BPM has been able to unlock these types of informational details for leadership. BPM allows that transparency and traceability of the work being performed at the tactical level.

What do traceability and transparency mean in the BPM tool context?

White: In short, the ability via the BPM tool suite to see an issue or see a problem or see an indicator moving in a direction that is not in the best interests of the organization. Being able to drill down in the BPM, past the key performance indicators, and into the underlying processes and sub-processes to determine where the problems truly lie. And that is done between the partnership of the CIO's organization and the business areas, whether that is an operating division or a line-of-business manager.

How does the emergence of digital business or "digitization" impact the need for BPM? As enterprises transact more business via the cloud, mobile technology and social media, does BPM play a role in helping CIOs optimize business processes and workflows across multiple platforms?

White: I would say yes. Digitization really impacts BPM in a few ways. You have this key step in the modernization of technology, and BPM really helps you understand the business as you migrate into these new technologies. It's critical for understanding how processes are currently executed. When thinking about the power of BPM, it does a great job of positioning the organization as they move into a more digital environment. They have all of this great visibility into the organization and that is a big difference from [years ago] when you deployed a new technology solution into a line of business and had to first go in and do a lot of work understanding the business. With BPM in place, you have a connected business and technology ecosystem and are able to eliminate several root causes including human error and wait time, which makes getting the job done right and on time significantly easier.

When thinking about the power of BPM, it does a great job of positioning the organization as they move into a more digital environment.

Craig White, National Strategy & Operations Quality and Risk Management Leader, Deloitte

In what areas do you see BPM having the greatest success in improving an enterprise's customer interactions and business outcomes?

White: The very nature of BPM provides a structured approach for organizations to facilitate their understanding of how to efficiently execute their processes and how to ensure strategic alignment. BPM makes for a more effective and efficient organization, which of course results in much better customer alignment, and customer performance.

Taking another perspective, stepping into the day-to-day business processes, you have some processes that appear to be far removed from the client-facing position or the client themselves. BPM allows you to connect these processes to the end products. Being able to have that connection focuses attention on customer interaction and business outcomes. It helps you think through applicable laws, regulation, policies, and implement standard operating procedures … to make sure your processes align to the customer and your business outcomes. I guess the capper for me is if you have fully implemented it, it takes a lot of variation out of the process results of your organization and makes it easier to connect to the business outcomes you are trying to drive for your customers.

Any advice for CIOs on best practices for utilizing a BPM tool and BPM techniques?

White: The biggest thing for CIOs is to ensure they have a great partnership with the business itself. Once you move past that step, which is a precursor to an effective organization, CIOs need to work with senior leadership to make sure they have a solid vision for the organization and make sure the vision is aligned to the needs of the customers -- internal customers and external customers. We see that CIOs play a critical role in ensuring the vision for that technology lines up, is very clear, establishes the need for change and emphasizes benefits.

CIOs should also ensure that they empower others to identify improvement opportunities across the organization. This is a great opportunity for CIOs. Be facilitative in nature -- this is something we would like to see. It's part of the implementation around adopting Agile with Scrum and the Continuous Process Improvement best practices to enable rapid results. That is something every CIO can consider in addition to ensuring you have the right culture in place to move forward, connect customers and be successful with your business outcomes.

SOURCE: SearchCIO