My highlight from this week’s Inspiring Performance conference at the British Film Institute on London's South Bank?
Not the awesome new video from Nestlé; not even Carphone Warehouse's inspiring passion for process excellence; but Rick Boughton from Serco on becoming an intelligent customer.
Rick described how Serco’s BPM strategy - like Chevron, Nestlé and other global leaders – is to synchronise the operational view of its business processes (managed in Nimbus Control) with the IT view (managed in SAP Solution Manager).
So there are multiple views of one reality - every stakeholder gets what they need from one single source of truth. But it’s far far more than that.
Rick described how the use of Control’s intuitive graphical interface resulted in a “phenomenal business response and ownership” that is transforming the Business:IT relationship.
A first workshop with stakeholders on an SAP HR project was in violent agreement by lunchtime of the first day. What had, in earlier programs, been a painful and protracted negotiation became a properly collaborative discussion. Even better, immediately after the workshop, the stakeholders could sign off electronically the exact process diagrams that they had helped create; and these same process diagrams would then form the basis for the storyboards that would be used for testing and training. In Rick’s words:
“We are placing process at the heart of the implementation project lifecycle.”
Serco’s carefully structured and synchronised approach is maximising re-use and leading to a “phenomenal reduction of effort required” to advance the business.
It also enables Serco to have a far more productive relationship with its suppliers:
“We are a far more intelligent client. We are able to present a Serco way of working that is driving our ERP implementations, and avoid being driven by our SI partners.”
Rick pointed out that smart SIs realise that while they may get less work from Serco, it’s at reduced risk for them (because their client knows what they are doing) and genuinely high value for the client – so it’s win-win.
Just one among many great presentations – but this was surely a sign of where we are heading and the new normal.
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