Business Process Management: The Trick is in the End-To-End

Gartner is predicting an updraft of interest in BPM this year, as businesses hunker down in an attempt to improve efficiencies and save dollars.  While the technology is improving and evolving to enable processes to be mapped and redesigned, as needed, one central requirement for achieving success in creating a good process shouldn’t be forgotten.  And that’s the fact that people are at the center of any process, and without their support, no matter what kind fancy technology IT dreams up, it just won’t work.

Dick Lee, business process consultant and founder of High Yield Methods, said that “process design in variable environments requires very heavy right brain activity. It’s much more creative and conceptual than left-brain technical. It’s about understanding people, understanding how business functions interact with each other; and having the imagination to see how things could be different – and better.”

For business process success, buy-in and coordination is needed at both micro and macro levels in the organization.  Individuals need to understand and agree with how they can constructively contribute to the process and change their work habits to improve efficiency.  Management needs to guide process consistently from a top-level master blueprint.  But what happens far too often is that individuals rebel when confronted with requirements to change without understanding why, and processes are created with a departmental or group focus and are not consistent across the organization.

Dr Kiran Garimella, Vice President for BPM Solutions at Software AG, said that “process design in variable environments requires very heavy right brain activity. It’s much more creative and conceptual than left-brain technical. It’s about understanding people, understanding how business functions interact with each other.  Functional managers only have incentives to improve the process within the particular office or department they are in charge off, with no incentive to look at end-to-end process improvement; and this is the same for both public and private sectors and having the imagination to see how things could be different – and better.”

“Business process management (BPM) is usually defined as end-to-end process and involving cross-functional collaborations – something that technology alone cannot achieve,” Dr Garimella says.