Importance of Business Process Management

Businesses of all kinds need to be well managed. Today it is as important as ever to help a business or a company to stay afloat in the competitive world. This is the case in part to technology that is allowing businesses to have a broader customer base because of the Internet, for example.

Often businesses find ways to make more money, but costs are rising. Still customers are demanding more so businesses, companies and corporations are finding a need to step up their game. Everything needs to be considering from productivity to resources and expenditure decreases and processes. This means that Business Process Management (BPM) is needed.

BPM is a when the business is analyzed to determine ways to improve the processes. Everything is considered. They look into every department, every operation, every function and every productivity element. It is vital to find better ways to work out everything within the businesses' functionality. Often technology advances are considered an option to help with the business process. This is done through applications, automation, the Internet and computers. It is important to find ways to adapt a business to these technologies. It must be put to use in a particular process to really make it efficient. A methodology is created within BPM to provide structure.

Of course a business or company wants to produce ways to save money then in turn add to their profit. Considering BPM is a new way of organizing. An example of a BPM process is when making a new product it needs its own business process to help make it a viable option. That means it is cost effective to make. There are three elements that are used within the BPM process. These include planning and analysis, design, implementation and monitoring. Using this helps the entire process to lead to a well managed and profitable outcome.

During the planning and analysis phase the key elements are evaluated and the effectiveness is analysis. Having a clear picture of the process and what is working or will work is important. It is finding a way to improve a business concept. This process is very detailed including diagrams and charts to create an easy planning process that is complete. The design elements are very important for proper BPM. It is finding the way to create a new and improve business concept. Once these elements are done it is time for implementation and monitoring, which puts all the planning into place.

Understanding Business Process Management Software

To understand business process management software or BPM software, it's important to understand that BPM software is not the kind of software that does a specific thing (ex. a word processor facilitates the creation of text documents) but rather it is a combination of many kinds of software all created to serve one end goal.

The term encompasses multiple types of software which may have different functions, but ultimately serve to improve a business through the enhancement or support of a company's workflow and operational processes. A business process is a collection of interrelated activities or chain of events that ultimately lead to the delivery of a product or service.

Core BMP software applications can be customized to suit the needs of any organization. They're built around the skeleton of business process modeling notation or BPMN, which is the standard method of graphically representing business processes in a workflow. This is then used to design or evaluate an organization's operational processes and activities.

However, the scope of BPM software is not limited to planning. Instead, the innovative use of computer software in BPM ranges from process modeling to sharing and security applications to business activity monitoring applications and more. These management tools help optimize the resources available to any given organization.

In the past, BPM meant sitting down with the key people of a corporation to literally drawing out plans in diagrams and then delegating tasks and giving new instructions. Business process management software has changed the face of BPM with business process automation (BPA). BPA integrates software applications into the company or organization's workflow in order to automate tasks that can be done without manual labor, thus cutting costs.

BPM software and BPA are the way of the future.

Appian is the leading provider of business process management software suites. They use their own software to optimize their business processes, proving that they have the utmost confidence in their own products

Liquid Office - A New Feature in Business Process Management

Business process management is a way to manage the organization according to client requirements. It is a well defined process in which there are so many steps involved during the project or business workflow. Business Process Management (BPM) is used to control and continuous flow of the business.There are so many difficulties face by the organization during theses days for maintaining their large enterprise business. The complex process during the flow of project and try to cover all the aspects of client need with the best process is primary concern of any business. There are some good products and technology available in the enterprise market for maintaining the business. One of the products name is Liquid Office (LiquidOffice). The Liquid Office (LiquidOffice) redefines BPM with the real time access. It helps to connecting people with the information and process, regardless of location.

Liquid Office made according to current business process management requirements. It contains some exciting features which play an important role in BPM. Some features are given below:

eForms: eForms (Electronic forms) is a web based powerful software solution for creating, deploying and automatically managing the routing, tracking and approval processes.

Mobile Support: This feature helps to mobile user which can manages the business process when he/she will be in flight or any journey and also find the real time data through their mobile device.

Outlook Integration: it easily integrate with the Microsoft outlook and allowing user to see all the activity sent item, inbox, saved items, work assigned and more with the help of single Liquid Office folder.

Dynamic Forms: It allows users dynamically add or delete rows in a table for the forms. With the help of this user can expand or contract according to the need.

Paper Automation: This feature is ability to easily capture paper forms and document and connect them into live processes.

Barcode Management: Easily generate 1D and 2D barcode on the forms and connect this barcode to the field data. It helps to the users which fill that form and after submitting through online or faxed/scanned this form it easily understands by the Liquid office.

There are so many other features involve in liquid office which help to business process management and document management workflow.

How Business Transaction Management Can Penetrate the 10% Barrier

Over the last 15 years, IT systems management has successfully developed silo-specific tools that resolve up to 90% of the problems experienced in main frame and distributed systems. Unfortunately, this still leaves a 10% barrier that only a few business transaction management products are addressing effectively. This 10% is the cause of considerable stealth waste.

A system that is managed by separate application monitoring tools can show that each application is 100% available. The first warning that the 10% problem has occurred is the arrival of help tickets at the service desk. So why don't these separate monitors give a true picture of the IT system?

The primary problem with silo monitoring is the failure of the separate applications to communicate with each other. They may be functioning internally as designed but aren't interacting between each other as planned. Or the silo monitoring solutions in place are just looking at infrastructure: network, web servers, application servers, and databases - but, not the applications that traverse them. In addition there is at least one "blind spot" for every transaction where visibility is unavailable.

Business Transaction Management Deep dive discovery across applications, middleware and transactions is the process in application performance management that eliminates the blind spots. BTM tools that include these processes scan for interactions between the "node types" and upload them into a special data center within a complex event processing (CEP) engine. It is the CEP capability of a BTM tool that gives it power to predict problems and administer policy or governance.

Deep-dive monitoring scans each action from end-to-end. From the first click of a user's button, to the completion of the transaction, the business transaction monitoring tool traces the transaction through each tier, whether main frame or distributed. When something stops working, the BTM software provides the necessary visibility to identify where in the IT process things went wrong. And the CEP tool identifies the problem before it impacts users.

How to Evaluate a Business Transaction Monitoring Solution In order to provide optimum value, a BTM tool needs to be customized to the specific business needs. Service level agreements (SLAs), latency requirement and other information critical to efficient and government compliant operations should be easy to enter. A wizard interface is recommended. It is also important the BTM tools is designed to monitor every single transaction, no matter where it originates within the datacenter. You want to know that once the button is clicked, everything will be recorded.

This feature is the first step to visibility. Fortunately, achieving this visibility does not mean that you have to trade existing applications for new one. The key component is finding a BTM tool with the power to monitor the functioning of multiple technology products such as.NET, Java, middleware and CICS, or home-grown applications. It is possible to "raise the IQ of your existing investments".

