Sourcing Shangri-La

Future of BPM? We're In Mesopotamia 3000BC

Adam Deane has set off a discussion on his blog on BPM Visions Of The Future.

My own view is that we are witnessing a revolution in process thinking.  It's similar to the transformation that took place around 3000BC when humankind moved from hieroglyphs to phonetic writing.  It is that breakthrough which makes possible this blog - and poetry and tax returns.

That transformation - the adoption of phonetic writing - too was driven by business needs.  The emerging societies of that time needed governance. Writing was simply the most efficient way to record and report, to establish the bureaucracy upon which control depended.

It was also a global transformation.  Writing seems to have emerged independently in Egypt, China and Central America - but the best evidence we have today comes from Mesopotomia, simply because they used baked clay tablets, which have lasted far better than paper or bamboo. This tablet from Mesopotamia, from the British Museum collection, records the allocation of rations to workers (in the form of beer, an early local currency).

Process is undergoing a parallel transformation. Until recently, process has been about technical symbols, focussed on automation, and intended to be used only by a few.

In the future, process will surely be the universal business language. But it will be holistic, not just focussed on systems. It will be integrated, not just process fragments stored in a common repository. And it will be in the language of the business, so that everyone can understand it - and get involved in continuously improving it.

In short, process will become a polite term. Folks with MBAs won't feel embarrassed to use it. We'll no longer have two terms - process and value chain  -for the same thing.  And it will be inclusive, stimulating a richer and ongoing collaborative dialog: the CIO will sit down with the business user.

And the essential enterprise enabler for all this - the 21st century equivalent of the bureacracy perhaps - will be the process management platform:

... it will integrate process with documents, KPI metrics, risk and controls, quality and compliance,  training and task support.  

... it will provide the collaborative framework and governance that enables process stakeholders, and Lean and Six Sigma teams, to drive performance improvement.

... and it will deliver all this to the desktops and smartphones of people doing real work - in the form of Storyboards and a personalized intelligent operations manual. 

Which is why I count myself thankful to work in such an exciting area.  Phonetic writing gave rise to enormous creativity. You couldn't be reading that blockbuster on your Kindle without it.  As enterprises become more virtual, more outsourced, more socially responsible, more complex and with ever more global supply chains, we will need ever more creativity in the workplace.  And business process management will be a crucial enabler. 

This post inspired by A History Of The World In 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor. Highly recommended (an ideal Christmas present, if you can bear to let it go)

PS you don't have to wait! First editions of the process management platform of the future are available here ;-)

Related Posts

02 Nov 2011    Toxic Processes: Social, Cloud, Agility - And Risk

10 Oct 2011    The BPM Story Line: Tragedy or Comedy?

11 Aug 2011    Why Management 2.0 Will Be Built Upon BPM

Toxic Processes: Social, Cloud, Agility - and Risk

There's a looming crisis that's being driven by the headlong rush into Cloud, Social  and Big Data in pursuit of the Agility agenda. Like the financial crisis, the signs are clearly evident well ahead of the crash.  And just like every actor in that sorry tale was acting rationally within the confines of their silo, so too this time everyone's busy.

At the heart of the financial crash was the accumulation, over many years, of  toxic assets purchased in vast quantities by over-leveraged banks. The risks were not clearly visible or understood.

On the smaller scale, many global enterprises are busy working on their own sub-prime crisis. They are relying on toxic processes. As a result, their risks are not clearly visible or understood.    

Organizations are rapidly building a future that is far more virtual, where an empowered workforce manages service delivery operations that are far more complex, fast-paced, and largely outsourced.

Cloud promises the frictionless enterprise.

Social promises employee engagement and the capability to turn on a sixpence.

Sourcing and supply chain innovation promises low costs and rapid response.

Within each program silo - Cloud, Social, Sourcing - it makes perfect sense. It's the agility that CEOs are looking for. But this new level of agility comes with new levels of risk. Two examples:

The complexity of existing supply chains  makes them vulnerable. Car production was halted in several factories around the world when the Japanese tsunami struck the remote Tohoku region: it turns out that the Renesas plant there produces 40% of the world's microcontrollers. Building resilient global supply chains will require even more complexity. The increasing adoption of outsourced services from multiple suppliers - the growing virtualization of the enterprise - will exacerbate this complexity, and therefore the vulnerability.  

