The success of a campaign to foreground business process orientation as a critical component of organizational competitiveness will depend on many factors. The terms and terminology associated with business process management must be commonly defined and understood. Secondly, the technology associated with business process management must work as advertised. Too often, the big ideas associated with IT outstrip the technology’s ability to deliver.
But, most importantly, people must understand why some business process management projects succeed while others fail bitterly. Over the past several months, high profile business process successes and failures have been reported. On the positive side of the ledger, last fall, Thomas Swidarski took the helm of Diebold, the manufacturer of ATM and electronic voting machines. At the time, the company was not in good shape. A new ATM machine had software flaws. Supply chain problems had slowed the flow of products. The former chief executive had been roundly criticized for engaging in partisan politics. Every C-level executive left.
Swidarski took several steps to turn the Diebold ship around. Among the most significant was breaking down the barriers that separated the different parts of the company and reassembling them with more attention to the way they interacted with each other. Swidarski combined service and product development under the direction of a single leader. Field service technicians, and the customers they service, now have a direct line of communication to make suggestions for product improvements. The company anticipates that the change may ultimately save several hundred million dollars.
To solve the supply chain problems, Swidarski put one person in charge of both procurement and manufacturing. Previously, procurement managers had a chain of command separate from the plant managers. Their focus was more on the cost than on the specific inventory levels needed for the most efficient manufacturing processes. Swidarski believes that the reorganization could produce much of the $100 million in manufacturing cost-savings he is hoping to generate.
Intelligence Failures
And then there is U.S. intelligence. One of the most significant recommendations of the 9-11 Commission was that the U.S intelligence infrastructure had to be reorganized to break down the information silos of each agency in the game. To achieve that goal, the agency recommended creating another layer in the intelligence community whose primary mission was to synthesize the intelligence from the other agencies. By most accounts, it hasn’t worked. Not only do data silos still exist, officers in the CIA have reportedly been demoralized by what they see as the diminution of their position in the overall intelligence apparatus.
Process reorganization has failed so far in the intelligence community because it flies in the face of 60 years of practice. Operations were sharply compartmentalized on purpose for security reasons. Trust is not necessarily a good thing. Moreover, information really is power here and, though intuitively it may make sense that sharing intelligence data will lead to better decision-making, that may not be the case. If they are not kept separate, a more powerful part of the intelligence bureaucracy might simply stifle less powerful voices.
The take-away from these cases is this. Focusing on process does not necessarily mean process should be better integrated. History, culture, responsibilities and roles play a part in determining what and who can and should play nicely together.