The complex event processing engine is the second step to visibility, for this is the part that interprets the data collected. The CEP design is key to collecting the information that eliminates that last 10% barrier to consistent predictive rather than reactive application performance management. Look for a CEP that collects data across both internal and external tiers. One that gathers both transactional and operational data will give you not only the "what and when" but the "why" of any problems that arise. Also look for a CEP engine that is capable of scanning high volumes of events and metrics as your business scales. In addition, it should have grid capabilities to provide both fault tolerance and linear scalability.

Also look for business transaction monitoring solution that allows you to program it to distribute warnings when system abnormal conditions are detected. Also look for user-friendly dashboards upon which to view and elicit information. Solid experience within the BTM industry and a reputation for providing superior support are also important considerations when choosing a BTM product.

Business Event Management in a Nutshell

This is not an article on how to organize your next company party or sales event. Business event management (BEM) is a method on how to detect deviations of the effectiveness in your business and pro-actively reacting to changes.

Forrester defines business event management as:

"Business event management (BEM) is the process of capturing real time business events from multiple sources and assigning them to the appropriate decision maker for resolution based on the business context of the events"

The main focus is on the terms real time and multiple sources. This is the only way to intercept business processes that are out of control or are about to miss their target. Business process management is the method to ensure that a business process has a clear definition form start to finish with checkpoints along the way. Business event management is also known as cousin to workflow. Workflow management ensures that a single business process completes successfully and in a timely fashion. Whereas business event management combines multiple business processes, monitors its progress and lets process owners know when things are about to go wrong.

Another term that is frequently used in combination with business event management is complex event processing (CEP). As CEP implies, business event management is a complex method to detect patterns that are exceeding a certain threshold or are about to exceed them. To boost the effectiveness of BEM, the pattern detection must be done in a timely matter to stop a bad situation from getting worst.

As an example, in the restaurant industry, fraud detection is a big problem. Detecting these fraud patterns as they happen would save an immense amount of money. Without BEM the detection happens after closing the books, a long time after the potential fraud happened, and a lot of man hour is spend to scan the transactions for irregularities. This is a good example on how BEM can apply complex event processing in real time to detect situations that exceed a predefined threshold. The timeliness of the detection is the real money saving factor in this example.

BEM doesn't need to be a messenger of bad news. Monitoring positive situations is as important to a success of a business as preventing negative situations. Identifying positive situations initiated by an employee and recognizing this employee will not only boost morale, but ultimately boost the bottom-line.

There are many vendors that are offering their implementation of BEM. Most of these products are vendor centric, meaning that they are not capable of correlating multiple sources of event data. This defeats the primary objective of Forrester's BEM definition. Other vendors went too far with their BEM implementation and made it overly complicated and unnecessarily complex.

I came across one tool that lives up to Forrester's BEM definition without being too complex. It is called SmartScore. With the ability to connect to most known database flavors and even monitoring ftp servers and file folders, this tool has the power to combine many data sources for an effective pattern detection, which is the primary objective of BEM; monitoring multiple sources in real time.

This is what the industry has to say about BEM:

"Through 2010, the adoption of BEM platforms will grow at least 200 percent from 2006."

Source: Gartner Report

"BEM's real potential is at the business level, helping to enable new strategies, reduce operating costs, and improve process performance and other tangible areas of management attention."

Source: Gartner Report

"The Business Event Management market will grow from $1.2B in 2005 to $2.7B in 2009."

Source: Forrester

In my opinion, BEM is absolutely crucial to detect real cost saving opportunities and then constantly and consistently execute these saving measures. Especially in a down economy it is a question of survival if your business is able to minimize the cost to do business. Sometimes the only way to do this is with the use of additional software. This additional expense is Ok as long as the ROI is fast enough to benefit the cost savings in the long run. I believe SmartScore is the tool that can deliver.

Business Knowledge Management

In the last few years a lot has been written about Business Process Management, and about technologies supporting it such as BPMS, SOAP and Web Services. Most of these theories, tools and techniques refer to processes of a highly structured nature.

Typically, BPM theorists and practitioners have focused on highly structured processes, like back-office processes of industrial or administrative nature. These processes are highly standardized and repeatable, produce a consistent output and are likely to be automated in part or end-to-end (STP). All process instances are executed in a very similar way and it is easy to draw a flowchart detailing the sequence in which tasks are executed. It is also possible to formalize the business rules that guide decisions, normally based on the evaluation of some process variables.

But recently other kinds of processes have caught the attention of process management specialists. They are known as knowledge processes, or knowledge-based processes. Knowledge processes can be defined as "high added value processes in which the achievement of goals is highly dependent on the skills, knowledge and experience of the people carrying them out". Some examples could be management, R&D, or new product development processes.

Knowledge workers carry out these processes by taking into account multiple inputs (generally a wide set of unstructured data and information) to perform difficult tasks and make complex decisions among multiple possible ways of doing the work, each one implying different levels of risk and possible benefits. They are dependent on individuals and it is not possible to automate them.

One example of a knowledge process is "Marketing a new product". The same steps are followed each time a new product is launched (benchmarking competitors, deciding pricing strategy, planning promotion, etc...), but it is the experience, knowledge and intuition of the people that drive the process to success.

* Multiple inputs to the process exist

Some of them would be competition, lifecycle stage of the market, brand image, budget, etc...

* Complex decisions are made

There are many possible ways to achieve the process objectives (reach planned sales, leverage brand image, etc...)

* Each decision implies different levels of risk and potential benefits

It is the responsibility of the worker to choose the best one (low price strategy, aggressive advertising campaign, etc...)

There are three main characteristics that make knowledge processes different from highly structured processes:

Focus is on communication instead of automation

The key to process improvement is to clearly communicate process definitions (the way in which the company wants the processes to be carried out) to the people in charge of their execution (through training, process descriptions publication, etc...). The better process participants understand the process definition, the higher the probability that the process is carried out according to it.

They are better implemented through obtaining buy-in than through imposing directives

They are more difficult to implement through discipline than administrative human-centric processes (although some discipline is needed). It is better to focus on obtaining buy-in from the people affected by the processes through early involvement, communication and expectations management. It is a known fact that knowledge workers are reluctant to change their habits. Some say knowledge workers don't like following procedures because they feel it limits their creativity; but most of the time they will be happy to follow a procedure as long as they see value in it, perceiving that it helps them work better and produce a better process output.

Process definitions are high level descriptions instead of rigid workflows

Processes can only be defined up to a certain level of detail, and it is difficult to provide low level work instructions or to automate decisions. Because they cannot be formalised in detail, process simulation is rarely possible. Decisions are highly subjective and too complex to be expressed in a formal language, as they are taken based on intuition and not on rigid business rules.