In customer relationship management, IBM's Global CMO Study, out this week, shows CMOs living in a world of high complexity and unpredictable interdependencies. It calls out customer intimacy as a strategic goal for CMOs. But it's to be delivered as rapid response in a world of real-time social media by empowered employees - many of them working for outsourcing partners - dealing with empowered customers, and by complex, rapidly-changing, business rules applied to Big Data.  So much higher levels of complexity and therefore vulnerability.

It's easy to get carried away with the potential benefits in Cloud and Social (and Big Data). But the execution risks are correspondingly high - and largely overlooked. In complex, fast-paced and global organizations, increasing agility correlates with increasing risk. 

Business process management is unglamorous next to Cloud, Social, Big Data and Agility.  But a BPM platform is the essential foundation for success.  The first step in mitigating risk is transparency. (It's also the key to unlocking potential innovation as well, of course).   

Pause please while I step up to my soapbox again. The BPM platform that can leverage Cloud, Social, Big Data fully, while properly managing risk, must have three fundamentals:

Holistic perspective. This means visibility of the enterprise that is complete, integrated, rigorous and realtime.  Transparency here is like the capability to run a three-dimensional CT Scan for the enterprise at any time.

Effective collaboration. That means a common language, across the internal functional silos and the extended enterprise. The only plausible language is end-to-end process - but, and this is critical, in the language of the business, not IT-speak, to ensure shared understanding.  It also requires a governance framework that is robust but practical, otherwise collaborative innovation will stall, or undermine risk management.

Ubiquity. It must connect strategy directly with operational reality across the enterprise. There's a compliance gap if the enterprise process model is simply an abstract managed by IT or the Quality function. It has to support real people in getting real work done.  So it needs to be personalized, and deployed to desktops and mobile devices as easy-to-consume process content.  This ensures the real-world integrity of the process model. It also engages the workforce and so channels Social to where it's most productive: fostering continuous improvement within the process context.      

Some organizations recognize these risks - we are seeing new levels of interest in a BPM platform that can deliver this capability - but most don't yet. Some put their faith in complete and 'perfect' IT process models - but they focus only on what's automated, and are understood only by a handful of people. Most organizations rely on incomplete, duplicated and overlapping process fragments in a variety of tools and formats, and with no governance beyond email.  Either way, IT models or myriad fragments, these are toxic processes.

If we continue our current trajectory, Gartner's prediction earlier this year that ten global companies will be toppled within three years by basic process defects looks safe.

Related Posts

31 Oct 2011    The Socially Optimized Business - And Process

30 Sep 2011    Optimize 15,000 Business Controls? No Problem

 

The Socially Optimized Business - And Process

I love the positive energy and openness of the Dachis Group and the Social Business Council - their one page graphic summarising Attributes of a Socially Optimized Business can be downloaded here - so I don't want to be picky.  But there's a flaw in their manifesto - at least, as I understand it - that may seem nerdy but is, I think, actually quite crucial.

I've huge sympathy for the call for a Renaissance in business:

"After decades of mechanistic, dehumanizing, process-oriented management dogma, progressive organizations are waking up to the disturbing truth that they’ve squeezed all the creativity out of their business. When companies embrace organic, passionate, socially-savvy initiatives, they blossom. Who benefits? Everyone."

What worries me is the way we seem to be trashing 'process-orientation'. 

Agreed, process has for too long been articulated in the form of technical gobbledegook. And it's rarely exciting. 

But - if we express process simply and holistically, so that people across the socially optimized enterprise can understand it, then we have a universal language that can get everyone talking. 

And if we support it with an enabling process management platform, then we have:

connected the creativity with how work gets done.  So we ensure that social business is not an ivory tower, it's about engaging with everyone's ideas

the ideal framework for Lean, Six Sigma and other process improvement programs - and for sustainable continuous improvement

the governance framework that ensures collaboration will be effective, across all the functional silos and the increasingly virtual extended enterprise  (it also allows the Chief Risk Officer to sleep at night). 

Great ideas -please sign me up for the Renaissance. But let's see process as part of the solution and so make it practical.

Related Posts 

30 Sep 2011    Optimize 15,000 Business Controls? No Problem

20 Sep 2011    BPM - The Foundation For Operational Excellence

 

How Not To Implement Shared Services

A shared services center to deliver HR, finance, procurement, IT and other services for the UK's seven Research Councils. It seemed like a Good Idea when it was announced in 2006. 

