Leaping into the Next Generation of BPM

Molson Coors is the fifth largest global brewer with a combined annual volume of 60 million hectoliters and net sales of more than $6 billion. It leads market share in Canada and in the UK with growth profile in the US and emerging market opportunities in Brazil. Molson Coors employs 15,000 employees worldwide in 18 breweries serving 40 brands.

Coors turned to BPM in 2001 before the merger with Molson to develop a business architecture that would organize its business processes in a structured way. Coors wanted to easily identify the business redundancies along with smoothly integrating business components. Boykin said that what was needed was a methodology that worked across the entire organization. A top-down, developmental approach was needed and initiated in 2001. The BPM implementation started in IT, but was soon shifted to HR so it could work throughout the organization.

Boykin related that Coors found it necessary to develop a new process global thinking mindset and did this by creating the position of Business Process Architect.  The business process architect brought thought leadership in the areas of:
• BPM direction within the industry
• Process maturity guidelines with the industry
• Business engineering tools emerging within market and their functionality

The process architect also orchestrates the activities needed to implement the BPM lifecycle and to leverage additional corporate knowledge assets. It is also important to enforce BPM governance and to provide BPM coaching to the business units. At least one business architect is aligned to the core business processes. Molson Coors has nine process architects to monitor all the processes. Controlling processes involves monitoring and identifying further risks and opportunities.

Below the process architect and the process owner is the Business Process Lead. This person resides within the business community and uses their understanding of the business units' strategies to facilitate change. This person works with the Business Process Steward to maintain process models in the ARIS tool. The steward is also responsible for all the process documentation. 

The governance process enforces the process design rules and is accountable for performance. BPM controlling involves measuring the efficiency of the process systems and for implementing control systems that monitor compliance with regulations and provide the capability to identify potential for improvement.

Boykin said that it is necessary to develop an enterprise architecture that figures out all the impacts to the processes in order to:
• Embrace new information technology
• Change a business process
• Decommission an application
• Conclude a merger or acquisition

Boykin added that Molson Coors is changing how it implements the new processes all the time. For example, they are adding simulations to get a better idea on how these implementations will work when they go online. This is especially important for any processes that are core to the business. Boykin said it is important to first access where you are, define where you want to go and then plan the best way to get there.

Debra Boykin recently spoke on this topic at BrainStorm’s Business Process Management Conference.  For more information on this conference, visit www.BPMConference.com

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