It is extremely important to continuously improve knowledge processes, by creating an environment through which they can evolve. This can only be achieved through coordination of diverse disciplines such as knowledge management, change management, expectations management, etc... It is crucial to establish an adequate process context (the combination of technologies, procedures, people, etc... that support the processes). The process context must incorporate feedback mechanisms, change evaluation procedures, process improvement methods and techniques and must be flexible, in order to be able to incorporate enhancements in an agile but controlled way.

If the process is instantiated frequently and the instances are homegeneous, it is possible to create great process models that dramatically increase the efficiency of the process. The best way to ensure process improvement is to generate an environment in which people are motivated, enthusiastic and passionate about process management.

Most of the time, knowledge processes are collaborative. By performing a process collaboratively it is possible that each task is carried out by the most specialised, experienced and knowledgeable worker in that specific area. Having a net of relations within the organization is a very important asset for people executing knowledge processes.

In the last years some organizations have emerged with the aim of creating professional communities around specific disciplines such as Software Development (SEI, ESI, etc...), Project Management (PMI), Business Process Management (BPMI), IT Service Management (ITSMF), etc... One of the objectives of these groups is to develop a body of knowledge that compiles the discipline's best practices in the form of reference frameworks, methodologies and maturity models. These assets should be considered by any organization interested in knowledge process management.

It is usual that knowledge processes take the form of projects to manage their execution. If the output of the process is a unique product, managing work as a project will result in obvious advantages.

There are certain guidelines that can help an organization willing to improve their knowledge processes:

* Provide process description on how to approach work

Try to figure out the best way to carry out a knowledge process, by making the best practices existing in your organization (or in your industry) explicit. Publish process definitions in a format that is easy to consult and understand.

* Provide tools that facilitate and standardize work

Decide which tools are best to help knowledge workers carry out their work. Involving all affected knowledge workers in the process of deciding which tools will be used is very convenient, in order to obtain user buy in. It is a good idea to choose a champion for each tool who will master its use.

* Assign owners to processes

Choose a person with leadership skills and the appropriate level of responsibility and influence and make him/her accountable for continuous improvement of the process. Give him/her a clear objective to achieve and an incentive to reach the goal.

* Encourage feedback for process improvement

To ensure that the flow of information between executors and the process owner is fluid, encourage people to contribute to process enhancement through incentives. Use your imagination to reward contributors (consider not only monetary incentives).

Business Process Mapping Tools

Visual Business Process Management Tool

Business process mapping software provides a useful set of process improvement tools that will help any organization measure its performance and improve its efficiency. A map provides a visual reference that outlines all the steps in the manufacturing or service process and specifies who is responsible for each step. Mapping can be descriptive or prescriptive. That is, it can represent how the organization currently operates so every member knows what their particular function is and how the rest of the steps operate, or it can describe how the organization should operate if best practices are not already in place.

When researching for process mapping software, you want to make sure you find a robust process management tool that will allow you to create your map and share it with everyone in the organization quickly and affordably, preferably a Web-based tool. As such, you can share your information instantly, regardless of whether your members are next door or around the world, and without the expense of printing and shipping.

Business Process Improvement Tools and More

Effective software usually can be purchased either as a stand-alone off-the-shelf package or it can be customized with other management services. Either way, you should be getting a management tool that provides you with interactive maps, automatic graphic-to-text functionality, real-time updates, and change tracking. With a support package, you will have access to experienced team members who will help you export your existing processes to the new software, identify improvement areas where change will result in measurable results, and provide training services for the software. Best of all, with this tool, you should expect to have the support you need to meet any number of industry standards, including HIPAA, ISO compliance, Lean 6 methodology, Malcolm Baldrige, Sarbanes-Oxley, and Six Sigma.

PMC Solutions, Inc has effectively collaborated with successful companies, government agencies and educational institutions producing efficiency within their organization. InProcess, our process mapping software, allows these organizations to create a real-time visual process mapping tool accessible by an entire workforce.

Advantages of Business Process Management And the Balanced Scorecard

Business process management is used by many organizations to control computerization of the existing and future processes of the business. Business management's key is to reach the full potential of the firm's internal rate of return and quality customer service. Because of the popularity of the business management, organizations develop and take advantages of the business management system.

Advantages of business process management includes the use of business process tools or models like modeling, monitoring, automating, analyzing and optimizing business processes can help the organization achieve their profit goals. It also enhances smooth workflow for increased productivity. Business process management also facilitates effective documentation and storage for future reference. It also improves the quality customer service and product quality. Reporting is patterned for management's use and to anybody (stakeholders or owners) who needs it. It also reduces costs and time by reducing the working hours of the workers. Business process tools are developed or purchased by top management because of the many advantages that business management gives to the organizations.

Performance management balanced scorecard is also a management tool balancing the four aspects of an organization: financial, customer, operations and learning and growth. A balanced scorecard management approach aims in balancing these four aspects in order to achieve the over-all goal of the organization.

Advantages of a Balanced Scorecard include balance itself, wherein rather than aiming only for financial performance, management also make sure that the other aspects of the organization are performing well.

No aspect of the organization is compromised in order that the other aspect will perform well. In the end, this will lead to serious problem. Another advantage of the balanced scorecard is that it is scalable, meaning that because of the metrics used in the scorecard, individual performance is measurable. This will enable the top management to assess how their managers are performing in their respective departments. Customer focus is also an advantage of the scorecard since it is based on the perspective of the customers rather than the organizations internal goals. Using the balanced scorecard also enables the management to gain employees insights. Growth and development for employees are metrics used for gauging employee satisfaction resulting to low turnover and increased productivity. Balanced scorecard approach ties the employees' satisfaction with the organizations goals making them feel part of the organization eliciting loyalty and excellent performance. Lastly, a balanced scorecard helps management to be proactive rather reactive. Meaning, that a good scorecard also current performance and factors that influence results.

Therefore managers monitor performance and anticipate problems that may arise and prevent complications in the future. An example would be attending to customer complaints right away before it will lead to poor customer retention causing low profit margin.

Over all business process management and the balanced scorecard is a holistic approach of management in operating an organization. By maintaining the four aspects always in balance, and by using business Software and tool, this ensures the achievement of the organizations' mission and vision leading to its success.

Manage Your Business Processes To Create A Competitive Advantage

During the boom times of our economy, like the late nineties, it was easy for companies to turn a profit. It was so easy, that many companies didn't give a lot of thought to efficiency. However, after the stock market bubble burst, most companies began thinking about efficiency.

Look back about five years when Dell was competing to be the number one personal computer (PC) manufacturer. PCs were becoming commodities and the quality difference between all competitors wasn't readily apparent. As prices were falling, these PC manufacturers needed to figure out how they could manufacture a PC and still make a profit. Dell's strategy has proved to be a winner. It has become so efficient that it actually does not build a computer before it has an order. Dell has accomplished this by working out a deal with its suppliers where it can process the order, get parts, assemble and test the PC, and ship it to the customer in a few short days. Rightly so, Dell sees this new efficient process as a competitive advantage.