Five years on, a review by the UK's National Audit Office (NAO) makes gloomy reading. Overspent £130m against a budget of £79m, and projected savings significantly less than expected. 

How did it happen? The NAO report highlights three fundamental flaws:

Lack of Clarity

"A key factor contributing to escalating costs was the early lack of clarity about how the service would operate. An outline design, known as a target operating model, was not agreed until August 2008, nearly a year after implementation had begun, but it was incomplete and lacked detail. Some elements of design were still ongoing during transition and system launch."

Confused Governance

"Early governance structures were complex. Reviews commissioned at various points during the project showed that responsibilities and accountabilities needed clarification."

Poor Management of Outsourcer

"A contract with Fujitsu to design and build the systems and ICT was "poorly managed".  It was eventually terminated at an additional cost of £13m."

Each of which could, of course, have been avoided, or at the very least mitigated, by the adoption of an appropriate process management platform.

No surprise that developing process maturity is an NAO theme - and runs through the NAO's recommendations in this case: to harmonise processes further, to strengthen end-to-end process management, and to embed continuous improvement.

Hear stories like this one, and other shockers in the Process Hall of Shame, and it's bewildering how organizations can still be in denial about the need for a process management platform at the heart of any shared services project.  As though it was a 'nice-to-have'.

Whereas actually it's the key to clarity at every level; to effective collaboration within a robust governance framework; to IT alignment; to drive process harmonization; to controlling a multisourced environment; to making life easier for the SSC workforce; and to enabling a culture of continuous improvement.

Related Posts

07 Oct 2011    Accenture: What's Holding Back Shared Services

19 May 2011    Service Integration and Process: In Six Minutes

 

Deloitte Shared Services Insights: Could Do Better

Accenture's report earlier this month did a good job in advancing the debate about shared services. By comparison, Deloitte's latest shared services insights disappoint. It's a commendable report - but it kind of misses the point.

Overlook the waffle and the sloppy thinking: Accenture's report does nail the essential truth - that a service management framework is vital for sustainable success:

There needs to be a “system around the system” that includes the people, discipline in procedures, communications, service expectations, performance measurement and key cross-functional processes, such as continuous improvement and client relationship management. It’s this broader shared services system around the system— which Accenture calls the service management framework—that sets shared services organizations that have achieved high performance apart from those with a sub-optimized centralized service delivery model. The service management framework is the keystone...

I've argued elsewhere that Accenture needs to go further and recognize that the service management framework for shared services, in its best developed and most valuable form, is the business process management platform at the heart of the enterprise. 

But, that qualification aside, the idea of the service management framework is a crucial advance and deserves to be adopted.   It provides the context by which we can understand that Deloitte's latest list of worthy insights - on the importance of change management, IT alignment, governance and enhanced controls - are in fact all inter-related.  And jointly soluble, once we frame this correctly. 

Related Posts

13 Oct 2011    Placing A Big Bet On Global Shared Services

07 Oct 2011    Accenture: What's Holding Back Shared Services

 

 

Continuous Improvement - Made Easy

Naturally, I would say that Emitra Nelson from Cameron stole the show on Day 1 of the Summit for Finance Leaders in Dallas today (you can hear her story on a SharedServicesLink webinar on 18 October - more details here).

But if I couldn't vote for Emitra, on the grounds that hers is a Nimbus success story, my choice for the most thought-provoking presentation would be Andrew Simpson, Head of Business Services in America for BP, whose case I summarised in a doodle in my notes as this:

 
(my maths is shaky, so I'm hoping this means what I was thinking!)

Andrew defined Continuous Improvement (let's call it CI) as 'operational excellence through process improvements' , or, more informally, as 'stopping business insanity'. He listed the 20 most common excuses he's heard about why CI can't be done, the funniest being the manager who claimed that it would be 'against corporate policy'.

He then proceeded to show exactly how he has implemented CI, and went on to make a totally convincing case that, in the long run, 'background' CI can be even more valuable than high-profile transformation programs.  And a CI culture, he argued, will also make any major transformation program more likely to succeed: people are engaged and energised by change, not simply resistant.  In shared services terms,  CI is 'the critical success factor for any SSO that wants to stay relevant'.  

