The Maturity Level of a Process as a Principle Factor for Process Automation (First Pillar)

“A high level of process maturity is considered a fundamental pillar for comprehensive process automation and successful future implementation. The process operation and the time this process has been utilized by the business must be well understood by the person or people who are going to automate said process. Considering implementing a theoretical process or a process that possesses a low level of maturity is likely to result in failure and/or extended execution time and/or a high investment in cost and resources. So the maturity level must be evaluated as a priority before the development of any process automation."

Process maturity is the extent to which a process is explicitly defined, measured, controlled, and administrated, and is considered the principle categorization for effectiveness. These elements are what constitute maturity as the first of our four fundamental pillars for successful process automation.

Having a detailed classification of the maturity level of a business process is not considered the objective of process automation. Nevertheless, knowing the formal process definition, in the case that it is documented, if the process is diffused, if the process is revised, and if it is revised and authorized by upper management, is an important place to start when modelling a process designated for automation. Having control and administration requests within the activities of the process to be automated guarantees that the process is well integrated into the enterprise’s daily operations, so when the automated process is to be executed, there will not exist any negative reactions to changes by the users. Rather the user reaction, that in some cases may be negative, would be to the change towards information technology culture.

When a team or area is then joined by business process consultants and a team leader, the team must have detailed knowledge of the process to be automated; the team must understand its daily operation, including manual, semi-automatic (meaning the use of information systems that comes from previous manual processing) and/or automatic activities. This detailed knowledge will give the business process consultant a detailed view of the complexity and scope of the process to be automated. It is important to mention that, although an evaluation of levels of maturity and deep evaluation of the risks it is not expected, the risks must be communicated to the team leader or person responsible for the automation so that this person can evaluate and/or elaborate action plans on his or her own or with the enterprise he or she is working with.

Tackling the subjects described above within an automated process implementation will bring us a clear perception of the level of maturity of the process one wishes to automate. Process maturity may be simply classified on a scale of high, medium and low. High level indicates a mature process that is defined, documented, diffused, controlled, continuously monitored, measured, and in a few ideal cases, is continuously optimized, with the use of tools to improve the quality and effectiveness of the activities of the said process. Medium level maturity describes a defined, documented and diffused process where procedures and activities formalize the existing practice. Finally, a low level of maturity means a lack of a coherent process concept, where there exists no standard procedure to carry out the activities, rather there exists ad hoc (arbitrary designation) trends that are applied individually. In summary, a low level of process maturity indicates an administrative and operative lack of organization.

If our reality is that we must deal with a low level of process maturity, and its operation has shown so, it must be discussed between the team leader and the enterprise, which has high expectations for having an automated process and is not aware of the great lack of organization that was discovered. The execution of a process with a low level of maturity will bring higher cost and more time for the process automation team.

To relieve the difficulties of automating a process with low level of maturity, which surely will fail in its automation process, it is necessary to create an immediate action plan with the enterprise that is seeking short-term results; among the suggested actions are: very frequent managerial meetings for the diffusion of the process modelling (not the automated process), and revision, approval and authorization by the owner of the automated process. At the same time, it is important to raise users´ consciousness about the future implementation of the automated process and about the importance of their participation in improving the productivity and performance of the management objectives, which will in turn benefit the daily operation of the enterprise.

On the contrary, if we have a process with a high or medium level of maturity, periodical meetings for the diffusion of the process modelling, process revision, approval and authorization, and awareness trainings may always be carried out. But they must be managed under the project life cycle of an automated process implementation. A high level of maturity within process automation helps significantly to correctly define the process, measure its complexity, and execute the automated process in the future.

Ramiro Cuentas, B.S. in Computer Science, has three years of experience in process automation implementations and more than five years of experience in information and communication technologies. Mr. Cuentas specializes in applying concepts, techniques, methodologies, and best practices in process automations. Currently he is the National BPM Technical Coordinator in a project financed by the World Bank with the goal of applying a BPM system in 100 small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) in Bolivia, in order to improve their productivity and strategic management.

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