Dell realized that spending money on research and development to create the ultimate PC motherboard is not going to increase its profits. However, Dell realized that changing their business process - order parts to specifications and then assemble and test to make sure that its performance criteria was met - would increase its profits. The company realized that the closer it got to just in time (JIT) manufacturing, the more profit it could make. They realized that this was a competitive advantage. Building on this competitive advantage, the vendor saw that it could expand its product offerings to other electronic devices like a PC version of the iPod and flat panel televisions to increase revenues.

So, what are the driving forces for other companies to gain their competitive edge?

InformationWeek published a study (July 2005) that identifies the factors driving companies business process management initiatives. [Shown at right]

Managing Business Processes

Any company efficiency improvements are going to involve business process management (BPM). The responses to the InformationWeek poll are very revealing.

Let's look at some of the issues underlying those driving forces.

Ensuring Process Consistency

Most companies have great difficulties in defining their business processes. One group could define it one way while others may define it very differently. If you could come up with a single definition, each group would likely handle exceptions differently. If those processes are not consistent, it is hard to know how to be more efficient. Companies that have been successful defining their processes have had a strong champion for the project and a dedicated project manager to make sure the definition gets written properly.

Optimizing Business Processes

Assuming your processes are defined, the next step is to begin using them. With use, you will be able to spot inconsistencies and make adjustments. When you are satisfied that your process is well defined, it is important to measure the time it takes to complete them. Now that you have a baseline, you are in a position to improve them. You can make changes to the process and see the impact of those changes.

Automating Cumbersome Manual Processes

Assuming that you have a well defined process, you will be amazed at the impact automation can have on that process. Automating the process will produce shortened cycle times, lower management costs, increase quality, control access to critical data, and more. Automation will provide the biggest impact to your ROI.
Ensuring Compliance

There are many needs for compliance. All companies have Sarbanes Oxley issues, pharmaceutical companies have FDA, manufacturers have ISO 9000, and there are many others.

With the new requirements of the US Sarbanes Oxley (SOX), companies are mandated to put processes in place. Those who have successfully implemented SOX compliant processes and automated them have found rewards beyond meeting legal compliance regulations. They discovered that their processes were inefficient and improved them. They shortened cycle times. They shortened the time it takes for audits. They gained visibility into their processes. There are articles being written about companies that see SOX compliance as a competitive advantage.

Integrating and Automating Complex, Multi-application Processes

Managing processes across multiple applications creates many difficulties. Two of the more difficult issues include: applications talking each other; and the inability of most BPM software packages to link one process to another. It is extremely important not to lose track of your vision for a solution. The technology is available to create almost any solution - but, at what cost. Linking one process to another allows you to map reality--we call it process orchestration.

The author has seen many successful solutions created with minimal integration coding. Many solution architects tend to call for more integration coding than is really necessary for day to day operations. Often you can perform a simple once a day import/export to share information among applications. [Contact me to learn more.]

Why Automate?

Companies are in business to build and sustain profitability while growing revenue. In today's competitive economy, it is not easy to raise prices to increase profits. However, if you could maintain your pricing and reduce costs, the results would increase profits.

Further, automating processes is a winning strategy. According to an InformationWeek 2004 survey, 95% of companies attempting to automate business processes were successful. Companies responding reported an average 15% rate of return and more than half had returns from $100k to $500k (USD) on each project.

Automate to cut costs

Research shows that process delays are costly. The costs of delays are generally considered to be part of the cost of doing business, and most companies are unclear how much they could actually save by automating key processes.

Automate to save time

Over the last twenty years, time to market has become common terminology. If a company can bring a product to the marketplace one month earlier, then it can potentially get an additional month of revenue. Or, it can establish its position in the market before the competition.

Automation adds value

Companies that have implemented BPM strategies have seen many benefits: increased control; cycle time predictability; improved visibility into processes; improved morale; fewer manufacturing errors; greater throughput; and more.

Automate to create a price advantage

If you and your competitor sell your goods for the same price and your company is more efficient, then you have more room to lower your price putting pressure on your competitors to follow.

Automate to improve quality

Most companies that have implemented BPM have discovered an unexpected benefit of improved product quality.

A Competitive Advantage

A competitive advantage allows you to build and sustain profitability while you grow revenue. A competitive advantage is a barrier to entry - imagine deciding to get into the PC manufacturing business against Dell.

A competitive advantage can help you sell products.

Dell's competitive advantage is their process that calls for JIT manufacturing. Because of their market strength, they have been able to build relationships with their suppliers that allow them to 'manufacture on demand'. They have negotiated terms that allows them to manufacture, ship and bill before their supplier invoices are due. They are so efficient with this new process, that they actually make money on the 'float'.

Wal-Mart's competitive advantage is logistics. According to one investment magazine, Wal-Mart sells more than 5% of all retail goods sold in the United States. If they are short of an item that is selling well in California, they can stop one of their trucks in Nebraska that is carrying that item, remove the item and redirect it to California.

Build a Competitive Advantage for Your Company

Make Business Process Management [BPM] your competitive advantage. Well defined, automated business processes allow you to bring products to market sooner [shorter time to market]. Lower costs due to increased efficiencies make your company more competitive. More efficient consistent processes usually result in higher quality products. In short, effective management of your business processes can provide your company with a Competitive Advantage:

BPM should provide some control over how long a process takes. If nothing goes wrong, you know how long the process will take. If something does go wrong, you will be notified immediately [not weekly] so that you can assign other resources to the problem. This early notification may keep the project on schedule.

BPM should provide visibility into the status of any process in the system. You should be able to see what step is being worked on and who is working on it. You should be able to see if someone is late or even potentially late.

BPM should provide access to documentation required to perform tasks. BPM should manage and provide access to any documentation created by performing tasks.

BPM software should allow you to perform audits in a few hours versus a full week.
Your Competitive Advantage

How will you build and sustain your profitability while you grow revenue? What will be the story that is written about your company?

Scott Cleveland is an innovative, creative, technical VP of marketing & sales at Ingenuus Software with over 20 years of experience in marketing and marketing management; sales and sales management; and business process consulting aimed at high tech companies like Adaptec, Applied Materials, Cisco, Sun Microsystems and many of the aerospace and defense contractors.

Contact Scott Cleveland to see what BPM can do for you and your company

Business Process Management Basics

In an article entitled "Will GPS Make Us Dumb?" that expounded on advances in GPS technology, ABC News quoted Ian White, founder and CEO of Urban Mapping this way:

"When we develop a crutch for technology, we lose the ability to do that which we did previously."

As the organizational approach to business process management (BPM) develops over time, there have been many discussions around which technology or software suite will make optimization of existing processes easier to manage. There are many schools of thought around which BPM system will best assist in creating the "perfect process". Tibco, Lombardi, Savvion, Skelta, Cordys... the list goes on. But, you can't help but wonder if the fundamentals of the BPM discipline are being overshadowed by our own obsession with technology.

