The digital effect on the BPM lifecycle
Blog: Colin Crofts - Business Process Improvement
Business process management (BPM) in the digital age is a whole new deal. Not sure if this is just more techno-geek industry hype (TGIH) or an important reality to be embraced and reckoned with? Actually, it’s a hefty measure of both.
Business process management lifecycle
- Cloud availability and pricing models for BPM suites that make the technologies available to a much broader marketplace
- Visual design and collaboration tools, including integration with familiar end-user applications, e.g. Sharepoint, Visual Studio, etc.
- Separation of business rules from process logic flow, greatly simplifying changes when the business needs to change
- Event reporting, to notify administrators of critical event incidents in ways that streamline and simplify process monitoring and optimization
- Content Management, including support for unstructured data and rich media (video, audio), additional document types, e.g. project, and case management, etc.
- Social media integration, as above
- Easier integration with other third party software through standard APIs, middleware, etc.
Digital business imperatives
- Business focus, which is now much more external, e.g. on customers and partners, compared with traditional models which focus much more on internal operationally oriented business drivers, e.g. products and services.
- Organizational structure, which is now much more based upon collaboration across communities of interest (which often include customers and partners), compared with more traditional hierarchical organizational structures built around governance models based upon command and control.
- Supply chain management, which now concentrates on the just-in-time availability of commoditized resources that allow the enterprise to increase its focus on its core competencies and competitive differentiators, compared with more traditional “customer-to-cash” supply chain ownership and management hierarchies.
- Self-service, which now allows customers and partners to perform many functions in a connected self-directed manner from inquiry, to purchase, to on-going relationship/account maintenance compared to handling customer and partner interactions through more traditional brick-and-mortar stores and/or back office operations centers.
- Balance of power, which now places customers and partners in a much more empowered context by enabling them to become much more educated consumers during the purchasing stage. These customers and partners also have a voice that can be heard across social media as they describe their experiences with companies and products to potentially millions of interested parties around the world simultaneously. More traditional models typically empowered enterprises and sales people as the main source of product information (for better or for worse) in a world where individual customers could make only minor impact upon a company’s brand or reputation.
- Information technology focus, which now concentrates on usability, intuitiveness, simplicity and product/service integration (service brokerage), compared with more traditional models focused upon large development efforts, and product/service features, functions and architectures.
Digital business CIO imperatives
- Create and foster a shared vision. If your enterprise has not already created a shared vision around evolving into a digital business organization and culture, you have an opportunity to demonstrate your leadership abilities by initiating and nurturing the conversation. Once created, the vision should be widely and frequently communicated and reinforced with the enactment of each major digital initiative.
- Adapt your organization. If you have not already done so, ensure that you have the right skills within your organization to support the technologies required by the digital business. Social, mobile, analytics and cloud skills are a good start. Ensure that you also have people in your organization that can work in relatively unstructured environments and still produce results both as individuals and as team members. If your organization has many layers of hierarchical reporting, seriously consider creating a much more flat structure.
- Adapt your management and decision making style. If you have not already done so, consider empowering a wider base of your community (including stakeholders) to share in more collaborative decision-making activities. Augment the traditional hierarchical command and control style of management with more bottom-up communication, conversation and direction setting, consistent with a flatter organization structure.
- Become a convener. If you have not already done so, enhance your leadership abilities and style to include the skills of a convener — the organizational equivalent of the technology service broker role. Bring the right people from inside and outside the organization together in the right place at the right time for the right discussion and good things happen.
- Instill core values. If you haven’t already done so, ensure that the core values of your organization are well defined and frequently articulated. Include trust and respect for all as top cultural priorities and ensure that end-users and partners are a key component of the definition of “all”.
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