BPM’s Value Trails

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. 
Lao Tzu quote

Last month we’ve got quite positive feedback about discussing BPM’s Rocky Road, to summarize BPM from the definition to confusion, from pitfall to best practice, from today’s reality into future’s perception.

 Last generation’s BPM more focus on document-centric process, application & IT integration, or structured human activities. From BPM perspective, the last decade, it’s more about “learning curve”, with some confusion and progression, passed some pain points and tipping points, walked through the rocky road and bumpy ride, as one of the prestigious BPM expert described: today’s BPM is a bit blind, deaf and dump. 

Statistically fewer than 40% of major improvement projects  typically achieve their stated goals, and the sustainability of these gains is even more questionable.

What is the BPM’s mission journey for the next decade?

No matter social BPM, mobile BPM, cloud BPM., etc, we believe the next generation of BPM should be more agile and wiser, we need transform BPM into a holistic management discipline that takes an integrated approach to the organization and its business as a whole, going beyond the obvious, and making bigger P&L impact. Hopefully it takes some happier trails and climbs up to the harvest hill.

Trail #1: Process to Delight Customers

Why: Can BPM help organization to explore Blue Ocean strategy—to develop innovative product/service with long tail and attractive customer value proposition?

Trail #2: Process to Enchant Employees

Why: Can BPM enhance creativity and employee engagement, framework for culture change & innovation, create dynamic link between people, strategy & operation?

Trail#3: Process to Manage Business Decision

Why:  Can BPM help every layer of organization to make rational judgment and decision via well crafted process, embed customer/operational data, to framework the risk intelligent, more resilient organization with imaginable growth?

HOW: In today’ constantly changing, digital & global era, the advantage of BPM lies in the requirement of the dynamics or flexibility in process orchestration, to build the conversation centric, business capability; and make radical improvement to mission-critical, cross-functional process.
The best practices include:

1. Recognize the process pain point, customer’s touch point and operational P&L point;

2.  Base on above “point” of view, pick a pilot, not too big, but with strategic value and    

      Priority

3. Build up the process mindset, encourage analytic, but also non-linear &out-of-box   

    thinking, with holistic view.

4. The dynamic team and roles include BPM champion, process owner, executive sponsor, analyst, architect, project manager., etc.

5. Roadmap, BPMS, communication, governance and metrics

6. Center of Excellence: to share resource, from pilot to parade;

Besides pitfalls list here, also pay more attention to:

Seven Sins of Organizational Measurement:

1. Vanity. This sin uses measures devised solely to make managers look good.

2. Provincialism. This one lets departmental boundaries dictate perform­ance measures.

3. Narcissism. It’s widespread: measuring from your own point of view instead of the customer’s.

4. Laziness. You assume you know what’s important to measure.

5. Pettiness. You measure only a small portion of what matters because you’re fixated on details.

6. Inanity. Stupid consequences flow from measuring the wrong thing. An irresistible example: To avoid waste, a fast-food chain told employees not to cook chicken until it was ordered, turning the fast-food chain into a slow-food chain.

7. Frivolity. This happens when leaders don’t take metrics seriously.