BPM: Tying It All Together

By Rod Travers
Senior Vice President, Technology

In the late 1970s the first electronic spreadsheet, VisiCalc, burst onto the scene and became the killer application that legitimized personal computers even though the IBM PC was years away from being born.

Since then few applications have had as much widespread impact or importance, though email and web browsers are in that realm. Killer applications at the enterprise level are even scarcer. Some might argue that ERP fits that bill, but ERP is not universal enough in my opinion. There are many reasons for this scarcity, chief among them being system complexity, closed architectures and a natural tendency toward functionally-specific systems (e.g., claims, policy admin, etc.)

There is however a relatively new category of technology now gaining momentum which truly has the potential to deliver the kind of business benefits that will make it one of those rare breeds that has universal appeal and applicability at the enterprise level. I’m talking about Business Process Management (BPM) systems. Perhaps you’ve heard of BPM and BPM systems and perhaps, like others, you aren’t quite sure what it is. Indeed it is still an emerging category that is defining itself.

This is in part because system vendors of all kinds are hastily repositioning their existing products to sound like they are BPM or else casting BPM to sound like their current offerings, depending on what suits them. And there are BPM pioneers who have their own definitions, based on something they built from the ground up. We all lived through this “definitions of convenience” phenomenon with CRM and it was a nightmare for buyers and ultimately for vendors. Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself with BPM systems.

What Is It?

Since I don’t sell software, hopefully my definition of BPM will be reasonably straight and untainted. BPM is a combination of management practices and technology that takes a business-oriented and process-centric approach to automating and managing business processes. This is in contrast to the technology- and data-centric approaches that are common today. A BPM system doesn’t replace your existing systems. Rather, it makes those systems work together where they haven’t before, and it automates processes that were previously not practical to automate. It also enables visibility into business processes through real-time reporting and analysis.

In my view, a system must have the following elements built in (not linked in or cobbled together) to be considered a true BPM system:

What’s New?

The fundamentals of business process management have been around a long time. Among them are process design and renewal, measurement, control, process integration and appropriate automation. Only recently, however, have these elements coalesced under the BPM moniker. This has happened in part because an overall management maturity has taken place, born out of experience, in which the importance of process stewardship is at least acknowledged if not fully understood.

Another reason for the coalescence of BPM is the maturity and adoption of newer technology standards such as XML and web services. These standards enable easier and more functional integration among disparate technologies. It is now easier than ever to “digitize” a business process.

Enterprising technology vendors have recognized this and have developed process-centric automation systems. Companies including Metastorm, Fuego, Clear, Lombardi, IBM, FileNet, Pegasystems, Microsoft, Intalio and others offer BPM systems. The key to success with BPM technology is to ensure that it supports and enables business processes rather than constraining them to fit technology.

Don’t Forget Process

With all the aforementioned functionality built in, BPM systems are indeed wonderful tools for process automation. In fact it can be tempting to focus too much on the systems piece of BPM instead of the “process management” piece. But one thing that seasoned process owners have learned over the years is that “you can’t just slam in technology.”

CRM is the poster child for this and it holds true for any technology, especially BPM systems. To achieve business benefits, you’ll have to commit equally to ongoing process improvements and technology investments to achieve and maintain process excellence. BPM is neither a one-time project nor a slam-dunk technology.

Most company leaders recognize that process excellence is a competitive differentiator that materially affects costs, customer satisfaction, agility and, ultimately, profitability. Companies like FedEx and Amazon have proven that. BPM systems support that premise by enabling process owners to actively manage processes with respect to both design and execution on an ongoing basis.

Yet the mission of attaining excellent business processes is itself an ongoing process requiring specific competencies that oftentimes companies do not possess internally. These include process design, measurement design, staff modeling, critical analysis, requirements development, system selection and change management, among others. If these aren’t among your strengths, seek outside expertise to help you navigate the BPM waters.

Getting Started

Where do you start with BPM? Every situation is different, but I’d suggest starting with your costliest and messiest processes. That may sound counter-intuitive and risky, but these are where you will get the most ROI and big boosts in key measures such as unit cost, customer satisfaction and cycle time. Such processes are of course the most difficult to redesign and automate. Don’t let that deter you.

A well-designed BPM project anticipates this and includes joint design workshops, small pilots, and detailed implementation plans that mitigate risk and manage process and technology changes. You probably have a good target for BPM: An ugly business process that has too much manual intervention, has chronic quality problems, requires re-typing of data, takes too long and is supported by two or three legacy systems that aren’t well integrated. Sound familiar?

A BPM initiative aimed at that ugly process will establish the working environment and technology platform to redesign the process, eliminate the retyping, tie together the systems and ratchet up the automation to minimize the manual intervention. Once you have achieved success with one process, you can start to address other processes while leveraging the experience and the data and role definitions you developed for the first one.