Posted by Tom Dwyer on Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - 17:32
Is there one approach for proposing and funding process improvement projects that achieves better results than the others? Often the cause of failed or delayed funding attempts is management ignorance of the current state and therefore no sense of urgency, management impatience for miracle cures, inadequate metrics leading to an inability to prove business benefits, and a natural resistance to change.
A number of funding initiatives require investing in an IT project or program of projects. Often times a business case is required to help prioritize the allocation of scarce IT resources (both $ and people). A number of IT organizations have recently added a requirement to that justification request. That is, they have added this principle to their IT Governance document. Simply stated it says that " no new project will be touched by IT until the business produces a business process model of the current area." What do you think of that idea?
Recently I have found challenges because higher priorities in the organization have come up related to the financial crisis. But even in the best of times, funding for BPM is tough. I agree with your points Tom. Spot on. Some of the tactics I am using to gain funding are the following: 1) build Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) capabilities in the define phase of the BPM life cycle. This addresses your point about inadequate metrics. In addition, it put some funding commitment to a process by the LOB plus it will spur more desire for improvement once they see how bad the process is. This will spur more continuous improvement (BPM!). 2) A tactical approach may be needed in the beginning to get started with BPM. Meaning - get funding for a small project(s), implement successfully, and capture the ROI then use to market BPM as a program - long-term strategy of continuous process improvement which will require long-term funding. Back to my original thought: The environment plays a big role. The economy is down which attracts more attention to BPM as a method/tool for cost reduction. Good for us! But the economy is so bad that there is no budget to invest. Bad for all!
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