What's really interesting is how few of the organizations represented in the audience have a serious CI program.  There's lip service but little commitment. How can that possibly be? At the end of the day, CI is pretty straightforward. 

Maybe the clue lies in a video Andrew used in his presentation to illustrate resistance to change (can't find it on YouTube, but it was like this).  The hamster keeps getting on the wheel, spinning faster and faster until it's out of control and finally gets flung out into the cage - then does it again, and again and again... 

Maybe the hamster enjoys the adrenalin rush - just like the business enjoys the thrill of firefighting.   And when, after a while, the hamster is punchdrunk with concussion and unable to think clearly, well that's like the business getting so used to living in firefighting mode that it too can no longer see clearly - and so resists the CI initiative that is ultimately its way forward.

Finally, a great endorsement for CI: people from BP's Business Services unit are sought out by the rest of the business.  It's career-enhancing because it has a carefully thought-through and well-executed CI program that encourages people to bring their brains to work. It breaks out, he noted, of the analysis paralysis of left brain thinking, the belief that life is a machine and we just need to understand how the cogs fit together to get it to work perfectly.  It recognizes the special and unique value that diverse perspectives, working intelligently together, can create.

There was a ton of other good stuff too of course.  More on that later in the week, I hope.

Related Posts

07 Oct 2011    Accenture: What's Holding Back Shared Services

20 Sep 2011    BPM: The Foundation For Operational Excellence

 

Accenture: What's Holding Back Shared Services

Hats off to Accenture for bringing some reality and insights to the debate about what's holding back Shared Services. 

Everybody's doing shared services, everybody thinks it's strategic, yadda yadda yadda. The reality though is often disappointment and missed business cases.  Sustainable success in shared services is still the exception.

The Deloitte Shared Services survey, published in April, highlighted some lessons learned: the importance of governance, a collaborative framework, transparency and change management.   

Governance was also a theme running through the PwC/HfS report on Global Business Services, published in July: it has to be 'ongoing', 'well-integrated, consistent and rigorous' and not just another tool for vendor management.  

Those were useful contributions.  But Accenture's report this week Trends in Shared Services: Unlocking The Full Potential brings a new focus.  It spells out what the leaders are doing, and how they are succeeding. And process excellence is front and center.

Noting how one leader in shared services uses automation and metrics and process improvement specialists, it continues:  

"...while other elements are certainly in place - C-level support, comprehensive change management and a relentless focus on value - it is the organization's continued focus on process excellence that stands out ."

I share the report's enthusiasm that shared services will mature to become ubiquitous. And that we are witnessing the emergence of "a long-envisioned" model of integrated business services.  I agree too that 'managing multisourcing consistently' is a huge challenge for most organizations. And I'm delighted that Accenture highlights the vital need for a service management framework.   

But I have one quibble. Because even Accenture hasn't quite joined up the dots.

What is it, ultimately, that enables process excellence, that provides the collaborative framework for change management, that ensures transparency and IT alignment, that supports Lean and other continuous improvement programs, that provides the governance framework for the effective management of outsourcers, and that allows cloud and social media to be most effectively leveraged?  It's a business process management platform. 

It's not a panacea. It can seem a bit boring. It's an unspectacular answer when your SSC is 'in a complete mess'. But everything points to the business process management platform as the foundation for success in shared services.  It underpins process excellence. It's what enables the service management framework.  And it's the only way to optimize the management of process variants, which, the report notes, is the real problem in process standardization. 

What is the business process management platform that can do all this? I've defined it elsewhere as a platform that uses the universal language of end-to-end business process to enable four capabilities.  The only way I'd improve on that definition now, especially in the light of the Shared Services workshop in London last week, would be to re-iterate the importance of adoption.  If our brilliant process management models don't engage process stakeholders, and help real people to get real work done and to contribute to improving things , then we're missing the biggest trick of all.    

Related Posts

03 Oct 2011    Shared Services at IP11: Your Top Issues

19 May 2011    Service Integration and Process: In Six Minutes

  

After Nimbus IP11, The Sky's The Limit

 
It seemed entirely appropriate that an extraordinary first day’s program at Nimbus IP11 closed out this evening with a stunning set from the amazing a cappella vocal group Naturally 7.

It was a day of superlatives. I lost count of the number of people, whom I’d never met before, saying, in the breaks: ’This is amazing!’. 