There is some validity to the idea that, as we rely more on technological innovation, we lose a bit of our edge in practicing the tasks necessary to be successful should (god forbid) this technology ever disappear from our organization's arsenal. Put more succinctly: Is technology itself making us dumb? The truth of it all is that BPM is more about business process and behavior than tools. It's a good thing too, since many organizations at this time have limited resources needed to invest in software, support, licensing, and maintenance.

While the IT PPM article in the March 8, 2010 issue of InformationWeek is mostly about using project portfolio management, there is good advice that can be applied to getting back to the fundamentals of business process management (BPM). Here are some excerpts with my interpretation:

First thing's first: "Decide on what problem you're solving and how to know when you've solved it."

Business process management (BPM) itself can be complicated, simply because you're changing the way people work. As with any problem, identifying the end goal (e.g., reduced time spent on a task, less resources required to complete a task, etc.) helps to quantify how close you are to it.

Next, don't be overly concerned with automated integration too early in your assessment.

It's very easy to weigh system integration as a "pro" more heavily than other benefits of the overall offering. Understanding your business needs well help avoid being distracted by bells and whistles that are not must-haves.

Remember to "manage the change".

Organizational change management is key to a BPM implementation. Forgetting to educate staff and support teams can quickly undermine even the best solutions. Quantifying your success with periodic measures of progress will be sure to convince skeptics who may not have been on board from the start. Also, don't be afraid to ask skeptics and proponents alike for feedback. Constructive criticism will help in making the deployed solution better for most, if not all, users involved.

Remembering to stick to the fundamentals of why we look to business process management (BPM) in the first place will keep things in perspective and help keep us on track for a successful implementation.

Getting Started With Business Process Management

The set of ideas, tools, and techniques that deal with business processes, known in short as Business Process Management (BPM), has been around for a couple of decades. Even though forward-thinking professionals in business and IT recognize the importance of BPM, it does not get the mainstream attention it deserves.

Large-scale ERP and client/server implementations absorb the attention of IT departments and distract the innovators. The underestimation of the importance of integration in connecting end-to-end business processes, coupled with proprietary application architectures, continues to make it difficult to realize the promise of BPM.

In the last couple of years, there has been an increasing recognition of the role played by integration, enterprise service-oriented architecture, and mature process management platform in creating agile business processes that confer competitive advantages.

Companies are realizing that functional excellence and product commoditization are not sufficient to ensure customer centricity and innovation. Visionary executives consider the set of integrated capabilities that deal with the full lifecycle of business processes as the key to an accelerated evolution towards process maturity.

Two of the major roadblocks to adopting and implementing BPM are the lack of understanding of Business Process Management Software, and not knowing how to get started. Understanding and implementing need not be sequential activities. It is critical to get started with BPM, since adoption and implementation will continuously enhance understanding.

Most important, companies that make a beginning will realize that BPM's expense and risk are several orders of magnitude lower than traditional IT development. There are different entry points for BPM, ways of ramping up process initiatives, organizational and cultural challenges that BPM practitioners face, and the critical success factors for BPM.

In order to support both process improvement and operational management, it is essential that the various capabilities of BPM form a set of cohesive tools for modeling, analysis, workflow design, user-interface design, governance, and metadata. A BPM platform that has a strong integration infrastructure moves processes from design to automation with minimum code and manages their run-time infrastructure. This facilitates rapid implementation of process improvement projects.

Business processes originate with the customer, traverse various functional departments of the company, and flow back to the customer. In this journey, the processes rely on both systems and people for handling business transactions. To the extent these processes are successful in their goal of delivering value to the customer, they are essentially customer-centric value chains. BPM therefore deals with both process improvement and operational excellence. It plays a role in the various phases of project lifecycles (such as requirements gathering, modeling, analysis, design, improvement, development, and deployment), as well as in the post-project phases of processes (such as control, monitoring, maintenance, and management of business processes).

A true BPM platform handles not only the components of business engineering such as modeling and analysis, but also the components of software engineering such as integration, connectivity to existing IT infrastructure through adapters, and enterprise-class middleware management. Human-centric workflows that seamlessly integrate with system-centric processes must support the role played by people in business processes.

BPM platform that has a strong integration infrastructure moves processes from design to automation with minimum code and manages their run-time infrastructure. This facilitates rapid implementation of process improvement projects.

Software AG's customers provide testimony to its ability to deliver software for improving business processes and its software portfolio helps foster new levels of IT agility through SOA and allows the rapid creation of new business processes with BPM.

Business Process Management Outsourcing

The growth and survival of business in the dynamic environment depends upon the development of new products. Organizations must always be on the lookout for new opportunities and exploit the opportunities by creating new products and services. That's where the role of business process management outsourcing comes in.

Needless to say, new product development holds the key for the survival of an organization. New products do not come about by themselves. They are the result of the ingenuity of creative people in the organization. As such, it is obvious that new product development is the function of organizational creativity. In other words, it depends upon how creative an organization is with new ideas because any organization can only be as creative as its people.

Creativity, in general, may be defined as an "escape from mental struckness". In the organizational context, it may be viewed as new insights that point to better ways of dealing with reality. It involves a departure from conventional thinking to non-conventional thinking. It entails establishment of a relationship between the hitherto unrelated things, ideas or concepts.

Just as individuals differ in their ability to translate their creative talents into results, organizations also differ in their ability to translate the talents of their members into new products, processes or services. When talking about business process management outsourcing, organization members must believe that change will benefit them and the organization. Some resistance to change is found in many organizations for fear of losing position, learning new skills, etc. Such a resistance to change has to be overcome by clarifying the need and urgency for change. The adage that routine drives out the non-routine has to be revised and must be made the other way. Managers in the organization, from top to the down must make it clear in word and deed that they welcome new products and services.

Business Process Management provides detailed information on Business Process Management, Business Process Management Software, Business Process Management Systems, Business Process Management Solutions and more. Business Process Management is affiliated with Corporate Performance Management Solutions [http://www.e-CorporatePerformanceManagement.com].

Business Process Management Solutions

In designing an environment for the effective performance of individuals working together in groups, a manager's most essential task is to see that everyone understands the groups purposes and objectives and its method of attaining them. If group effort is to be effective, people must know what they are expected to accomplish. This is a function of business process management solutions. Planning plays a pivotal part in attaining the solutions.

Planning involves selecting missions and objectives and the actions to achieve them. It requires decision-making, choosing from among alternative future courses of action. Plans provide a rational approach to pre-selected objectives. Planning bridges the gap from where we are to where we want to go. It makes it possible for things to occur that would not otherwise happen. Although we can seldom predict the exact future, and although factors beyond our control may interfere with the best-laid plans, unless we plan, we are leaving events to chance.

