This is the first installment of a monthly column. My focus is software technology dedicated to automating, integrating, and managing business processes, the building blocks of so-called business process management systems (BPMS). I readily admit that within the BPM community there is a contingent that believes BPM has little to do with software, that it’s really a new way of thinking about the business.
Leading companies are integrating and optimizing end-to-end business processes and crossing traditional IT system boundaries within organizations. In addition to requiring a good integration strategy, this trend forces companies to adopt process orientation and explore BPM as a technology to orchestrate, optimize and increase flexibility.
Brett Champlin is an internal Process Consultant who leads business and IT process redesign projects. He led the development of an enterprise process model repository and the selection of the enterprise process modeling, analysis and design tools.
SOA has become a well-known and somewhat divisive acronym. If one asks two people to define SOA one is likely to receive two very different, possibly conflicting, answers. Some describe SOA as an IT infrastructure for business enablement while others look to SOA for increasing the efficiency of IT. In many ways SOA is a bit like John Godfrey Saxe’s poem about the blind men and the elephant – each of the men describes the elephant a bit differently because each of them are influenced by their individual experiences (e.g.
Every new wave of industrial and information technology has brought prognostications about what it would mean to the workplace. Usually, these predictions are either wildly utopian, claiming universal application, or dystopian, warning of dire consequences. Typically, neither extreme comes to pass.
Businesses today are trying to be more effective in their operations to optimize results. Though ERP systems have automated transactions, organizations still cannot manage themselves. Measuring and monitoring from a business process context is essential to manage operational performance and the framework for developing a process-centric view for measurement of an organization is an essential step to maximizing operational performance. Business intelligence and business process management technologies are converging to support new capabilities.
What do GE, JetBlue Airways, Progressive Insurance, Amazon and the Virgin Group have in common? By making deep structural changes–made possible by business process innovation–these companies have transformed the very ways they operate their businesses, changing the game in their industries. Indeed, there’s a new breed of fierce competitors on the block ready to engage your company in extreme competition. Are you ready?
Why is it that, given two companies with approximately the same capital assets and same number of skilled employees, one struggles and the other grows profits?
The Goddard Space Flight Center at NASA uses more than $525 million of technical and administrative accountable government property in the performance of its mission.
Change isn’t easy. It’s not something most of us seek out. But for any company who intends to remain healthy and competitive in an increasingly global and electronic marketplace, change is continual and necessary. Market downturn or other external factors may force us to become more efficient at what we do. Other times the need for change comes from within – a response to new product or service offerings, system enhancements or reorganizations, for example.
“As the business grows, it gets increasingly difficult to know what is going on
Taking BPM applications to the next level involves more than buying a good BPM solution. The technology is important, but two things will make or break a BPM deployment. The first is creating customer value through the company’s enterprise-wide business processes and the second is understanding and managing the processes at the organizational and actual process activity level. To accomplish these the mindset of the whole organization must change.
Andrew Spanyi is the managing director of Spanyi International, a consulting and training company that operates in the field of organization and process design. He has worked with executive teams at global organizations assisting them to change the way they think about their business. He is the author of ‘Business Process Management is a Team Sport, Play It to Win!’
Organizations typically undertake periodic process improvement that are focused on specific business processes and may or may not align with the business strategy. In order to realize all the benefits of sometimes disparate BPM efforts, there needs to be an ongoing, organization-wide effort to assess and measure the results and continue to use the successful implementations. A process portfolio is the answer.
Bob Curtice is Vice President of Performance Improvement Associates. He was previously Vice President of Arthur D. Little, Inc.
Everyone starts here.
You're looking for a way to improve your process improvement skills, but you're not sure where to start.
Earning your Business Process Management Specialist (BPMS) Certificate will give you the competitive advantage you need in today's world. Our courses help you deliver faster and makes projects easier.
Your skills will include building hierarchical process models, using tools to analyze and assess process performance, defining critical process metrics, using best practice principles to redesign processes, developing process improvement project plans, building a center of excellence, and establishing process governance.
The BPMS Certificate is the perfect way to show employers that you are serious about business process management. With in-depth knowledge of process improvement and management, you'll be able to take your business career to the next level.
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