As one delegate put it, the Nimbus plane took off some time ago, lifted high by client enthusiasm.  And the video message from TIBCO founder and CEO, Vivek Ranadivé, who was keynoting at TUCON in Las Vegas today, confirmed that Nimbus now has an extra large powered-by-TIBCO jet engine strapped under each wing.

As ever, it was Nimbus customers who fizzed with energy. And, as usual, their candor was remarkable: this was real knowledge-sharing among pioneers in an approach to enterprise business process management that will one day be business-as-usual.

My own highlights from the stage, picked out from a packed program, would be...

Tim Leach from Northrop Grumman, on the challenge of bringing together the insights of 23k people (many of them actually rocket scientists, he laughingly pointed out) and aligning them in the cause of continuous improvement. If Northrop Grumman can assemble all the parts for the most advanced aerospace equipment, and keep them aligned so the plane can fly, then why is it such a challenge to get people aligned and flying in formation?  How could it be that having 7k people trained in Six Sigma and Lean was yielding so little in terms of sustainable cost reductions and service improvement? The answer: bring their work together into a single process repository, within a single process architecture, and connect that with how people get real work done. “Our failure”, he said,”was that we tried to build it ourselves. After 18 months we found Nimbus, and that was an immediate 85% of the solution.”

Richard Miller from Marathon Oil, manager of a platform in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea that cost $3bn to build, costs $160m to operate every year – and that pumps $1.6m of oil and gas per day, when everything is working properly. After a Nimbus Control implementation that has successfully enabled a major in-sourcing exercise, and a re-implementation of SAP: "The thing I notice", he said,"is that things are becoming much more predictable. Not just in planning work and the delivery of materials, but right across the business."   

Darren Anderson, Principal Solution Architect for Sony, based in Tokyo, steering Sony's global SAP program (which is his 32nd major SAP implementation), and striving to ensure that process is at its heart. "We had this realization - I knew this but could never vocalize it - that end-to-end process is what we have to focus on." That realization had enabled Sony's European business to reduce the timeline for delivery of an SAP program from two years to just one. "The critical success factor was Nimbus: working around one process. I want the business to be thinking about how to improve the process, not have to think about changes to SAP. Nimbus Control has the potential to accelerate our global program, and to help us win in the marketplace by being One Sony."  

Gregory Reynolds, Head of the BPM Center of Excellence at Nestlé, described as a 'no-brainer' the final decision, after an exhaustive evaluation, to adopt Nimbus Control as Nestlé's global BPM platform. "There's almost unlimited potential", he said,"because continuous improvement is baked into our culture." 

Anne Salétes from Novartis on how Nimbus Control is enabling process improvement in the most challenging regulatory environment by providing end-to-end visibility. "We are all talking about - and challenging - the same perspective on our clinical operations processes. Our people working in clinical trials are, naturally, very precise.  What we are doing is helping them to see the big picture as well. So we can see how we can improve - and show our regulators that we are efficient and managing the risks." 

The funniest moment, for me at least: Richard Parker, co-Founder of Nimbus, talking about the company's evolution within the SAP landscape, and noting that: "We're not just going around helping the victims of SAP implementations any more."  (Images of ambulance-chasing to get to the scene of an implementation and help to restore the vitals of the enterprise fast...)

But I can't neglect to mention the Guide Dogs video, which was hugely inspiring. I happened to meet a delegate from the conference on the train on the way home (as I wrote this - she recognised my conference badge!) - and it was the Guide Dogs, and Naturally 7, that she wanted to talk about.    

Related Posts

11 Aug 2011    Why Management 2.0 Will Be Built Upon BPM

02 Aug 2011    BPM: The Invisible Gorilla

 

BPM - The Foundation For Operational Excellence

Looking in on rehearsal presentations for Inspiring Performance 2011 next week, it's interesting to see how operational excellence is coming to the fore - and how BPM is central to it. 

Agreed, operational excellence sounds worthy but boring (though execs at UBS might be wishing that they'd paid it more attention).

Agreed too that, while it's a widely used term, there's only a loose consensus on what operational excellence actually means (even the Wikipedia entry includes an appeal for help).

But, however it's defined, or branded within the organization, it's an unqualified good.  Every COO wants it. What's less obvious to many organizations though is how operational excellence is directly linked with Business Process Management.