Business process management solutions are an intellectually demanding process. They require that we consciously determine courses of action and base our decisions on purpose, knowledge and considered estimates. Any attempt to control without plans is meaningless, since there is no way for people to tell whether they are going where they want to go (the result of the task of control) unless they first know where they want to go (part of the task of planning). Plans thus furnish the standards of control.

The failure of some managers to recognize that there are a number of different types of solutions has often caused difficulty in making planning effective. It is easy to see that a major program, such as one to build and equip a new factory, is a plan. But a number of courses for future action are also plans. In fact, a plan can encompass any number of courses of future action that clearly show that plans are varied.

Business Process Management Training

In business process management training, qualified executives look to the future and prepare. One important way to do this is to develop and train managers so that they are able to cope with new demands, new problems and new challenges. Indeed, executives have a responsibility to provide training and development opportunities for their employees so that the employees can reach their full potential. The cost of training represents a major investment, so executives are justifiably concerned about the effectiveness of the training.

Companies spend billions of dollars every year to educate their work force, and most of this money is spent on in-house training and development. It is important that management education is effective and efficient. Therefore, there is need for a systematic approach to manager and organization development. The term manager development refers to the progress a person makes in learning how to manage. Managerial training, on the other hand, pertains to the programs that facilitate the learning process. However, it is quite common to refer to management or manager development when talking about programs or approaches.

Before specific training and development programs are chosen, three needs must be considered. The needs of the organization include the objectives of the enterprise, the availability of managers and the turnover rates. Needs related to the operations and the job can be determined from job descriptions and performance standards.

Data about individual training needs can be gathered from performance appraisals, interviews with the jobholder, tests, surveys and career plans. Manager development and training must be based on a needs analysis derived from a comparison of actual performance and behavior with required performance and behavior. Analysis of the deviation from the standard might indicate that the manager lacks the knowledge and skills for forecasting and that conflicts among subordinate managers hinder effective teamwork. On the basis of this analysis, training needs and methods for overcoming the deficiencies are identified.

Business Process Management Consulting

Decision-making is the primary task of a manager. While making decisions, it is common that managers consult the existing organizational policies relevant to the decisions. Policies provide the basic framework that managers operate in. Policies exist at all levels in the organization. Some may be major company policies affecting the whole organization, while others may be minor in nature affecting the departments or sections within the departments. Thus, in business process management consulting policies are intended to provide guidance to managers in decision-making. These policies are a one time standing decision, in the light of which, so many routine decisions are made.

In the absence of appropriate policies, managerial decision-making may be analogous to "reinventing the wheel" every time. For example, a policy on internal promotions greatly helps the manager in filling the vacancies. Whenever vacancies arise, he simply goes by the existing promotion policy of the organization. Sound policies, thus save lot of time in decision-making and avoid confusion.

When talking about business process management consulting, policies specify the boundary conditions of decisions. Thus, when decisions are actually made, they conform to the policy relevant to the decision. If the policy of an organization is to face competition with quality products, the emphasis naturally will be on issues relating to improving the quality of the product. All the decisions that affect the product quality are normally taken in the light of the explicit policy. Policies developed carefully and understood perfectly result in consistency in planning.

Policies help to ensure that all units of an organization operate under the same ground levels. They facilitate coordination and communication between various organizational units. This is possible because policies make consistency in action possible. In view of the importance of policies in guiding executive behavior, they have to be formulated carefully.

Business Process Management Tools

Business process management tools are comprised of planning, organizing, staffing, leading, controlling and coordination. Planning involves selecting missions and objectives and the actions to achieve them; it requires decision making like choosing future courses of action from several alternatives. No real plan exists until a decision (a commitment of human or material resources or reputation) has been made. Before a decision is made, all that exists is a planning study, an analysis or a proposal. There is no real plan.

Organizing is a part of managing that involves establishing an intentional structure of roles for people to fill in an organization. It is intentional in the sense of making sure that all the tasks necessary to accomplish goals are assigned. It is hoped that the tasks are assigned to people who can do them best. The purpose of an organization structure is to help create an environment for human performance. It is a management tool and not an end in and of itself.

Staffing involves filling and keeping filled the positions in the organization structure and identifying the work-force requirements and inventorying the people available do this. These people are recruited, selected, placed, promoted and appraised. Thus, both candidate and current jobholder's skills are developed to accomplish their tasks effectively and efficiently.

Leading influences people so that they will contribute to organization and group goals; it has to do predominantly with the interpersonal aspect of managing. All managers would agree that their most important problems arise from people- their desires and attitudes, their behavior as individuals and in groups. Therefore, effective managers also need to be effective leaders.

Controlling is the measuring and correcting of activities of subordinates to ensure that events conform to plans. It measures performance against goals. Plans show where negative deviations exist, and by putting in motion actions to correct deviations, help ensure accomplishment of plans. Although planning must precede controlling, plans are not self-achieving.

How Business Process Management Can Help Small Businesses

What is Small Business Process Management?

Business process management can help small businesses in two ways: (1) identifying repeatable processes and (2) automating them.

Automating repeatable processes (straightforward ways of doing things that you do over and over again the same way) saves time and money by removing guesswork, making training easier, and allowing you to take a break from running your business without the whole thing falling apart!

Business process management takes into account the things you do every day to make your business run and lays them out visually, so you can see just how your business looks when drawn out in a diagram. This is a great way to discover your repeatable processes. When you work with a small business process consultant, you talk through your business processes, where you can trim activity and where you can ramp up activity, so that your business can run more smoothly and be more profitable.

For example, if you own a small cafe or flower shop and every Monday you take inventory and order supplies, it would be ideal to find a way to automate at least part of that process. Or, if you run a small organization of 50 employees or contractors, it would be ideal to automate the help desk system or supply ordering process. If you are a solo entrepreneur, you can automate billing, setting up accounts, tasks you send to your virtual assistant, article writing or blogging, responding to basic questions or concerns, or even your social networking!

Small Business Process Automation in Action

You probably will recognize some or all of these things, but you may not have learned to implement them in your own business. This is where a business process consultant can help. Which of these is right for your business? All of them? None of them?

• Automated or semi-automated supply ordering (e.g., food, office supplies, etc.)
• Automated new account creation
• Frequently Asked Questions booklets or page on your website
• Help desk system for internal employees or outside clients
• Project management software
• Time tracking systems for yourself, employees or contractors
• Billing management systems
• Online postage/printing shipping labels

Business Process Management: Is It Useful for All Kinds of Business?

Business process management plays a very vital role in the successful operations of different kinds of business. This is the main reason why this process is used in almost all business organizations. If you own a business and you want to try the process out, then you have to familiarize yourself with how it works. You have to know how to make it work in order for you to achieve the kind of success that you are aiming for. This way, things will become even easier for you and for your employees.