BPM in its IT incarnation - let's call it 'micro-BPM' - is focussed on automation.  But BPM in its wider sense - 'macro-BPM' - is about operational excellence.  And, in global organizations across every sector, a macro-BPM platform is emerging the essential foundation for operational excellence. 

Talking with clients and colleagues since our first attempt, back in January, to define how you do operational excellence in practice, we've converged on four closely-related capabilities: 

To achieve operational excellence, the enterprise needs the capability...

to understand the whole.  To maintain a complete, holistic and integrated model of the business - including what's automated and what's not, what's outsourced and what's in-house.

to flawlessly execute strategy as end-to-end operational processes. To maintain two-way line of sight between strategy and operating reality.

to continually re-optimize performance by integrating metrics and analytics with end-to-end operational processes and providing the framework for the entire enterprise to collaborate on continuous improvement.

to manage risks, controls, quality and compliance together, within one enterprise-wide and real-time governance framework.

Cue the enterprise-wide BPM platform: the essential enabler for all of these capabilities, and therefore for operational excellence. More on this, after the conference...

Related Posts

07 Sep 2011    The Social Enterprise: Don't All Speak At Once

11 Aug 2011    Why Management 2.0 Will Be Built Upon BPM

 

What's A Good Process Tool?

'Can anyone recommend a good tool for process mapping and modelling?'

The latest LinkedIn discussion on process tools set me thinking. 

The answer of course is that it all depends.  What's a good car? It might be a seven-seater SUV or a Ferrari or a Smart Car - it all depends on what you need.

Here's my way of looking at it. It's not scientific and can't pretend to be unbiased. It's jottings over a cup of tea, and yes it probably is inspired by a Domino's menu. 

Ten things that you might want in a process tool, and what they would lead you to choose.

 
  
 Related Posts

11 Aug 2011    Why Management 2.0 Will Be Built Upon BPM

14 Jul 2010    All Process Modelling Tools Are NOT Equal

 

Our Real-Time Interconnected Future

In The Interconnectedness Of Things, my colleague Rob Speck uses an M&A example to illustrate the value of end-to-end business process as the best framework for clarity in an increasingly complex world.

When we revisited our core value proposition recently, our clients' appetite for simplicity really became apparent.  It's what has led us to describe Nimbus Control as an 'integrated management platform' for the enterprise.  Even more boldly, as the enterprise platform for operational excellence.

Enterprise 2.0 needs its people to collaborate on improvement and innovation like never before, and at pace.

It needs collaboration across the silos within the enterprise, and often outside the enterprise, across a complex and dynamic web of activities delivered by outsourcing providers. Above all, it needs effective collaboration across the functional boundaries between operations, IT and compliance.

So simplicity has become crucial. But it's at many levels.

Visibility of end-to-end business processes, not just what's automated, graphically and in the language of the business - is just the start.  Many organizations have plausible end-to-end views.  Usually in Visio and on the wall of a proud process owner.  It's when they are integrated within an enterprise process framework that the benefits really start. Interconnectedness is the key.

But it has to be a multi-layered process framework, managing meta data at every level. It has to blend processes with metrics, systems, compliance, risks and controls. Again, interconnectedness is the key. (London Underground maps offer a parallel). 

And it has to be a real-time enterprise process platform. All this would be just an interesting snapshot without robust governance because everything is constantly changing.

But the hardest part of all is to win hearts and minds.  It has to be intuitive and appealing.  Like the Unix computer so beautifully sold and loved as the iPhone, this integrated management platform for the enterprise has to be seen as easy, authoritative and indispensable. As an intelligent operations manual built around me.

No-one is there yet - this is a journey (come meet some fellow travellers at Inspiring Performance 2011 later this month). But I'm optimistic.  It's beginning to become clear how Enterprise 2.0 fits together and how BPM will be its essential underpinning.

Related Posts

26 April 2011    Process as Science and Art

19 Nov 2010    Process and the Shadow Banking System

 more on Cracking Complexity.

The Social Enterprise: Don't All Speak At Once

Larry Dignan at ZDNet nails it in describing the looming 'social sprawl' in A Few Caveats Ahead of Utopia, his take on Dreamforce 2011:

"Every software vendor has some social hook. Let’s say every IT buyer goes whole hog with the social stuff. Well guess what? Now you have HR social features. CRM social. Business execution social. It’s a social fest. Meanwhile, employees are still using Twitter and Facebook. If social sprawl isn’t an issue today, it will be tomorrow. This emerging issue can go two ways for Salesforce. IT buyers can see Salesforce as the great social enterprise consolidator. Or they can close their ears. At this point, it may just be a jump ball."

He's right about the emerging issue of social sprawl. But I think it has a different resolution. It's not a jump ball between Salesforce Chatter and an alternative of a cacophany of voices. There's a rapidly emerging alternative - a process-based paradigm. And the best example may be the convergence of Tibbr with Nimbus Control, which analysts seem to have underplayed in commentary on Tibco's acquisition of Nimbus Partners.

Diversity in our interactions online is natural, just like in the everyday physical world: as Tom Cortese has argued, focussed and niche social networks will always have a place. But the collaboration and dialog that is at at the core of the social enterprise needs structure if it is going to be purposeful.  Especially because, while we may kid ourselves otherwise, the evidence is that actually we're not very good at multi-tasking. 

So what's the context and framework most likely to encourage effective collaboration in the social enterprise? It has to be the processes of the business.  What else is the social enterprise seeking to continually improve and optimize?  Ergo a business process management platform sits at the heart of social enterprise.

After seeing his social baptism ceremony last week, I'm coming over all funny. So, to channel the extraordinary Marc Benioff for a moment: Beware The False BPM Platform!

Is there a single integrated process architecture for the enterprise, with clear line of sight between strategy and operations?  Is there visibility of end-to-end processes, not just what's automated, and across outsourced activities too - and all in the language of the business, not IT-speak? 

No? Then it's a false BPM platform!

Are real-time performance metrics, business controls, compliance and quality, integrated with the end-to-end processes to create the operating system for the enterprise? Does it ensure that Lean and Six Sigma projects are delivering sustainable benefits?  

No? Then it's a false BPM platform!

Does it help people get real work done? Is it deployed to every desktop and mobile device as a personalised intelligent operations manual? Is it easy for every person and process stakeholder - including especially the IT community - to collaborate every day on operational excellence?  

No - then it's a false BPM platform!

Here endeth the diatribe. ;-) 

Related Posts

11 Aug 2011    Why Management 2.0 Will Be Built Upon BPM

07 Feb 2011    Productivity, Well-Being and Process

  

Solving The Riddle Of Sustainable Improvement

In a podcast following his HBR Blog How To Sustain Front Line Process Improvement Activities, Brad Power describes the riddle he's trying to solve.

For improvement to be sustainable, it has to be within the DNA of the organization.  It has to create a culture capable of surviving a change of CEO. 

After researching 50 case histories, and Toyota aside, Brad concludes that there are very few organizations with this kind of cultural depth:

 "How do we embed continuous improvement as an ongoing activity across the enterprise? That's the riddle we're trying to solve here."

Looking at leaders in continuous improvement, he identifies characteristics that they tend to have in common, components of an 'architecture for sustainable improvement in an organization':

Process visibility: the ability to 'see' end-to-end processes - singly and in the wider context, and in an intuitive way that everyone understands (esp outside of manufacturing, since most processes are not tangible)

Process ownership: accountability for improvement of end-to-end processes (across the extended enterprise, including activities outsourced or in shared services)

Strategic alignment: line of sight between strategy and front line operational improvement activities

Performance metrics:  KPIs embedded within processes to provide immediate feedback on performance, and the impact of improvement activities. 

When Brad and I have swapped perspectives on this before, I woffled a bit. I couldn't put my finger on what now seems totally clear, and reinforced by real world evidence: that the future lies in a culture of operational excellence that is enabled and sustained by an integrated process management platform at the heart of the business.

This integrated management platform has to use the universal language of end-to-end business process. It has to integrate process with real-time metrics, risks and controls, compliance and quality management - all within one governance framework. It has to be 'live' - deploying process to desktops and mobile devices as an intuitive and personalized operations manual.  And it has to provide the social collaboration framework that gets people working together effectively.  

No platform can solve the riddle completely. Talent management, executive leadership, behavioral incentives to break down political barriers to change - these will always be essential ingredients for sustainable excellence.  But an integrated process management platform is emerging as the essential enterprise infrastructure to underpin a culture of sustainable improvement.

Join us at Inspiring Performance 2011 in London later this month to hear case studies on these themes from Nimbus clients such as Novartis, Northern Trust, Marathon Oil, Northrop Grumman and Royal Bank of Canada.  It's one of the world's largest business performance improvement and process management events - and it's free.