Business process management (BPM) can be described as a methodology or business system which aims to improve the overall productivity of a certain organization. It is capable of optimizing all the practices of your business and providing a huge help in your aim to achieve your business goals in a more unified manner. This can be performed through a series of activities that include identification of all your current business processes, designing or creating new processes, implementing them and tracking each of them. BPM also has a great involvement in all the steps and departments of your business. It is used primarily for the purpose of producing productive results while your business continues to operate.

BPM has been used today by different kinds of organizations, regardless of size. Since it is a huge help in finding solutions for complex business problems, it is no longer surprising why several business owners tend to seek the service of the process. However, if you are trying to utilize this for your business, you have to be aware that its success can still be dependent on the managements approach and on how you apply it. Among its main purposes are to manage people and enhance the level of productivity within the workplace; you should be able to have a management team that is capable of making the process work. This way increased productivity can result in better customer service.

If you want the workload of your business to be managed in a more proper manner, then business process management can be a huge help to you. It ensures that your resources are not underutilized and the flow of information is made in a smoother manner. With this, you will no longer face issues when it comes to the operation of your business. You can increase your chances of obtaining success with the BPM around. You will then be able to gain control over the processes involved in your business.

A Guide to Business Process Management

Business process management (BPM) has become highly popular due to its capacity of making businesses achieve new operating capabilities and positive results. Now business enterprises seriously consider factors such as the value of BPM to the business, where to start BPM, the overall time taken for the end result after applying BPM, how other companies use this technology to make them more competitive in the market and so on.

Business process management is helpful for business analysts, managers, programmers as well as employees. The capabilities of BPM include deployment, execution, discovery, control, interaction, optimization, and analysis of processes. The main advantages of business process management is that it restructures both internal as well as external business processes, eliminates repetitions, and provides uninterrupted process visibility, control and accountability. The companies adopting BPM capability can serve their customers in a faster and efficient manner. These companies can definitely form more relationships in both demand and supply channels, and also have a better chance to increase their profitability.

There are books containing rich ideas to make a business very competitive and cost effective. A comprehensive guide to business process management can provide invaluable advice to organizations containing limited IT resources and budget. It will give you relevant and detailed information about how to make your organization run more efficiently and effectively by improving service levels, reducing costs and meeting regulatory requirements. These guides are made in such a way that they are easy to read, understand and act upon.
Some websites provide the facility of learning business process management. You can even download free copies of the guides provided. Live learning sessions are arranged by several websites where you can clarify all your doubts about business process management as well as know how the top companies are using BPM technology in order to streamline costs and slash cycle times. Altogether, a guide to business process management can assist a businessperson to make better use of a BPM package.

Business Process Management provides detailed information on Business Process Management, Business Process Management Software, Business Process Management Systems, Business Process Management Solutions and more.

Business Process Management and Six Sigma: Why Neither Can Stand Alone

What is Business Process Management (BPM)?

BPM is a comprehensive methodology that helps design and maintains all aspects of an organization with the sole purpose of meeting and/or exceeding their customer's wants and needs both effectively and efficiently. BPM attempts to continuously improve the business processes either in incremental steps or with radical changes. One way or the other, such ambitious endeavors requires equipping BPM practitioners with powerful computerized tools and an overarching infrastructure to enable a wide range of problem solving solutions. BPM tools can be classified in four groups:

(a) Strategy - utilizing tools like environmental influence and goal models, problem and opportunities models;

(b) Analysis - using tools like business interaction models, organization and communication models, and process simulation;

(c) Design - workflow and process models, use case and event models; (d) Implementation / Execution - creating sequence and operation models, business classes and system models.

BPM is a combination of these tools (and some more) helping the business to document, understand, measure and improve their business processes. BPM help to create well documented and streamlined processes, which are essential to ensure consistency, traceability and focus towards shared strategy and performance goals.

What is Lean Six Sigma (SS)?

Six Sigma (or its newer offspring Lean Six Sigma, LSS) is also a comprehensive and highly disciplined methodology that helps us focus on developing and delivering near-perfect products and services, by analyzing the underlying business processes and preventing and / or removing defects before reaching the customer. LSS also is a wide range tool set that is used under organized the following "problem- solving" cuasi sequential steps:

(a) Define -some of the deliverables in this step are project charters, CTQs, house of quality, Kano models;

(b) Measure - statistical descriptive and graphical tools, process and value stream mapping, capability analysis, data gathering tools;

(c) Analyze -statistical analysis tools, brainstorming, Pugh matrices, House of Quality (QFD),FMEA, Muda;

(d) Improve - Pugh matrices, mistake proofing, 5S, design of experiments; (e) Control - Process Control plans and Statistical Process Control (SPC).

Given the different origins, skill sets and backgrounds of a "typical" BPM and "typical" Lean Six Sigma practitioner, there are some deployment facts working against both methodologies:

1. Lack of knowledge of each other: Most BPM teams and BPM Software Companies know very little about Lean Six Sigma and vice versa. BPM traditionally has been used and deployed as an information technology effort. LSS has been viewed as an operational tool for manufacturing and / or back office processes, not software development.

2. BPM is almost all the time accompanied by an enterprise-wide software tool, and requires a software vendor on a periodical basis for training, new releases, technical support, etc.

3. BPM is usually deployed as a technology management direction or from higher up management levels. 4. Six Sigma and Lean have been for the most part manufacturing efforts; and most recently operations management directives. As a foot note, some of the most successful Six Sigma deployments were executive management mandates (Motorola, Allied, Bank of America, to mention a few).

5. Six Sigma tools do not have a large technology foot print, with software requirements mostly at some of the organization's desktops. Its deployment is typically driven at the beginning by consulting organizations and then passes to internal resources (a Program Office is a typical modus operandi).

6. Neither BPM nor Lean Six Sigma specialist is traditional a Change and Integration Management expert or trained specialist. This knowledge vacuum causes hiccups in the deployment and acceptance of either methodology by the stakeholders.

7. Neither BPM nor Six Sigma have an integrated data collection tool, creating always a delay in data gathering which hampers a quick deployment and execution. Both rely on a third party layer to perform data gathering and data readying for analysis.

What does BPM lack?

BPM tools are very effective in creating business interactions and communications models, mapping processes and workflows, as well as capturing key metrics and resources relevant to those processes. However, many BPM teams struggle to understand which processes are the top priority for the business and which defects are the most critical to solve for any given process. BPM lacks of quantitative ranking methods and statistical tools to prove significance. Teams sometimes use a series of "hunches" and past experiences to decide how prioritize design and implementation strategies for new or improved processes. LSS has much to offer BPM teams in this area - through tools like Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA), risk prioritization index and Value Stream Mapping (VSM). So, conceptually, BPM and LSS should be a great fit.

BPM is also a thin methodology to monitor the sustainability of any process change after implementation of such changes. Once process changes have been deployed, a project is closed and the consultant systems analyst goes home, or starts a new project. Tools like statistical process control and non-existent in the BPM tool set, leaving the operational leadership with (maybe) a wealth of reports, at best real-time. LSS offers via SPC, a wealth of proven and robust tools specifically tailored to particular quantitative variables; designed to monitor stability, trending and within control operational status.

BPM tools allows for storage of key data and key metrics for the different artifacts that are created and used in a project. However, does not allow for a strong statistical analysis of the data. As a matter of fact, most of the BPM data stores are for simple figures (like an average), curtailing itself for a more accurate data analysis, like hypothesis testing or a regression model to forecast future process performance. And the few software tools equipped with discrete or Monte Carlo simulators are rarely deployed.

What does Six Sigma lack?

By definition and key to its success, LSS tackles specific defects in a specific set of operations within a specific business process. This approach is very effective in eliminating defects. However, in general LSS lacks of a wealth of enterprise-wide view of the organization strategy, objective and goals, its actors and the organization surroundings. This is an area where BPM has a very strong showing. So, conceptually, BPM and LSS should be a great fit.

Lean Six Sigma also falls short when tries to incorporate tools for computer automation and information technology designs (both vital is most of our business processes with high integration and automation). BPM lends a helpful hand with use cases, event modeling, business class models, subtype and package models. Conceptually, again BPM and LSS should be a great fit.

It becomes very apparent that Six Sigma Lean and Business Process Management (BPM) neither can stand alone. Organizations that master the integration of both will have a higher rate of financial success when designing and implementing process to take any organization for a closer level of customer satisfaction and global competition.

What both methodologies lack?

BPM or LSS do not consider Change nor Integration Management or any of its derivatives when communicating changes to their stakeholders and much less to their customers. These important aspects of buying into the changes and managing smooth transitions and changes are not considered at all in any project plan, or are left to the assumed knowledge of the project manager.

The last section of this paper will present actionable tips to both BPM and Six Sigma practitioners to counter any natural resistance to change that will typically emerge from any organization when facing changes.

Core Reasons why companies don't want to implement BPM

In our experience these are the top reasons as of why there is no need for a formal BPM approach to process problem solving:

1. We have so much low hanging fruit that we know already what to do and where to start, we don't need a Business Process Architecture

2. Mapping out Processes slow things down, and is really over engineering our processes

3. We need savings now and don't have time to map out all of our processes

4. Why don't we just work on Process Control?

5. We don't know how to do Process Owners but we know how to improve processes, we've improved them before, and we can do it again.

If you are a Six Sigma Lean Resource and want a rapid tip to overcome BPM Resistance

- One can help frame Six Sigma DMAIC project or initiatives in the larger organization strategy context by quickly leveraging BPM's communication models, opportunity models, business interaction models, etc. as part of the analysis phase of DMAIC.

- BPM tools with the appropriate team of analysts and subject matter experts can create process maps and workflows in working sessions on average under one day of duration.

- Business Interaction Models show more strategic views than the conventional process model utilized in LSS.

-

 Opportunity models are a powerful tool to quickly establish and detect any missing component or gaps in the deployment of multiple DMAIV projects.

- At Metaspire, we develop current and future Business Interaction Models (BIMs) to scope the work for the current organization leading to the future BIM indicating how the various elements of the organization would interact in the future. Without these BIMs, we have seen duplication of efforts and the change one department was hoping for, quickly becomes undone by another department or conflicting priorities or initiatives.

Core Reasons why companies don't want to implement Lean SS

During our consulting activities some of the reasons as of why there is no need for a LSS implementation:

1. Didn't Six Sigma bring down Motorola and became non-competitive - too cumbersome

2. Six Sigma has little to offer and the tools and methods can be found elsewhere

3. Six Sigma stifles creativity and innovation

4. It's too expensive and too slow to implement

5. Too much specialized training and high maintenance of the six sigma group

6. Sounds to me like it would introduce too much bureaucracy

7. I don't understand why I need it in the first place

If you are a Process Improvement Resource and want a rapid tip to overcome Lean SS Resistance

- Motorola's Six Sigma methodology has now reached what internally is called Second Generation Motorola Six Sigma, with a process for governance, moving the tool from counting defects in manufacturing processes to an overall business improvement methodology, and in 2006 started Motorola Lean transformation and Software Design for Six Sigma. Thereby integrating Six Sigma tools with Business Process Management mindset.

- It is true that Six Sigma have incorporated tools that have been useful in previous quality initiatives (nothing wrong with that). However, the older methods do not magnify the impact of defects using millions of opportunities as a measure of quality, nor move from the traditional three-sigma to our six-sigma as a goal of perfection. Under Six Sigma, defect and defectives counts provide tangible, measurable results that we can use. Rather than being too costly, Six Sigma detractors are very unaware or ignorant of the cost of poor quality (COPQ) in their organizations. They have no baseline, and therefore any number is a high figure. A well-documented fact is that average companies perform at a 3 to 3.5 sigma level, with a COPQ ranging between 24% - 40% of their sales. Companies performing at a 5 sigma level lower their COPQ between 5% - 10% of their sales.

- Six Sigma consultants can bring the expertise for a quick proof of concept of LSS effectiveness within the organization. They will help to determine and prioritize any apparent low hanging fruits.

- Six Sigma is a business process improvement methodology, and unless deployed within a BPM architecture, has a hard time supporting strategic decision making. We can have a near perfection, defect free process producing Chocolate Cupcakes, and still the company will go down as the horse Chocolate Cupcakes market vanishes (God Forbid!).

- Best approaches to LSS deployment happens when the operations staff -project managers, supervisors, managers, directors are the six sigma practitioners. They continue to perform their traditional job related functions, but now they have a quantitative and statistical thinking and they decisions are supported with data facts.

- Often times, companies have a multitude of disparate measures and metrics. The Lean SS tool "House of Quality", helps companies focus on identifying customer requirements, where improvement is needed to meet or leapfrog competition, and strategies for making those improvements. As a result of this exercise core customer process measures and metrics are identified and can be re-weighted with a higher significance or introduced to the company.

- Why use Six Sigma at all? Most companies gather data and perform statistical analysis and forecasting of some sort, why not use statistically significant tools from Six Sigma to outperform your competitors? Six Sigma tools answer questions like: How do I know that I am measuring the right thing? How do I know that we are satisfying Customers and Shareholders? How can I measure and report the right processes? How do I stop defects before they occur? Six Sigma offers 10-12 tools where you can pick the right tools for the right question.

To summarize, BPM assists with organizational strategy whereas LSS assists with tactical improvement; and the most of the times forgotten Change Management component helps with the education, organizational development, integration and sustainability to operationalize changes.

Metaspire Approach Metaspire leads clients through an objective facilitation process. As a result our clients will not only have an aligned view on the low hanging fruit definitions, we also help the group align on priorities.

Do you need help with Six Sigma Lean, Business Process Management or Change Management?

We can help trim processes, control costs and improve profitability and operationalize changes