 Related Posts

17 Aug 2011    Analytics and BI: The Foundation For Success

11 Aug 2011    Why Management 2.0 Will Be Built Upon BPM

 

The Root Cause Of IT Failures

Next month's HBR has new evidence on the colossal cost of IT failures. It's the largest global study ever of IT change initiatives. And it's not optimistic:

"It will be no surprise if a large, established company fails in the coming years because of an out-of-control IT project. In fact, the data suggest that one or more will."

The study conclusions seem sensible - smaller projects, better risk assessment - but they don't get anywhere near the root cause.  

For a start, even if IT projects were smaller and risks were better managed, there is the bigger problem of 'projectification' - the challenge of managing multiple projects within organizations that are complex, fast-changing and increasingly virtual. 

The HBR report includes data on 'projectification':

61% of managers reported major conflicts between project and line organizations

34% of companies undertook projects that were not aligned with corporate strategy

32% of companies performed redundant work because of unharmonized projects.

All of which points to the underlying issue, the root cause of most IT failures: communication.  More specifically, the lack of a framework for effective collaboration that ensures joined-up thinking across the enterprise. 

This is absolutely not breaking news - Michael Krigsman and others have been hammering on about this for years. But it's still true.

The answer, as leaders such as Cameron have realized, has to be a collaborative framework, with a robust governance wrapper, that sits at the heart of the business. 

It has to use the universal language of end-to-end business process.  It has to be holistic, not just about what's automated.  It has to be integrated, combining process with analytics, risks and controls, documents, quality and compliance. It has to offer different stakeholder perspectives of one process reality, especially to align IT with the business. And it has to support people doing real work, and engage them in continuous improvement.

Implementing a platform of this kind  is not necessarily easy.  Conceptually it's neat and obvious. And yet implementation often meets resistance beyond the normal inertia.

Maybe that's because it's hard to shift a culture to embrace transparency and new levels of visibility and accountability.  But maybe there's an even deeper reason for clinging on to things as they are and rejecting the wider perspective. Projects - even big ones - are quite comfortable places to be. There's a seductive sense of certainty and control. 

We don't want to lose project control of course, but the future must surely lie in coordinating all projects within the wider enterprise perspective. It's the only way that major IT failures, that can cost $m as well as the end of many jobs, can be averted. And major business transformation failures, and major compliance failures, come to that.  

Why Your IT Project May Be Riskier Than You Think - Harvard Business Review, Sept 2011

Related Posts

11 Aug 2011    Why Management 2.0 Will Be Built Upon BPM

27 Jun 2011    IBM Global CIO Study 2010: BPM Slips Back

 

PwC and HfS on Global Business Services Success

Seven out of ten for PwC and HfS on their report: The Evolution of Global Business Services.

Credit where it's due: The report highlights governance as crucial, in a way that's not been done before.  And it's helpful too in setting out models and objectives for global business services. But it's silent on what is rapidly emerging as a fundamental for success.

Governance is a theme running through the report, and it's a mature understanding:

Governance has to be 'ongoing', not project or deal-related. Governance is not about another tool for the vendor management team.

Governance has to be 'well-integrated, consistent and rigorous' and process-oriented, capable of orchestrating change across complex service delivery environments with multiple and diverse stakeholders.

What's missing from the report is the learning that's emerging on how you do this. 

That learning, in a nutshell, is this: the tools which got us this far aren't sufficient to deliver this new world. 

Global business services initiatives are often bogged down, even paralysed, by the tools they are using. The result in many cases: 'a complete mess'.

Everything indicates, as I've noted before, that successful global services organizations will increasingly depend upon an integrated management platform that:

- provides line-of-sight between a target operating model and operational realities

- enables effective collaboration, especially between IT and the business, right across the  complex service delivery and supply chain of the extended exterprise

- embeds governance, compliance and controls within the operational processes

- delivers at the front line and engages the organization in continuous improvement.

This is not about the triumph of the process nerds.  It's about enabling the enterprise to manage effectively in an additional dimension: end-to-end process.   

Related Posts

11 Aug 2011    Why Management 2.0 Will Be Built Upon BPM

08 Aug 2011    Outsourcing Buyers vs Sellers: Swords Into Plowshares